Home Internet and wifi extender

I tried 3 different high-end extenders, including a wifi 6.  I got all 3 to work easily with the 2.4G range, but none of them would see the 5G range and that is because of the fixed channels that the new Arcadyan KVD21 Gateway uses are not seen by any of the wifi extenders I tried and very unfortunately the Arcadyan KVD21 Gateway has very limited admin functions available within the UI page.  I would like to see an official response from T-Mobile on this and would actually like to see more control given to us in the Admin config UI.  The range on the 5G from the Gateway is extremely short and poor, even for 5G, which I know is much shorter than 2.4G.

Gracias.

I see a lot of people talking about a 10 device limit on their T-Mobile home Internet gateway.I see a lot of people talking about a 10 device limit on their T-Mobile home Internet gateway. I think this is long gone now. We have had our service for over a year now, with this gateway shown. We have done a lot of Wi-Fi home automation this year, where every lightbulb switch and receptacle is its own Wi-Fi device, and have over 55 devices online, at least, right now, and will be adding quite a few more in the future, probably around 75 to 100 devices. Our Gateway is a Nokia 5G 21 gateway kit hardware version 3TG007398.

My one experience was w. a Netgear extender.  Not only was speed cut almost in half - but the signal emanating therefrom had a slightly diff. name.  Couldn't set up a whole home speaker system because of lack of similar name.  Got the mesh system at that point.

nartino wrote:

I can't get Netgear or TP-Link extenders to work. Blocks main 2.4 connection until I turn off extender. Tried the factory reset twice on each one. Probably some tiny simple but can figure it out. Any suggestions?

Still having issues with this. Cannot get three different extenders to work. It's not related to the 10 device limit either. I can get the extender to work with TMobile Hotspot though. Just not Home Internet. Any suggestions?

nartino wrote:

Is there any reason I cannot use a wifi extender with my home internet service?

II've tried two different TP Link extenders and neither one would see the 5G band, if you find an extender that works with the T-Mobile gateway please let me know! Thanks if I find out I'll add to this post

I will be very interested to hear if and how the extender works. There's no dedicated gateway WiFi 6 extender (that I know of) to wirelessly extend the gateway. That means a router would need to be hardwired to the gateway, and then an extender/beacon/node needs to be used to extend from the router. It's unfortunate that the WiFi extender feature on the gateway is such a mystery.

See this. Somehow we are supposed to be able to connect a mesh network (system), but there’s no documentation on how to do that.

To:MisterK

I was very interested to read ofyour success connecting Apple Airports as I need to do the same to reach all parts of my house. What configuration changes did you have to make to the Ethernet-connected AirPort?  SSID and password same as T-M Gateway or different? Change mode from Create Network? Change IP address range, disable DHCP?, etc.

I did not do anything special. I connected one Airport to the T-Mobile gateway with an Ethernet cable, and I set up the other Airport as a wireless extension of the network. I have since stop using the Airports and I sold them. I did a bunch of testing placing the Gateway in different locations in my large house. I found that smack dab in the middle is the best. I get better speeds with it there even though the signal gets reduced on the outer fringes of the house. I cannot connect to my network if I am in my concrete bunker storage room, but that's ok since I don't spend much time in there.

The best solution will be the time when T-Mobile offers some type of Mesh extender(s). I see this in my IP web address setup, and on the Home Internet apps too.

Reply to MisterK on connecting AirPort Extreme to T-M Gateway.

Great to hear you did not have to do anything special when plugging in the Airport Extreme, but were the SSID and password the same or different?

MisterK wrote:

I've tested with success using my two Apple AirPort Extreme routers. First test was a short ethernet cable to the first AIrPort and wireless to the second AriPort. That worked fine. Then I set it up connecting one AirPort to the Gateway with a long Ethernet cable (in the walls in my house already). That works fine too. No noticeable signal loss. I don't see anyway to connect any router or extender to the Gateway without an ethernet cable.

Can you give some details on how you setup your AirPort Extreme. I was trying to use one of mine to extend my network and I am running into issues.