Google Assistant and Gateway internet

DrLipSyncher wrote:

maybe this is due to google trying to use their own dns instead of the t-mobile provided one, if t-mobile is trying to block other dns they didn’t think this through, they better fire the guy stat, come out, and come clean

 

I can't tell you how thrilled I am having discovered this post! I have lived in two countries and I'm an old geezer. With the benefit of time I have used a variety of technologies: dialup, ISDN, DSL, Fiber, Microwave, Cable and now 5G. Tengo nunca before had an ISP whose system punished me when I used a third party DNS. I was beginning to think that the gateway had a hardware latency problem communicating over the ethernet out to my own router. I was just about ready to cancel this service and go back to cable. (frown)

Things were dreadful. I too was having all kinds of intermittent and patchy problems with a variety of Google Assistant based speakers throughout our home. I would request a web page and would be told that I should check my internet connection. (Even on my desktop with an ethernet connection to my router.) A refresh to the web page or a duplicate voice request to the Google Assistant speaker would yield the expected results.

I set my own router to automatically accept DNS and-- sure enough-- things seem to be a lot more stable. It's only been an hour (and early when bandwidth is at its best in my area). Fingers crossed.

Undoubtedly everyone reading this has run the Speedtest app and seen ping times that are somewhat higher than they've experienced with other ISPs. I chalked that up to the wireless technology we're riding on. My guess is that using a third party DNS server bogs things down enough to result in the kind of latency problems we're describing.

I cannot be sure whether my latency problems were compounded by slowdowns on Google's backend yesterday. But speakers were going brain dead with a variety of error messages. I've been on the T-Mobile service for about a week and yesterday was the worst. Before that I would periodically have to query the speakers a second time to get results. It was as if it was an old person with an earhorn (look it up) saying "what's that you're saying? could you repeat that?"

I the pre-dusk hours I just ran around the house querying the speakers. They seem to have discovered the fountain of youth.

By the way my gateway is running 1.2003.03.0168 firmware.