Connected, No Internet

Hi Tinker and thanks for the reply, good information. I've been using the Nokia for about 7 months now. This is my second one with no change in performance. The unit is in a window in my garage. Best signal I can get is 2 bars but sometime will get 3 bars on the secondary which is connected to N71, PCI 320.  The secondary is always on N71. The primary is connect to B2 or B66 and I get the faster uploads on B66, PCI 328. Is the different PCI numbers different towers? My computer is connected directly but the other 5 devices are via 2 or 5G. At most only 2 devices are active at one time. The system will cook along well for several weeks until I add more demand on the system. If wife is on a Fire Stick watching Paramount HD stream it works great until I connect to YouTube on the shop PC. In a few minutes it disconnects the Internet. Happens all the time. It is still connected to the tower, same signals but no Internet. Re-boot will bring it back. Of course the wife does not understand and is unhappy. Is there a limit to the amount of data I can be using at one time? Thanks for you help. 

• iTinkeralot

Thank you very much, bunch of great info.  I did notice my N71 secondary has switched from PCI 320 to 359.  I found the tower site #125290 SE of me.  Have you tried external antenna?  I know, I don't want to do it either but would like to see what kind of improvement I got.   Would like to try one of the new Gateways.  Thanks again and I'll keep working on it.  Great support!

Replies that offer suggestions for a better signal from the cell tower are completely missing the point of this discussion.

I, too, have lost internet connectivity after about ten months of what I would call "stellar" performance with my T-Mobile internet gateway. (I have the grey Nokia device.) I'm not talking about reduced speed or an intermittent connection. I'm talking someone-flipped-a-switch-or-tripped-over-a-wire dead-as-a-doornail no internet connection. I'm still connected to the tower antennas and, therefore, as far as I can tell, to the T-Mobile cellular network. I say stellar because I was getting download speeds between 30 and 50 Mbps with occasional stretches in the 100 Mbps range. I'm on my backup ADSL service right now, which tops out at 7 Mbps down and which is the main reason I am able to participate here.

Dealing with T-Mobile tech support out of India (my guess) has been utterly frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I've accommodated their "script" -- performing reboots, factory resets, SIM card reseatings, and readback of IMEI and other numbers ad nauseum. They've replaced my gateway device, also to no avail. It is difficult enough to understand these so-called tech reps because English is clearly not their first language. It is even more difficult to get them to understand that, after several hour-plus sessions on the phone playing their diagnostics game, the problem is not with customer premises equipment or setup. The gateway device continues to show connection to the cell network, and its router functions are all OK.

At the moment, I am waiting for a callback with an "engineering" status report. Apparently, there have been some equipment upgrades that might have caused this problem. But it's been three weeks, folks. C'mon…

I love that at the end of each telephone tech support session I am asked, "Have I satisfactorily addressed your issue today?" or some such thing. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

I may have to jump ship, but it will be a sad day. The T-Mobile internet service was my ticket to a happy day -- the day I cut my cable connection.

So I would argue for those focused upon the cellular connection and no internet that it will be helpful to know if you are connected to the same cell source or if it has had a handoff. You will not know unless you keep up with the PCI, physical cell identifier. There is some buffering of data to try to deal with handoffs but there is routing as well. If the routing does not update then your outside NAT address may not be seeing the return of the routed traffic so you get the behavior. It could be a routing issue with the gateway software. Without some debugging the T-Mobile engineers can't see what is going on. If the gateway is rebooted then the ARP table and routing table would be flushed and the gateway should be reconnected to the routers that handle the traffic on the T-Mobile network. 

I have had the same problem in Atlanta of "connected without internet." Had days of good service, followed by great instability of the internet connection. Tower signal remained constant.  Six calls to tech support, replacement of the gateway device, etc.

Finally, I spoke with an engineer (opened a trouble ticket) and a supervisor re-booted my virtual gateway on the T-mobile side (his explanation).  Service has been restored and running as anticipated.  

The solution is only 24 hours old (August 16, 2022), so anything can still happen. Still awaiting a response to the trouble ticket opened to understand root cause for the problem and why T-Mobile was unaware of this problem and unable to monitor/log my internet service.

Will wait a day or two. If still stable, will call T-Mobile Customer support and ask for a credit for service not delivered.

My connection has stabilized somewhat.  Don't lose Internet anymore, knock on Wood, and can live with T-Mobile.  Morning downloads 100 plus, busy afternoons and evenings, 35-45 MBS.  My uploads speeds have always been bad, 2-4 MBS.  I'm happy for now, sure beats AT&T DSL.  Good Luck..

I am having the same problem with the Nokia gateway.  It does not appear to have anything to do with the tower.  Most of my connected devices remain functioning at high speeds while others show "no internet connection".  For instance, My OOMA, iPhone and wife's laptop will stay connected to the gateway but show no internet connection.  Simultaneously my iPad and laptop are working just fine at nice high data speeds.  The devices loosing internet are largely random, though some tend to loose internet more frequently.  A total reset and numerous reboots and a software update have not solved the problem.

I am hoping they will send me another gateway, preferably not the Nokia since others seem to be having the same problem.  My service was perfect for the first 6 months,  the last two have been miserable.

BlueSurf wrote:

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.

Just fyi I was rock solid first few months too and same issues it got progressively worse week over week and now can't get on at all. I think they are adding more people than they can accommodate. Why else would I suddenly not be able to use it when it was great in the beginning but also gets worse every week.  (yes at peak hours and weekends) 

I'm desperately trying not to go back to spectrum but it's looking like that will need to happen. 

I got a replacement and it is the same issue!

I'm having the same problem with my 90 year-old Dad's internet.  It was good (20 mps) when I first got it for him last October.  Since the beginning of July it's been terrible.  Like, 0.15 mps terrible.  It's so bad that I can't even bring up a webpage to run a speed test.  I've called T-Mobile tech support 4 times and I'm getting really tired of hearing their script.  No internet means my Dad (who lives alone) has no TV and no phone.  That's right, the connection is so bad VOIP doesn't even work.

The Nokia unit is showing 4 bars and the tower is less than a mile away.  I think I know what the problem is but there doesn't seem to be any way to correct it.  The 5G signal is "poor" but the LTE signal is "excellent".  Unfortunately, there is no way to turn off connection to the poor 5G signal.  I had even considered asking for a 4G router instead but I'm just going to get rid of the service.  Why should I spend all my time trouble-shooting their lousy service? Fios is coming on Thursday and Dad is on a hotspot borrowed fomo the Library until then.  I really wanted to like T-Mobile Home Internet and I did at first. Now, however, I hate it and I doubt I will *ever* try it again - even they get their act together

The 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz bands you mentioned are wireless frequencies used to connect your devices to the gateway.  They have nothing to do with how the gateway communicates with the cell towers (usually 5G cellular or LTE). Likewise, the WPA settings you mention are just the various methods of encrypting communications between your devices and the gateway via your wifi network.  The cell tower is not involved with the WPA communications that occur between your devices and the gateway. The gateway has its own set of security and encryption protocols used to communicate with cell towers, and you can not change that via any settings that you can make via the T-Mobile app or the web UI.

That said, the settings you are describing can indeed affect the speed and security of the wireless communications between your devices and the gateway, and that can affect the overall internet speeds you see on your various device.