Forum Discussion
Frequent Disconnection on 5G Home Internet
Just putting out my observations on disconnects on my 5G Home Internet -- hoping that T-Mobile's engineering will take notice because I'm not sure if my support calls during the past several months have trickled up. I will place another support call again to communicate these observations.
My gateway is on the latest 1609 firmware.
During the last several months, I noticed that at least once a week, usually on a weekend, my Internet connection will drop out, sometimes two or three times on a given day. It was unpredictable. It could occur several times during a given week; and, like most, working remotely, it wreaked havoc on my work day. Often noticed service disruption when streaming video starts buffering or my vpn drops out. Sometimes, I'm able to catch a severe degradation of speed on a speed test app before it becomes unusable. I usually see 300/50 Mbps, so 1 to 2 Mbps down was definitely not a reasonable speed -- especially with the gateway still showing four bars.
In every case, power cycling the gateway fixed the issue. But obviously this is an unacceptable solution.
I opened a support ticket back in October 2021. Over the next couple of months, we replaced the unit+sim. We've powered off/on with removal of power for a period of time. We've replugged directly into the wall as opposed to a surge protector (which was an inane suggestion). Two engineering tickets were opened with no one getting back to me. All to no avail. The support experience was frustrating, especially when it was clear no one had a clue to what was going on and were trying to give me things to do to make me feel like something productive was being tried. I had to fly out for two weeks during the Christmas holidays, so held off of switching service providers until the new year. (I was a FIOS customer and was looking to go back -- I had no issues there, but I thought I'd try T-Mobile after a storm ripped out my optical switch from the side of my house.)
During my time away in December 2021, I asked my tenant to check speeds and report any service outages. To my surprise, during the two weeks we were away in December, there were no outages.
When I returned from holidays, service was still consistently good -- actually even better, up to 320/60 Mbps -- and I wondered if there was something repaired or improved on T-Mobile’s network.
Until I used a vpn (RealSolid) to watch some, er, region specific video content. Noticed that an hour or two into the viewing of the video stream over vpn, service would degrade until it dropped out. A reboot of the gateway would bring service back. Service was good during the week until I used the vpn again the following weekend. So this had gotten me to suspect that while1609 may have repaired some vpn client issue, it is still not handling vpn traffic properly.
During the previous months, I actually rarely used this aforementioned vpn, so I'm hypothesizing that it may have been my work VPN (GlobalProtect) with a sustained connection over time. My work vpn has been fine since starting back at work, but i have purposely shut down my work computer every evening. I'm going to keep it running as I did prior to Christmas to see if I can reproduce the issue. If it recurs, I suspect the sustained use of some vpn clients may be affecting service.
In any case, it appears that engineering will need to look closely at their code and fix the handling of vpn traffic.
Hi. Around super bowl I had one disconnect a day. Streaming froze up once. It was stable for 5 days without disconnect. Able do a little streaming without problems. No buffering. Not a problem to reboot the router once a week. As you found I doubt any of what you tries was the problem. More likely this is how Tmobile is handling traffic off of there servers. When it does disconnect the wifi signal and lye and 5g signals are good (2 -3 bars) but there is no data coming in. This is a problem if not home as can not reboot the router remotely only if at home on wifi. I believe Tmobile can reboot the router remotely however as some have said. Right now things are fairly stable. There was a firmware update recently that may have helped??? Also remember that Tmobile can reduce speeds if you use more than 50-100 FBI per month. This might be effecting your ability to stream at a high rate.
Thanks for the heads up. I just checked and apparently did get upgraded. I will have to run some tests this weekend.
After my first month with no issues I'm unfortunately on the same boat as many of you in these posts. My first non issue month was too good to be true now these connection drops are becoming the norm.
I've had a couple random dropouts before but today experience multiple disconnections from the internet while signal strength looked good.
I believe this to be an easy thing to detect on the network and something they should be trying to avoid.
I recently subscribed to Home Internet and got the KVD21. Installation and set-up was simple. After two weeks of use and testing, I have found that the unit is fully capable of sustained advertised download speeds of 115 Mbps.
The problem that I have found is that T-Mobile is not pushing the bandwidth to the device when network usage in your area is high. In fact Home Internet has no priority at such times. In my use thus far that means speeds of 0-3 Mbps during these Prime Times. When network traffic is lower I have sustained speeds of 81.43 Mbps, 86.76 Mbps, and 94.16 Mbps for a few hours. So basically in a 24 hour period my ability to use this service goes from being on a 2400 baud modem (remember those) for a few Prime Time Hours to moderately high bit rate speeds that allow you to adequately use the service. Yes I have tried power the unit off, factory reset, unplug, change locations, reset devices, different cables and reinstall software multiple times.
I see the solution to this issue is simple at this stage. SUSTAINED MINIMUM BANDWIDTH. T-Mobile needs to set a minimum speed for these devices if they want to maintain subscribers until they can build out their network to handle demand in areas there is a problem.10 Mbps is an acceptable minimum during these Prime Times. If they want to compete with cable and fiber they can't expect people to accept daily speeds under 10 Mbps with all the options out there. This service solution has many positives but the biggest negative at the moment is sustained usable speed.
I've had the t-mobile 5G internet for less than a week now. It works intermittently at best.
There are 2 locations in my house that get pretty strong reception, but in this short week, I've had to move the router almost everyday to get a signal strong enough that my computer can even connect to it. This is not acceptable service. AND, while most people on this forum say that they notice the most drops in service to busy hours, I find that the service all but disappears during the middle of the night when I'm occasionally woken by my dog, a child or strange sounds during the night.I really want this service to work because my prior internet service, while much more stable, was incredibly expensive.
Hey everyone. I think I have found the solution for you. So, like y'all, I've been having issues with the internet for almost 3 weeks now (my gateway is the arcadyan kvd 21). When I called T-mobile they just sent a replacement gateway and said that should fix it. Surprisingly enough, that did not fix the issue, the replacement gateway that was sent did not match their records and due to maintenance on the nearby tower, the gateway wouldn't communicate. Today, at least for the past 2 hours, there have been no issues with the wifi. So when it comes to solutions. It could be because of the manufacturer. but the advice my spouse and I got was to go in the home internet app, go to the Networks tab and add a network. Make ones frequency set at 2.4 and set the others frequency exclusively at 5. Its been a bit over 2 hours and the wifi hasn't dropped. We do have the gateway connected to a router that is handling the load pretty well. Good luck fellow travelers
My router has been working much better since one of the techs realized that my little tower was not connected to the phone number assigned to the device. Still, it's not as reliable as cable. I've found that all I have to do, rather than move router is to just unplug and replug it without moving it at all. Still, that means that you have about 2 minutes down time before the router fires up again. But my internet now works a couple days at a time now without going out. Has that been checked for the rest of you
This isn’t a giant issue for me most of the time, but it is inconvenient, espcially if I’m watching a movie and internet suddenly cuts out.
The issue is that these routers are not plug and play. The instructions to install them do not include things like attaching a phone number to your router if it wasn't programmed in before it was shipped to you.
So update. It did not work. My spouse and I have gone so far as to remove the 5g network and it has not changed a thing. We reduced the number of electronics on the router, nothing changed. So we're going back to fios. Seriously T-Mobile, I get that contracts are signed and you're supposed to use a product for a certain amount of time. However, you think that there would be a clause that states that if the product is causing so many issues, that y'all can void out the contract and not have this machine as your advertising piece. Idunno, y'all don't pay me at all to give advice or work for you. But like tvision, y'all dropped the ball hard on this one.
