Connected, No Internet

K4VW - The PCI, physical cell identifier, is the identification for the cell that is the origination for the band. If the tower information in cellmapper.net has both the B2 & B66 LTE bands you might be sort of in the middle of the zone where your gateway tends to move back and forth between the two. They could be on different towers but without looking up the PCI information in cellmapper.net I could not say if both are on different towers or not. Use cellmapper.net to locate the 4G LTE cells via the PCI values. You also may be able to locate the 5G NR signals as well. CellMapper.net is roughly 80% accurate as the database is populated by users uploading info. With an account and using application software on an Android phone users can get their information to the servers and in the database and that helps everyone that tries to find cells. Not possible with an iPhone, an apple thing. If it is I have not seen any way yet. I have been reading the info on cellmapper.net and Android and Win10 mobile apps available but not for iOS. Using cellmapper.net is free and very helpful.

One thing you might try is to rotate the gateway say 5 degrees at a time and watch the signal metrics. The arrangement of the Nokia is such that there are multiple antennas in it which run vertical. I found if I point the back of my gateway, i.e. where the switch and Ethernet ports are, in toward me and have the front left, from the back orientation, facing toward the tower I can improve the 5G NR signal. I usually can get 3-4 dBm improvement on the 5G NR signal just by turning the gateway to improve the signal wash over the two antennas on the front side. I oriented mine to improve the 5G and ignore the drop on the 4G LTE signal. I don't do much in the way of heavy uploads so the download speed on the 5G signal is where I have worked to improve the exposure. So, you can with a simple rotation of the gateway impact the signal metrics and improve your performance. You can use the chart to translate the metric values so you can dial it in. You might get it to hold 5G with a stronger, cleaner signal with just a simple spin on the gateway. I did have success with this.

Some people get improved performance with the Arcadyan GW vs. the Nokia and others report results that are about the same. Users that have the Arcadyan and the Nokia have BOTH reported heat related issues. Nothing is perfect in this world. I have the Nokia and I would not trade it for the Arcadyan. I have been in service here with the Nokia since early January 2021 and had two flakey outages. Both were due to work being performed on the tower equipment. Upgrades and programming I suspect. After the second period it has been stable for the past 11 months. I prefer the Nokia and I am familiar with the interface and it has more configuration functionality than the Arcadyan GW. The Arcadyan firmware has been improved but I don't know how much as I don't have one to tinker with. If my download and upload speeds were less I would use an external antenna just to be able to locate the gateway so I could improve WIFI delivery over the house better. With 180 Mbs down and 40-60 Mbs uploads I don't have the demand for the external antenna. If that changed in a negative way then I would probably give an external antenna more priority.

K4VW -  “The unit is in a window in my garage.” If the garage is hot; heat may be part of the problem and a fan may help. I seem to recall some of the users with heat issues reporting similar behavior so put a fan on it and exhaust heat. 

If you can locate the GW with good exposure to the tower in a room with better air conditioning that might be better. Some gateways do have the heat issues. :-( A fan will NOT hurt. You might query the Community threads for heat or fan and find a quick response that gives you a line on the size and price. They are not expensive and can be had on Amazon or other sources online pretty easily.

Thanks to all those posting here, proving that my issue is far from unique and isolated. About 40 days into this failure mode, I am still without internet service via my T-Mobile gateway.

After many, many frustrating phone conversations with "tech support," I'm on my third device -- this time the Arcadyan model. The problem remains the same: "good" connection with T-Mobile's cellular network but no internet service… not even a blip... this after about ten months of what I consider stellar internet access, given the paucity of options in my area.

To Jay from Georgia: Thanks for your post, but I sincerely doubt you spoke to an actual engineer. T-Mobile has erected impenetrable firewalls to prevent that from happening. Instead, you most likely spoke to one of their offshore "tech" representatives, who can do little more than perform scripted procedures and file trouble tickets. One of the last reps I spoke to claimed he was the last stop on my journey to a solution, promised to stay on top of it, and would get back to me with updates. I haven't heard from him in a couple of weeks.

Still, the thought of reconnecting with my local cable company is so odious to me, that I am willing to wait. As long as I keep getting credited (for my autopays) for outage days/weeks/months, I have nothing to lose. Reports here are encouraging in that some users seem to regain service after some indeterminate period. In the meantime, I can limp along with my slow, expensive, rock-solid DSL service.

I will update as I can.

Jim12957 wrote:

We've had TMobile Home Internet for several months, and it's been rock solid from day one.

 

Until the last 24 hours.

 

Every 10-30 minutes or so, our devices get 'Connected, No Internet', and the only way to fix it is to power cycle the gray trash can (as we call the modem).

 

Very confused, as it's location hasn't changed since initial setup, nor have any of its settings.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

The posts about resetting to factory settings are incorrect!!! This is NOT a fix.  After 6 weeks and 10 hrs with Advanced Tech Support dept (unable to help) I have solved the problem. As background I had flawless fast service for 2 months, then it was terrible. I'm 600ft from my 5G tower in a major metropolitan city too. 

Here's the solution(s)... use the T-Mo Home Internet app. Switch to 5ghz from the standard 2.4ghz if you're close to your tower. 2.4ghz is for longer broadcast distances. We switched and service definetely got better but was still unacceptable. The real thing that worked was (on the same page of the App) select WAP/WAP2 from the default WAP2/WAP3 encryption. Our cell tower must have had a software update that is not prioritizing WAP2/WAP3 encryption IP traffic. I took the entire router to my boat in another city/state (that's not even available for TMo Home Internet) and with the original settings it was passing 240MB down with 31ms ping. This is how I knew it was a problem from my local tower. Roll back the encryption standard and your service will come back. I'm getting about 44mb down now but the ping is about 200-300ms. 

Well you did the basic to get your service back to normal.  Since that didn't help it can very well be a hardware issue.  Overheating has caused problems.  I use a cooling fan and it has been just great.

Your next step is Tech Support 844.275.9310, tell them everything you did to try to fix your Gateway.

They can do stuff remotely which may turn out to be a new replacement.  Good luck.

I am also having the same issue. Only had the service for about a month though. We got our second trashcan 3 days ago and yesterday I had to reboot it multiple times throughout the day due to the "connected but no internet" message on my phone. I generally get Good signal and average D/L of 150-200 and U/L between 10-50 and we are running a cooling fan on it. I was wondering if adding an external router would help solve this issue?

I experienced the same thing while they were doing tower upgrades in my area last September, 2021. It took them three or four weeks to complete the work, then speeds went up and internet dropping problem disappeared.  It's been stable ever since (it's now late February 2022).

This started happening again yesterday.  :(  Only this time WHILE I was watching Roku connected to my router!  Several devices were reporting no internet connection.  Hmm.  Did a power cycle on the router and everything came back.  I was so glad it wasn't T-Mobile taking done a local node without any notification.  I wonder if "node down" is the default explanation to no service?

I am liking the service (when it works) but just get tired of running into poor customer support, or "canned responses".  I've done worldwide tech support for a fortune 100 and this would never be acceptable from my staff.

So if it does come back on its own without a reboot does it connect to the same cells? It really could just be T-Mobile is working on the equipment doing upgrades or programming and don't provide any warning about maintenance activity. When they get the equipment upgraded and set it usually does improve but it is frustrating while they monkey with the radios. We had the same behavior here and once they got the equipment dialed in service did improve and get stable.