Forum Discussion
5G home internet keeps dropping
I'm having a problem with T-Mobile 5g home internet that has not been resolved despite many calls in to the help line. I've had T-Mobile 5g home internet for almost a month now, and the short version is that every so often the gateway drops the network. When I say "drop the network," I mean to say it throws everything off of the Wifi that it's broadcasting, and anything plugged in via ethernet says "no network found. (To elaborate this point, cell phones switch to cellular data because wifi is gone for them, and computers hardwired into the gateway think that they are no longer plugged into anything.) Turning off the gateway and turning it back on resolves the issue, but doesn't prevent it from happening again. Whatever is happening doesn't seem to affect our connection speed/strength when the gateway IS providing signal to devices in the home, but due to the nature of our work, we need a connection that won't just disconnect randomly.
To address this, T-mobile has so far run a bunch of tests on their end, and seem to have ruled out a tower issue (which makes sense, as the tower shouldn't have anything to do with whether or not the devices on the gateway's wifi or ethernet connection get thrown off of the network.) They've sent me a replacement gateway, which is experiencing the exact same problem (3 times in the last 36 hours, in fact). I've noticed that the device gets pretty warm, so I set up a computer case fan as a cooler to force air through the device, thinking that perhaps it's an issue with the device overheating. However, while the gateway is notably cooler than it was without the fan, it has not prevented the issue from persisting. The last thing that I can think to do (and my most recent attempt at resolving this issue) is to plug a router into the gateway via ethernet, and allow the router to handle the wifi/connections w/ devices in the house, and to disable wifi from the gateway all together. Maybe the gateway is simply too overburdened with connections and gets somehow overwhelmed and shuts down, and having the router handle the "heavy lifting" of taking care of all of the individual device connections will resolve it? I don't have a great deal of faith that this will fix the issue (as the gateway also kicks ethernet things off of the network when it experiences this problem), but I'm running out of options/ideas of what to do in order to just get a stable, constant internet service.
Is anybody else having this issue, has anybody resolved this issue, or does anybody have any advice or feedback regarding how I might get this resolved so that I can get back to having stable internet?
@Fredreed I'm still on hold waiting to report this again. I've asked a number of times what they're going to DO to fix this, and asked more than once if they'll send somebody out. I think I'm about a phone call away from cancelling, as this is eating up too much of my time. I don't understand how my cell phone can have a constant internet connection, but a device that's much simpler can't.
I don’t think that your router is the problem I suspect that something in your area is causing this problem and I would call T-Mobile and ask them to send out a tech ASAP to take a look at your problem in person.
@Fredreed I unplugged it again and did another walk around the house. Aside from one spot in the house that I get four bars about 5% of the time, and 2 bars the rest of the time, I think it's in the best spot. Whatever's happening seems to be getting worse, as I'm now up to my fourth crash in two days.
well that brings it back to something has to be blocking the signal or causing the signal to be weak and whatever It is causing It who knows. If there's nothing wrong with the tower it has to a blocked signal or something has to be causing the signal to become weak. I'm sorry but I'm out of ideas except that but good luck.
I've not tried it in other parts of the house, because where it's at seems to get the best signal. I'm not sure it's realistic to test it at another person's house, as we need the internet to work and the fact that it works fine 99% of the time makes it tough to catch the 1% of the time that it doesn't. (Said another way, if I brought it to another location, I'd have to commit to leaving it there for at least several days to see if it it stays up or not.)
It's possible that there could be a blockage coming from the tower but if that's not the problem then it could be something else causing the signal to be blocked. If you tried everything like all possible locations In your house then the only other thing it can be is something has to be blocking the signal. What you could do is take your device to your friends house in your location and see If they get the same problem if so then you would know that something is wrong in your location and t-mobile needs to investigate It further.
I would to have this that maybe it’s not the device that is having problems but maybe possibly something could be blocking the signal from the tower to the router or maybe the tower is having problems with getting the signal to the router.
So as a quick update, I'm still running a case fan under it (and it DOES seem cooler), and I now have turned off the WIFI from the gateway, relying on two ethernet cords for connection (one for my router, and the other for my smartthings hub). It has, unfortunately, failed again in less than 24 hours. The tech I was talking to is supposed to call me back at some point about possibly trying a new SIM card, as well as report back about what the engineering team is finding, but I'm starting to lose faith pretty quickly that I'll find something that'll work for me.
18 days of uptime is pretty amazing @jdt254 . If I could get to that, I’d probably just restart the thing once a week just to be sure that we don’t get intermittent faults at times that would impact our work, but at this point, I’m not clearing 24 hours even with a case fan and a router handling the heavy lifting of my home network.
Yes the tech support for their home Internet service is terrible and the biggest problem I have is that they can't speak English clearly so you can't understand what they are saying to you. But if your having problems with the service I would recommend that you try a router and if that doesn't work My only suggestion then is to try a different service for home Internet. For me I can about 300 to 350 for download and about say on a good day Upload 40 to a low 20.
