Frequent Disconnection on 5G Home Internet

Just got off the phone with tech support.  Told the same story that a fix was coming in a few weeks...of course, the posts on this issue have been coming for almost a year now, so I'm not optimistic.

What about this "manually separate devices onto either network to get instant results" notion of setting the 2.4 and 5Ghz networks on separate SSID's.  Has anyone tried that?

One possible solution.

Background, we have 2 mobile phones, 2 tablets, 3 laptops, 2 TV, and 4 arlos cameras utilizing the internet. 
It has been about a month since we signed up with the Tmobile 5G home service in Oct '22.  The model of our black 5G tower is FAST-5688W.  Yes, it is sensitive to placement and also the proximity to the Netgear Nighthawk wifi router, causing the 5G internet to randomly drop over the initial 8 days.  The duration of the drops can last from 5 mins to forever.  That is until I moved the Netgear wifi router 12+ inches further away instead of setting closely side by side.  It has been almost 3 weeks of reliable internet since.  We're very happy that T-Mobile is available in the mountains of Colorado.  Subsequently we cancelled the Starlink reservation.  

Saltgod21, I didn’t get the details you have, but yes they told me the same, so my fingers are crossed too.

I've been having issues with the signal constantly switching between 4g and 5g, while gaming it will constantly go to no signal every couple minutes. Used to have an excellent signal strength and now it just has 2 bars no matter where I move it to. Having a fan to cool it off doesn't seem to help. I work from home so sadly this issue is going to cost me my job

I have had this issue on and off for the last several months of having 5G Home Internet.  I got complacent and ordered a Keep Connect, which is a device that automatically power cycles your modem if internet is lost.  It is up to 300+ resets in the past few months.

I called support today to see if there is anything else that can be done as it seems to be getting worse rather than better.  The support was energetic and helpful and did have new reason for this issue.  They said there is a 'fix' coming to firmware in a few weeks that has something to do with the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz signals and devices switching back and forth.  I was told I could manually separate devices onto either network to get instant results, but that sounded like too much work so I am gonna wait and hope a firmware fix is weeks away.  Anyone else hearing this?  Is it true?

Being new to this forum I can not figure out how to make changes to prior posts.  However, the posts I made about the cooling fan solving the problem are incorrect.  It worked only for about a day or so, and the problem has returned again.  It does always seem to drop the internet when I am not actively using it, which could be a clue to the failure.  But the cooling is not eliminating the previous problem.

raphael wrote:

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.

I just got this KVD21 this past Friday, 10/7. Plugged one Ethernet cord directly to my PC and the second to my Netgear router. The KVD21 was loading internet pages, it would stop loading and I would have to refresh for the page to finish loading. I went into Wi-Fi settings and turned it off and that seemed to fix the problem until I turned on my Norton VPN. That crippled my internet.

I have a Wi-Fi card in my PC. I unplugged the Ethernet cable going to the PC, still had a cable from the KVD21 going to the Netgear router. Initiated the Wi-Fi and connected to the internet using the Wi-Fi from the router. Wallah, solved the problem for the time being.

Got up this morning and rearranged the Ethernet cables as they should be and all is fine today. Reading in this forum it seems this is an intermittent problem. I have this KVD21 on a two week try out and it seems support is lacking from what I read here. I had high hopes for this KVD21. We shall see, I may have to go back to my previous internet provider.

¡Genial!

Okay I said I would update my prior post if it dropped the internet again, but guess what???  The fan fix solved the problem, or miraculously it fixed itself!  I did find that merely sitting the tower on the fan didn't do anything, because the insides are constricted so it just pushed the air out the gap between the fan body and the gateway case.  So I sealed that up with some curved plastic rims off of a frozen microwave meal tray.  BOOM!  Airflow established, and the case cooled down nicely.  Tried to clean it up a little to look presentable, but hey it works. 

Materials:

Noisy used 12 volt computer case fan
Dirty used 120vac to 9vdc adapter (makes the fan run quiet)
Feet for under the fan, and a 4.5 inch filter screen to not suck dust into the gateway
12dc automotive switch with LED indicator
Hot melt glue
Shrink tubing
Edges cut off of a Stouffer’s Lasagna microwave meal tray
More hot melt glue
Alcohol to clean off all the excess hot melt glue, LOL

As far as other responses, I too have the exact same problem with my 5G gateway, the Arcadyan KVD21.  It's in a window facing the direction of the tower as located by the app, and when working, has 4 bars and reports "Very Good Signal."  It is plugged into a wall outlet via a 6 foot 3-prong extension cord (14 gauge).  Nothing else is plugged into the outlet.  It works fine most of the time.

However it tends to cut out at night when I'm asleep.  I wake up about 3am and it's off again, the time of the very least area demand.  It does not often cut off while I'm using it.  I haven't noticed any lagging or slow responses when it did drop the internet while I was using it, it just went dead.  I  Just finished building a cooling fan base for it, and sealed the fan to the bottom of the gateway.  The fan is a 12 volt computer fan 4.75 inches square, so a perfect fit.  It is raised up on (4)  3/8" feet.  There was substantial airflow from the fan at 9volts, and no noise like there is at 12 volts, so I used an old 120vac to 9vdc adapter.  I notice hardly any air coming out of the tiny holes in the gateway, but am trying it.  The cabinet used to get warm (not hot) but now is cool to the touch.  I rigged up an indicator switch to both control the fan and provide a blue LED when running  I'll let it run and report back if it drops the internet again.