5G home internet keeps dropping

@jtheiss Thank you for the reply. I've started a new thread to collect information from users like us who have experienced degradation after some period of operation. If you'd care to participate it can be found here:

This is more of a poor device design then anything else. Others have noted the same thing that T-Mobile needs to design a better router with better hardware and more efficient software. This is a poor design of a router that T-Mobile rushed out the door. The FCC should hear about this company and how they refuse to address the problems they constantly keep having.

I spent considerable time monitoring mine and researching. Do get into the web interface from a local client and record the internet connection information for the primary and secondary channels and record the channels recorded for the primary and secondary connections to the tower. The T-Mobile support engineers should be able to provide the coordinates for the tower where your connection is established. If you know how far you are from the tower(s) and what channels are used etc… that helps to have a better idea of what to expect. 

I would guess the primary will connect to LTE and the secondary channel should connect to 5G. Hopefully you have good signal strength and signal quality at least. It could be they are just doing work on the tower equipment and you have just encountered the disruptions due to that. I found the web interface to the router from a client can be impacted by my Bit Defender agent from time to time as the connection from the client to the router is not encrypted. That makes it appear as if there is no connection to the router even with a refresh so that was driving me nuts. I ran speed tests and also ran concurrent pings to several of the DNS servers to monitor how the connection was holding. You can rotate the router a bit and influence the signal strength. I was able to improve the 5G signal several dBm just by turning the router to position it so the 5G antennas were receiving the most favorable exposure to the tower. You have to know where the tower is to really get the router in the best location. Also make sure you dont have metal screens on the window in the way of the signal from the tower. 

I cannot say for sure about the relationship to heat as I cannot confirm any heat related problem with mine. I did put a fan under it today since I had a small spare laptop cooler. Some people appear to have had heat related problems and appear to have had positive results adding a fan for cooling. I put mine out in 88 degree temp last Sunday to test it for such but it ran fine for hours. It was a bit warmer than usual when I brought it in but it never dropped link while outside the door. I suspect the problems I have seen are more related to engineers working on the tower rather than this router. Good luck with it.

I have had my T M internet for 2 weeks and have only had maybe 2 full days of service fair  been on the phone daily lots of excuses but no fix, speeds are all over the board and as stated here drop outs  especially after 7pm that's when TM Ted's say that it's the busiest, The last Tech turned in a ticket? And will here back on the issue, we'll "NOT" fed up cancelling Monday. Very Unreliable.

add my name to the list. i’ve only had the device for a week, but it has dropped several times and rebooting does fix it. i am not using the WI-FI and my device runs about 110F…..on hold with support as i am typing

Yep after many hours of the same answers from the Techs mainly that the tower has problems I canceled and only had this useless paper weight for 8 days I am being charged a full month and didn't get it till Aug 4 th. Oh well done with T Mobile. I wanted it to work but I guess they don't ?
good luck

I've now been on hold for 2 hours waiting on technical support. I think I many have made a terrible mistake ordering this service. It has dropped 4 times today alone

As I recall for customers that do want to return the router by the end of the initial trial period you would not be charged if it does not work out. If you do run into problems with the billing just keep calling back in and stay after it. Early on I had a couple of charges that they did not get removed properly and they kept charging/billing me even though it was supposed to be resolved. Don't just give up keep after it as they will resolve improper billing if you are persistent. When you get with a support person that is solid and knowledgable they can and will resolve disputes over billing. 

If you call in for a tech call I recommend using the call back option in the menu if you do not get to a support engineer right away. It has always been more acceptable to me to not waste my time just sitting on a call listening to elevator music. I found calling early in the morning was more successful than later in the day or evening. Avoid what would be peak hours and it does help to not have to wait. Have your questions ready and give them as many data points as you can. Get the trouble ticket number before you hand up as well. Work the system.

My 5G gateway does not have any wifi enabled but uses my home network router and access points.  About the same time every day, it refuses to connect any of the clients to the internet.  When I connect to the web interface (192.168.12.1) the status shows the internet and the gateway with a green check.  I can reboot it and get my internet connection back but it is a pain.  I was on a call with a support lady when I rebooted and it came back up but she said she would refer it to one of the product specialists.   We will see ...

I suggest a couple of actions to see if you can get a better idea of what is going on. Open a command window and run continuous pings to say the quad9 DNS server 9.9.9.9 or Cloudflare at 1.1.1.1 and let the pings run. When you halt the pings you can see the success/failure rate for the given period of time, average latency etc.. When you go into the HTML interface of the T-Mobile router look beyond the overview and review the current cellular statistics. Use the refresh switch or refresh the page itself or use the F5 option key to refresh the statistics. Do so several times to confirm if the send and receive counters both increment. It would be interesting to know if the  router is  sending but nothing is  received or vice versa. Since you have your wireless device connected, via ethernet to the router be sure to look at the RX/TX counters for the ethernet connection between the two on both sides of the link. Do both agree on RX/TX values and if there are errors recorded or not. If you have multiple clients run pings back and forth from one to another on the local LAN and have each also ping the router gateway IP address. Evaluate the viability of the local and remote traffic and see if there is possibly some communication issue between your local wireless solution and the T-Mobile router. It might be interesting to see if there are search results for others that use the same wireless devices and the T-Mobile router. The T-Mobile router is 802.11ax capable so using a client direct to the router WLAN with a separate SSID might be good to also test with parallel to your current solution. If a wireless client connection direct to the T-Mobile router continues to work while a wireless client upon your personal wireless device does not that would be a good data point. There might be some operational compatibility problem between your wireless device and the T-Mobile gateway. It might be as simple as a software upgrade of the personal wireless device or the T-Mobile router. I can only speculate but if you get more data points it should help clarify where the failure takes place. Record your data periodically and see if things change over time. Taking a screen clip of the overview, status and statistics reporting at each interval and making a document for review will help profile the operation to know what is taking place over time. The more you keep an eye on it the more you will "know". It is not what we think that matters, it is what we know that will make a difference. I also suggest to record the statistics recorded before you reboot the T-Mobile router. FYI, from time to time, ok more frequently than I like, I have seen the T-Mobile router HTML server refuse show squat. It will render the page contents at times but NOT any vital statistics. It can report no connection, no statics counters etc… I believe if you allow the webpage to stand idle for a bit then the data goes stale and you get squat. In that case just close the tab and open a new browser tab/window to the 192.168.12.1 address again. You can always tell when it is in that state by opening a terminal window and sending pings to one of the DNS servers. If your pings are successful but the HTML page rendering reports not connected well the basic cached information seems to render but nothing else so it can be deceiving. ¡Buena suerte!