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?
Seems to be a thermal issue and needs to be fixed. Gateway reboot issue is still there. Can't work on any social platform or website.
jlillard wrote:
@jdt254 already linked to my overheating post. Even with two cooling fans running when I was using the built-in wi-fi I would still lose my connection every few days. Offloading the wi-fi to a dedicated router helped me get an 18 day uptime. I think I managed to crash it last night with a solid upload and download running at the same time. I'm also only getting a 4G connection. If you're getting 5G speeds it may run even hotter. I would definitely switch to a dedicated wi-fi router though. Rebooting twice a month is much better than rebooting twice a day.
Can you tell me exactly how you got this set up? I'd love to not have to reboot our gateway several times a day just to watch a YouTube video.
Heat is not the problem in my case. The gateway is not hot. And I turned off the broadcasting on all SSIDs because I have it hooked up to another router by Ethernet cable, so the gateway only functions as a modem. Nevertheless, there are still multiple dropouts all day long.
If you think that heat is potentially an issue, a good first step may be to decrease the broadcast power. The default router setting of 3600 mW is a lot of power that you probably don't need if you are just using inside a normal-sized home. I decreased my 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz transmission powers to 25%.
I just made the change, so we’ll see if that reduces the frequency at which I must reboot.
Yes, very disheartening. My experience with customer service and "escalating" complaints to the engineering team has been completely unsatisfactory. There must be a way to get them to pay attention. When I have seen online reviews of the gateway I have contacted the reviewers to let them know of the problem but that has not resulted in any action. At some point, T-Mo will have to take action or customers will take their gateway "trashcans" and throw them in the trashcan.
same increasing disconnections and same response from customer service. I believe tower maintainance is what they have been instructed to say and hope you take it at face value: of course it's not. It appears to be same if they escalate to engineering, which will give the same explanation after 72h so they can close the ticket and stay within acceptable metrics.
it’s disheartening to see there’s no one actively looking at the problem and there is no open communication about it (“we are aware, you will experience disconnections, we don’t know what’s going on, we’ll keep you updated”)
My gateway internet dropped out at least 20 times yesterday, sometimes within minutes after it reconnected. T-Mo customer service said it's because there is maintenance work going on at the cell tower I connect to and that it will take another several weeks to complete. I find it hard to believe this is the cause of repeated dropped connections that have been going on for over a month now. My phone service is fine, just the internet drops repeatedly using the gateway. There must be a better solution.
it’s disheartening to see this has been happening for months to multiple users, and they act as if no one reported this to them if you call customer support
I've had my 5g home internet for Two months now. When it is running properly, I have download at 120-140 Mbs during wee hours of the morning and 40-50 Mbs during daytime.
WHEN IT IS RUNNING PROPERLY!
My complaint is performance is consistently inconsistent! Frequently performance drops to less than 1 Mbs. Then mysteriously starts working again. Lots of times this is unnoticed when browsing but since I took advantage of their special offer for Youtube TV, It becomes obvious when the streaming is constantly buffering or providing a fuzzy picture.
If T-mobile wants to succeed as an internet provider, they need to provide more consistent reliable service.
CONSISTENTLY, INCONSISTENT DOESNT CUT IT!!! Occasionally poor is bad enough.
BlueSurf wrote:
I watched this video last evening. I watched it again this morning. I placed my order on Amazon for the Dynalink. I think this is the fix for me.
Has this worked?
