My Primary Signal is 4 bars / B66 and my Secondary Signal is 3 bars / n71. My download speeds are less than 100 Mbps. Does that mean I'm operating over 4G LTE instead of 5G?

Note: The primary signal will be for your 4G control connection. The secondary signal id for your data and will be 5G if it is available. If your secondary signal Band is "n41", then you are on 5G.

@jlillard The secondary signal can also end up being 4G depending on the tower and the signal strength. If you end up with a 4G secondary signal, your top speed will be much lower. Your secondary band indicates the frequency used by your connection and that in turn determines your maximum speed. Your actual speed will also be affected by the signal strength, the other users connected to the same tower, and the tower's backhaul speed (how fast it can send and receive data on the rest of the network).

da.down wrote: Note: The primary signal will be for your 4G control connection. The secondary signal id for your data and will be 5G if it is available. If your secondary signal Band is "n41", then you are on 5G. T-Mobile uses several 5G bands. In my area the n71 600 Mhz band is used. The n41 band obtained in the Sprint merger is being deployed in areas where T-Mobile does not have 600 Mhz coverageFrequencies that can provide 5G: Band n71 (600 MHz) Band n41 (2.5 GHz) Band n260 (39 GHz) Band n261 (28 GHz) With 5G, high amounts of data can be transmitted more efficiently than 4G LTE. One of the ways T-Mobile is rapidly deploying 5G is integrating mid-band 2.5 GHz spectrum from Sprint.T-Mobile network | Asistencia de T-Mobile

My signals are the reverse. My Primary Signal is 4 bars / B2 and my Secondary Signal is 5 bars / n71. Guess it helps to be less than a mile from a tower. I regularly get 400-600 Mbps download speed.If your PC, laptop, or other device does not support Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax you likely will be limited to speeds in the 100-200 range with Wi-Fi 5 802.11ac or even less with older devices, even if the T-Mobile gateway is connected to 5G.I have both a Wi-Fi 6 laptop and a Wi-Fi 5 laptop. I never get more than 200 Mbps download with the Wi-Fi 5 laptop, but 400-600 download is the norm with the Wi-Fi 6 laptop.

@jlillard Yes, a good secondary signal will get better speeds. If a slow secondary band has a strong signal, it can dominate the cell setup and keep you from connecting on a higher frequency band with better throughput. This is why 5 GHz wifi provides faster speeds than 2.4 GHz as long as the 5 GHz signal is strong enough to avoid packet loss.

Internet residencial - 4G LTE vs 5G | Comunidad de T-Mobile

pashvin
Network Novice
Hace 4 años
You are getting good speed. enjoy it.
I think concept of primary and secondary is confusing but I feel when secondary is available, it is always using secondary and speed on secondary is changing based on the throttling logic and it is based on load on tower. For me primary is B2 and secondary mostly N71. Sometimes I get N41 which gives me 200 mbps but it does not stay of N41 and most of time falls back to N71. Now at night time , I get 80-110 mbps but at day time it falls 11-18 mbps on N71. I don't need much speed but what I don't like that the day time throttling is giving less then what is promised (min 25 mbps) and I know it is throttling because at night time without changing any position of device, it starts giving 80-110 mbps.
AlSeattle
Network Novice
Hace 4 años
My primary is B66 with 2 bars and my secondary is N41 with 3 bars. Download speeds are fantastic. The lowest I have seen is 200 megabits. It is 310 megabits many times. The upload speed is between 7-10 megabits.
Why aren't primary and secondary the other way around? Should I be getting faster upload speeds? I am less than 1,000 feet from a T-Mobile tower. The elevations are about the same but there are a couple buildings in between.
10 days and it has been very good. Xfinity is now cancelled.
jlillard
Connection Cadet
Hace 4 años
I think I am in the same boat. I'm experimenting with different rotation angles right now. I can boot up on n41 for a couple days but then eventually I fall back to n71. Maybe I'm not patient enough but I have yet to see it go back to n41 without me rebooting first.
pashvin
Network Novice
Hace 4 años
It is not about 2 bar vs 3 bar. I am on intersection of N41 and N71. N41 only get 2 bar but speed is 200mbps and N71 get 3 bar but get 17mbps - 25 mbps. Because N71 is more strong , it is staying on N71 most of time and sometime it switch to N41. Trying to find out how to keep on N41. Looked N41 location and direction on cellmapper.net and placed router at the best place but still goes back and forth between N71 and N41. I know primary always stays on B22 (4G) but secondary switch makes diff so I assume it actually used secondary signal.
jlillard
Connection Cadet
Hace 4 años
I added a couple dedicated cooling fans (one on top and one on bottom) to see if it helps the stability of my connection. After doing this and moving the modem back up on to a table from the floor, my primary signal is on B66 at 6/6 bars. My secondary signal is disconnected. I just did a speed test and got 77 Mbps down and 46 Mbps up. These speeds are consistent with what I've gotten in the past which makes me think my secondary signal has never been used because it's been too weak. According to cellmapper the tower I am closest to is only 4G. And if I go back to the T-Mobile page to check if I'm eligible for the service, it says I'm not. I wonder if I got it by mistake. Hopefully my tower will be upgraded at some point in the future and I'll have a nice 5G connection.
mikew1956
Transmission Trainee
Hace 4 años
Back to B41 primary and no secondary and speed back down to 70mps...WTF
mikew1956
Transmission Trainee
Hace 4 años
I'm getting the faster speed through the gateway now since I got the secondary signal back, Whatever they tweaked 2 days ago is working now. Hope it lasts.
jbj
Newbie Caller
Hace 4 años
Ditto. My device always has primary of B2, secondary of N41 and I barely get 30Mbs with lots of drop outs (waiting for Youtube to buffer). At times, speedtest shows less than 1Mbs while the same test in the same room as the gateway gets over 300Mbs on 5g phone. I've gotten used to just doing a screen cast from my 5G phone since the latest Chromecast (ten feet away) can't connect to the gateway/internet at reliable speeds. In other words, my 5g phone gets great 5g speeds but the Internet gateway - not so much.
mikew1956
Transmission Trainee
Hace 4 años
After several weeks with no secondary signal I now have primary B2 and secondary N41. Both at 4 bars and download is now around 270 mps. So we'll see how long this lasts.
metricus
Roaming Rookie
Hace 4 años
jlillard wrote:

My Primary Signal is 4 bars / B66 and my Secondary Signal is 3 bars / n71. My download speeds are less than 100 Mbps. Does that mean I'm operating over 4G LTE instead of 5G?

I have a similar situation. My secondary is often not connected. I get speeds in the single digits when that happens. Really sucks.
jlillard wrote:

And if the secondary signal is using band n71 then it's a 5G signal, right?

anything with n in front is 5G if it has b in front it’s LTE
ver www.cellmapper.net