We have an Asus RT-AC5300 router. We also have a small 5-port ethernet switch attached to the router for all the wired connections in the house. We just got the T-mobile Home Internet gateway. I have the AC5300 connected to the top ethernet port on the T-Mobile gateway. The speed is usually quite fast, but sometimes things will choke. For example YouTube, Facebook and IG will sometimes take a while to load. This is regardless of a wired or wireless connection. Whats even worse is my wife's work uses a VPN and after about 45 minutes, her connection slows down to the point of being unusable. Her PC is connected via ethernet (via the switch). I connected the switch directly to the bottom ethernet port on the gateway and she could not connect at all. Rather than go down a network IT wormhole, is there anyway to make this setup more stable? If not, I have a feeling I'm going to have to cancel the service until they can figure out how to make their gateway JUST a modem. Based on what I have read, its the "router" in their gateway that causes all these problems.

Going down the network wormhole. The Nokia router of course will deliver the IP addresses via DHCP to the local clients on the WIFI & wired connections. It will also NAT the traffic to the internet via the WAN port. With the Asus RT-AC5300 router it should natively behave the same between its WAN port and the local WIFI and ethernet ports. It is not a good idea to double NAT. Under some conditions, UPnP, it can cause problems. From your descriptions it sounds to me as if you do have a double NAT going on. If you enable Access Point mode on the ASUS that might put the WAN port into bridge mode and prevent the double NAT. A chat with Asus support would confirm that. I don't know how you have your ASUS router configured or connected for sure so it is hard to be specific. The router does operate with different modes; Access point, AiMeshnode, Mediabridge, Repeater, or Router. You have lots of bells and whistles to play with on the AC5300 so it may take a bit of investigation to know how it is operating. You need to be sure of how the AC5300 is configured to be clearer of what can be done. I have seen other community threads about various problems with "routers" connected to the T-Mobile/Nokia router so searching other posts by users with Asus AC5300s could prove helpful. I don't have an AC5300 to test with so I cannot say how well it will play with the T-Mobile/Nokia router. Again, more research on forums for what others have encountered. The web-gui configuration interface of the Nokia does not show any WDS configuration so using WDS is not on the table. My take is that all the effort and testing might be an exercise in futility and actually not provide you with significant gain. Look at the configuration of the WAN port on the AC5300 and how it is configured. You might discuss the options with ASUS support to see what they recommend. Another way to look at using the ASUS with the Nokia would be to connect the AC5300 to the Nokia with the ethernet cable connected to one of the ethernet ports not the WAN port. This would put all the wired and wireless clients on the same broadcast domain. You could then disable the WAN port and also disable the DHCP server so the only DHCP server on the segment would be the one from the Nokia router. You do not want two DHCP servers on the same broadcast domain. You could then still setup the 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios on the ASUS AC5300 for the SSID and WPA key(s) desired. Keep in mind the Nokia does NOT allow you to disable the wireless radios but you can reduce the power down to 12%. Playing with the power of the WIFI channels could provide a way to help prevent channel overlap. The radio operation at 12% still leaves some signal traffic. If you take care to avoid overlap the wireless channels then you might be able to use the AC5300 mainly for one area and the Nokia wireless bands for another area of the home. It is possible but more work and may still provide little gain. I considered buying a more capable AX Mesh solution for the house to get better coverage than possible with the Nokia router but I have found it unnecessarily as the Nokia is 802.11AX capable and seems to do a pretty fair job providing wireless delivery across our 3300 sq ft home both upstairs and downstairs. I don't have any AX capable clients currently so it would be overkill and only establishing a future proofing solution. I considered an external YAGI antenna for the cell communication as I have line of sight to the tower and that would do much more for me than the challenges of an additional distributed wireless system in the house. The Nokia does not provide you with any advanced configuration options to speak of. I think it is about ISP control of traffic. If you want a more robust internet solution and are willing to pay for the solution that provides such options then that is another option.Determine if you have a double NAT going on. Then confirm the Access point mode of operation does indeed prevent the double NAT by having a conversation with Asus support. Be sure to only have one DHCP server, the one on the Nokia router. Avoid wireless channel overlap. If you have an Android phone the Network Analyzer application is a great tool to gain visibility of the radio signals and also scan the LAN. Of course this is going down the network wormhole.

Sorry for the prior long response. With respect to the 5 port switch on Lan2 and the slow down you state. Get into the web-gui of the Nokia and check the stats on the LAN ports. If there are errors or discards that is good to identify. If the switch is managed then look at the statistics in its interface. Don't overlook the statistics of the cellular interface either. The assumption may be that the problem is local or with the Nokia router itself but well maybe not. Check the 4GLTE and 5G signals on the "Overview" tab and make note of the RSRP and SNR values. Compare when the speeds are good vs when they are poor. Also look at the Status tab and compare the primary and secondary signal "Band" for each and confirm also that the PCI for each is the same. Don't assume it is a local issue only. If T-Mobile is working on the equipment on the tower or connection loads on the tower increase that can also impact the performance and speed.

