Forum Discussion
Horrendous Download vs. Awesome Upload Speeds
It's really strange with out Internet service as of late. Using Ookla I've been finding our downloads have been 2 MB at the best while our uploads 50 MB or better. Normally it's been 7 or so MB down and 2 MB or so on the up. I've done the reboot on the trashcan and a full shutdown restart with no changes. I called TMO's customer service and the tech probed the gateway and then had me do a full shutdown/restart with no changes. This is the only thing going where we live besides satellite or dialup, we had DSL but the speed was 1.5 down at the best and now the port we had has been given to another customer The neighbors are interested in TMO but I keep telling them to hold off until the convert an old Sprint tower near us but with these slow speeds it's going to be a long wait.
From the initial posting the behavior appeared to me tower equipment centric. The values from the speed test did not add up as the should have. After working on large enterprise networks resolving issues one of the most common aspects of the job was to prove where the problem was not at. Customers would often report the problem was with our gear and they knew we would work the issues or come to a site because they got more push back from the larger vendor. We had to prove our equipment was not at fault in many cases. Confirming the operation of the gateway and local gear just provides more confirmation where the issue resides. When T-Mobile engineers have the equipment right it is a very good solution for the price.
A little update. Sunday and today (Monday) up downloads are around 10 MB which is where they've been but the uploads are still smoking around 50 MB. With today being a holiday it could be less traffic on the site, not sure if that is so since the area I live in is more a bedroom community so I'll keep an eye on it and make another post.
Thanks to all who posted with info.
I just have to agree the download speed is horrendous. You really need to press T-Mobile for more information. What they state and what is don't even come close. They should step up and actually provide information about the "other factors". The router's cellular metrics for 5G and the actual speeds just don't make sense. The delivery from the tower is not right.
With the 5G cellular metrics below, that you reported, you should get +10x what you get down at least. Only getting 10 Mbs download speed is pretty much blah DSL speed not high speed at all.
RSRP -82 dBm
SNR 16 dB
RSRQ -11 dB
“T-Mobile 5G Home Internet customers see typical download speeds between 33-182 Mbps, which is great speed for streaming video, surfing the web, working from home and most types of online gaming. Speeds can vary depending on location, signal strength and availability, time of day, and other factors.”
Doing a speed test in the middle of the night should give you an idea of what the system is capable of when there are few users on. Network congestion seems to be the biggest limiting factor for me. At night I've seen 25 down and 45 up. During the day, it can drop to 2 down and 30 up.
Sadly I get the feeling that TMO is OK with all of this poor performance.
If the download speeds are falling to single digits download during the day there is something fundamental WRONG with the programming or the delivering cell subscriber loading. Be sure to confirm you are seeing both the 5G secondary signal and the 4G LTE primary signal when the downloads are so poor. With the n71 or n41 neither should be established to deliver such poor performance figures. It is possible that the QoS is not properly configured OR they have overloaded the cells on the tower. Someone needs to evaluate the frequency and how the cell is configured for delivery. I suppose the distance of the user's gateways from the source may also be a factor. Be sure you have a clear idea of what tower/cell is delivering the 5G signal and how far you are from the tower. Every user's situation is a little different so external factors have to be considered. I am not trying to make excuses for T-Mobile's delivery in the area where you are. It is just a fact of cellular delivery that there are multiple factors to consider with cellular delivery and successful delivery over an area may be challenging due to external factors.
It may be T-Mobile intends to improve coverage with more cell coverage but T-Mobile should be up front about intentions and why the current behavior is taking place in that area. If T-Mobile cannot deliver on their expectations for download speeds between 33-182 Mbps then they are failing in that area and need to correct it.
This thread may be unwatched, but for what it's worth, I am getting download speed of 0.59Mbps and upload speed of 39.5Mbps. That is NUTS!
There must be some throttling going on. No way is 39.5 upload possible while 0.59 is all I can get down.
Is there ANY other explanation?
iTinkeralot wrote:
If the download speeds are falling to single digits download during the day there is something fundamental WRONG with the programming or the delivering cell subscriber loading. Be sure to confirm you are seeing both the 5G secondary signal and the 4G LTE primary signal when the downloads are so poor. With the n71 or n41 neither should be established to deliver such poor performance figures. It is possible that the QoS is not properly configured OR they have overloaded the cells on the tower. Someone needs to evaluate the frequency and how the cell is configured for delivery. I suppose the distance of the user's gateways from the source may also be a factor. Be sure you have a clear idea of what tower/cell is delivering the 5G signal and how far you are from the tower. Every user's situation is a little different so external factors have to be considered. I am not trying to make excuses for T-Mobile's delivery in the area where you are. It is just a fact of cellular delivery that there are multiple factors to consider with cellular delivery and successful delivery over an area may be challenging due to external factors.
It may be T-Mobile intends to improve coverage with more cell coverage but T-Mobile should be up front about intentions and why the current behavior is taking place in that area. If T-Mobile cannot deliver on their expectations for download speeds between 33-182 Mbps then they are failing in that area and need to correct it.
I consistently get 5 bars of 5G all day long. I only get the n71 band, but from about 9am through midnight, I get single digit download speeds and this IS on 5G. I've had work tickets opened and the cell techs say there is nothing wrong with the tower and it is functioning as expected. Hard to get them to fix something that they "believe" is working correctly.
I wonder if somebody at T Mobile would be able to SEE the throttling.
The answer is YES! Mellissa in Charlotte saw the throttling started when I exceeded my 300 GB cap. She helped me to get an "uncapped" account. ¡Problema resuelto! She said that when throttling is invoked, the speeds can go "crazy" hence the high upload speeds and the abysmally slow throttled download speeds.
