Slow 4G connection only, but only sometimes -- SOLVED

This has been an interesting thread. I got the T-Mobile GW on the beta program back in early January  and the GW ran solid until the end of June with little to no attention. Speeds were relatively good so I did not take a great deal of focus on mine. Then in July repeated tower disconnects of both the primary and secondary signal became a daily frustration. I did a fair amount of investigation and tinkered with my T-Mobile GW/router for weeks. I made 4 support calls and did a great deal of investigating. In my case the tower, i finally confirmed, is 5.3 miles line of sight with no obstructions. The primary signal always locks on B2 and the secondary signal picks up on n71. Well, I could see the RSRP and RSRQ and SNR values were commonly in the good to excellent range but the signal drops over and over were irritating. In my investigations I came across the waveform.com site and they have an very good guide about the device and a step by step for connecting an external MIMO antenna to the router. Well, once I paid attention to the design of the router it gave me ideas. If you examine the device you can see there are 4 5G antennas and 4 WIFI antennas and they are clearly labeled. What I took away from that was a more detailed investigation of systematically rotating the can to influence the exposure of the antenna responsible for the 5G n71 connection. I found I could give up a bar on the B2 LTE signal and pick up 4 bars on the 5G n71 and low and behold the speed tests improved nicely. While testing i used a Linux client to run concurrent PINGs to 8.8.8.8 9.9.9.9 & 1.1.1.1, i.e. google, quad9, and cloud flare DNS servers. When the disconnects took place is was obvious and the PING latency for each was easy to compare and get a clear picture of when the tower connection returned and improved or became unstable. For the investigation of how the gateway was running I used my MacBook Pro with a CAT 6 cable connected direct to the router on LAN1. The HTML interface on a computer is much better than the mobile application though it lacks advanced functionality it really needs. The overview and status pages were quite helpful in getting better visibility to operation. Knowing the signal strength, signal quality and signal to noise ratio are really helpful in understanding what your connections are doing. I recorded the values over and over and evaluated operation when the unit would ONLY pick up the primary B2 channel and fail to maintain any connection to the n71 channel. Once I started experimenting with rotating the can to influence the signal wash over the various antennas I discovered how much that could help. I read about others complaining about heat and the influence of heat on operation so I put my router outside on the patio, in the shade under the second story deck above in 88 degree weather and for 5 hours it ran solid without a single signal drop for a period of time. It never threw any alarms for over heating. Sure it was running warmer when I brought it in but it returned to a cooler state and suffered no ill effects. The testing was done to confirm, in my mind, that the location inside the glass door was still a good place or not to have it. Given the download speeds of 157-170 Mbs and 50+ Mbs upload testing with speedtest.net I feel it is doing pretty well. The key though to getting it to favor the n71 channel. Upon the fourth call with T-Mobile the support engineer did confirm that they had received multiple trouble calls on that tower and were upgrading it. I had seen the disruptions and even on Monday morning when the T-Mobile engineer contacted me it bounced but after that it has been stable. The take away for me is that being out on the edge of the range of the signal where it is still in the good range and has good to excellent signal quality means that if I decide to buy the external MIMO antenna I can probably improve the communication 3-4 dBm and not have to be so concerned about having it in a specific window. It will also allow better utilization of the 2.4 and 5 ghz WIFI signals in the house. I have seen pretty good signal strength with the router either centered upstairs or downstairs and I am using it to cover 3300 square feet of home on two levels. Actually I am pretty impressed with the unit though I do feel the antenna design might be a bit limiting. If you slip the outer shell off and look at it the antenna layout is super obvious as it is all tagged for 5G-1, 5G-2 etc… and WIFI-1, WIFI-2, etc… After seeing the document at waveform.com a neighbor told me he had dropped his SIM into the replacement router by mistake and it was stuck somewhere in the can. Well, I have handled networking gear for 22 years so I offered to get the SIMs out of it. That is when I got a real good look at the design of the router. My take away is that if you need to remove and replace a SIM, as was the case here, be sure to have the router on its side with the SIM carrier so the retention screw is to the right of the SIM when you carefully remove the nano SIM. If you turn the can upside down and try to remove the SIM it can fall right out of the carrier and into the slot and get stuck in there. It was fairly simple to get it out but it took some small tweezers and care to get it to come back out. The SIM carrier does NOT hold the nano SIM at all. The SIM card just rest on the carrier and can easily fall out or off the carrier. From what I could see it is a pretty simple task to connect an external MIMO antenna to the router and that would probably make many marginal installations better. We are in rural East TN with pastures and farms between us and the tower so I don't expect much more but the T-Mobile home internet router solution is 10X the speed I had in CA with bonded DSL lines and $25/month less. My only other option was Hughes net, so well, that was not going to happen. They would have been $20 more per month after two months with a 2 year contract for a solution with higher latency. Duh… not on my watch.  Now that the tower upgrade was done it appears to be a positive improvement. Like previous posts in this thread it is my hope that if anyone reads this and it helps them to improve their solution then it is worth the time sharing as T-Mobile support can help customers some but we can also help one another. 

justintyme2 wrote:

justintyme2 wrote:

 

I want to add that I'm also connecting to Sprint b25 as well. But mostly staying on b41 on all devices.