I got onto the T-Mobile home internet router solution in the BETA phase early in 2021 so my hardware is maybe an earlier revision of the router. I am on software version 1.2103.00.0338 currently. I found playing with the location of the router is really important. If you use a laptop with a hardware to a LAN port and keep the router plugged into a long extension cord you can move it around and see the strength of the signals in the web-gui much better than via the generic bars on the top of the router. Take the time to tune it into the 5G cellular signal. I know it will be the secondary signal but try to get the maximum power out of the 5G signal. Rotate the router clockwise and counter clockwise in 5 to 10 degree increments to improve the signal wash over the 5G antennas. I improved the 5G signal ay -5 DBM just by rotating the can and moving to get the best cellular signal. Don't assume anything with that baby. The wireless and cellular antennas are alternating about the radius of the can just under the shell. You want to get good SNR signal to noise ratio. More positive is better with SNR. The lower negative RSRP value is better. i.e. -70 dB vs -100 dB. If you get the router in a location where the SNR improves and can also get improved RSRP values then you will have a cleaner transmission and better performance.

I made a crude diagram of the layout of the Nokia router. It will help understand the layout of the antennas and help you get the orientation so it gets a better signal strength on the 5G signal. See the attached PDF.

Now I got what you are saying. When you do the automated setup it may just have you in as admin in effect. If you want to make changes after that sure you need to get the password off the bottom of the can for admin.

Semi-Complicated Network | Comunidad de T-Mobile

jasonkessel
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
iTinkeralot wrote:

Look at the bottom of the router for the default admin password. It is the MAC address of the router.

The password wasn't the issue. It asked for a username, which was never asked for during setup. Seems very strange.
jasonkessel
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
By the way, even if this doesn't work out for us, I do appreciate your knowledge on all of this. It's been way more helpful than scouring all these forums.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
I hear what you are saying. I have roughly 16-20 different devices that connect to our LAN. I run Windows, Apple, and Linux clients in addition to Xbox, Nintendo, and Playstation. We stream and I have done some remote sessions with various team sessions. I get 10X the bandwidth with the T-Mobile solution over what I had when I was in high tech in California on a dual bonded DSL connection. It still does all we need pretty much all the time. If there isn't some monkey on the tower dinking with the equipment then it is pretty solid here.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
I worked for HPE for 22 years in support and ran a global support lab as the IT manager and solutions engineer working with millions of dollars of equipment so this is child's play for the most part for me. I just enjoy being able to help people and staying active on the forum is an outlet for me that is a part time replacement for what I did. It is much more relaxing than 50-60 hours a week as a 3rd level network escalation engineer. Different tech but same basic technologies. Give the T-Mobile solution a good try while you have it. The fact that there is no contract is hard to ignore. My only option here is from a satellite of one or the other. Starlink might be ok but still not perfect and twice the money per month plus the upfront stand up is a pretty steep investment.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
Ah! maybe you ran into the issue I just recently posted to T-Mobile with the 1.2103.00.0338 code. If you are using your browser and save the login information well that will mess with your authentication the next time you go in. Now my guess is your username might be nothing or 128 and the password is probably your WPA Key. This is a bug I ran into last weekend. If you save your authentication info to the browser then look at your saved password information for the 192.168.12.1 interface. If you do you will be able to use that to get back into the router OR you may have to do what I did which was set it to factory default and reconfigure. Don't save the admin login to your browser. When you login to the interface and make a config change as admin each time you save and exit a given config level the browser will pop a window asking you to save your authentication information. If you don't pay attention it saves not what you put in but other information from the web-gui. It is a rather frustrating bug. Just don't save the authentication to the browser and you will not run into the bug.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
Sorry to be more specific. The router will have admin as the user but your browser will hold the saved incorrect information the web-gui sent to it. So if you were to back out of the 2.4Ghz config it may have no username and have the WPA Key as the password. If you backed saved changed information in the 5GHz config level then it would have the value of Max number of users, 128 as the user and the password would be the value of the WPA Key. Not like you would ever do this but that is what it does to you if you have auto save and auto fill for you authentication. Pick a browser you don't use as often and turn these off just so you can use it to manage the router. Then you just have to remember your login and do it manual each time. Not a big deal just only when it trips you up and you can't get in.
jasonkessel
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
Since I have never logged into to T-mobile or the gateway from this browser before, I dont think thats the problem. I even left the username blank once and still no go. I'll try it again. I have the trash can turned off at the moment. :-)
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
So if it is off just turn it upside down and use "admin" and the MAC address "password" to use the administrative credentials to configure it. If you changed the password then the login user is still admin and the password should be whatever you changed it to if you changed it.
jasonkessel
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
When I set it up, it only asked me for a password and I did create one. I did try "admin" as the username and it was rejected. Maybe my password never actually saved and its still the default. Needless to say, my first impressions of this thing are a bit tainted now lol
jasonkessel
Transmission Trainee
Hace 3 años
If I have time this afternoon I'm gonna try a few things. First and foremost, putting my router in AP mode. If that works, I'll try rotating the trash can to see if it helps. One thing I forgot to mention, when it was working, every time I did a speed test, the speed and ping was fine, but there was always quite a bit of packet loss. Anywhere from 5% to 40%.

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