I see. Interesting. Indeed, B25 is a 4G LTE Sprint band, along with B26 and B41. T mobile merged with Sprint but I didn't know they were using any other bands than the ones I listed in the chart, which is the ones they say they are using for their T mobile home internet 5G (gray cylinder gateway) service.

There's a little confusion here, in how they are naming these bands, and I find it that way since "b" or usually "B" could be construed as just short for "band." But that is not how it appears in the GUI. So you will know you are on 5G the first time you see a band you are using in the secondary signal that is an "n" band such as n71 (low frequency/slow, long range), n41 (mid frequency/faster), and  n260 or n261 (mmWave/fast, short range).

n41, the mid frequency, mid-range 5G band was part of T mobile's interest in merging with Sprint. It carries a signal which yields good speeds farther from the tower, compared with n71, even though the signal doesn't reach as far. It reaches much father than the mmWave high-frequency bands which are only good for one mile, and tend to work with the fastest speeds when you are a block or less from them, with no obstructions. 

Verizon is making a bigger push with the short-range, fast speed mmWave nodes.

So what is your average download speed, approximately, on the bands you get now, the speed you are happy with for now?

The B66 is probably the primary signal and is a 4G LTE band 4 extension band operating on the 1700-2100 Mhz frequency. The n41 is a 5G NR channel operates at 2.5 GHz and is commonly seen on the secondary signal. it may likely be the tower the router associates with only has the n41 radio currently but there might be, or could be plans to also deploy an n71 5G NR there. The way to know the location of the tower and know what radios are there is to goto www.cellmapper.net and select T-Mobile as the carrier and then look for both 4G and 5G NR towers in your area. If you are going to target for the connection with an external MIMO antenna you need to confirm the PCI listed in the T-Mobile web UI with those towers you locate in the area. Then you can obtain the best results with less effort when making the connection. If you have a T-Mobile SIM and iPhone you can put it in "field test mode" *3001#12345#* and get pretty good information. Android phones have some locator apps available you can download for the task. It really does help. Using the information at cellmapper.net is very good to have as well. No hagas suposiciones. With just a little homework you can have the data in hand to make an informed decision as to where to locate the router and an external antenna. I spent considerable time with this router here and through multiple sources, including confirming on a call with T-Mobile support the tower coordinates and location. Using the cellular statistics, the overview information and status information from the router web UI over time recording values you can profile the operation of the router. If you are going to use an external antenna from waveform talk to those guys. They are helpful and the guide they have for the Nokia router is very good. 

I had a similar situation where my options for internet were limited to satellite or T-Mobile home internet. There was no contest there. I commonly get 10X the speed that I had with DSL from the service we had in CA and at less cost. It was a no brainer. I found the WIFI from this Nokia router/gateway actually works pretty well. I get very good results here in our 3300 sq ft home with just the Nokia WIFI. If the clients have good radios they do well. Only my MacBook Pro gave me grief so I wire it in with CAT 6 cable and it is good to go. It does take a little time to dial in the router location in some places to get the best results but it is well worth the time and effort to get the facts and experiment. Good luck, I hope it turns out to be as good a solution for you as it has for me. 

One thing to be aware of with wireless signals — and this applies to both the OP’s experience and what @tjweller just posted - is that it's important to understand how obstructions affect signal quality, AND the physics of how signals are obstructed. One of the most counterintuitive aspects is that if a signal has to pass through a solid object (a wall, window pane, etc.), the closer you get to that obstruction, the more of the signal it blocks.

The reason is simple trigonometry: When you pass through a solid object at an angle, it appears thinnest when you take an exactly perpendicular path (pass through it head-on). If you approach it at an angle, the farther from perpendicular you get, the thicker the object appears.

Consider this diagram:

The red arrow represents a perpendicular path, the thickness of the object is the same as triangle side 'a'. But if we take the blue path, the length of side 'c' represents the apparent thickness of the object (in terms of the wireless signal). The length of 'c' can be computed in terms of 'a' and the angle at 'x'. (See formulas. The last one just solves from Pythagoras: c² = a² + b².)

When x is 45°, c is roughly 1.4×a. When it’s 30°, c is 2×a. At 15°, c grows to nearly 4×a.

Now, a wireless signal is nothing like a straight arrow; that's a massive oversimplification. In truth, the properties of wifi signals are almost impossibly complicated, and calculating or predicting them is a science unto itself.

But the basic premise here still holds: A solid obstruction like a wall will obscure more of the signal being received at steep angles, when you’re right next to it.

My phone and home internet used to use b66 and b12 a lot. Service went downhill for over a month, then I noticed my phone started connecting to b41 and speeds and service have been great. My phone shows 5g but I've never seen my router connect to a secondary signal. The router pretty much stays on b41, sometimes on b66. I hope the service continues to improve like this! 

justintyme2 wrote:

My phone and home internet used to use b66 and b12 a lot. Service went downhill for over a month, then I noticed my phone started connecting to b41 and speeds and service have been great. My phone shows 5g but I've never seen my router connect to a secondary signal. The router pretty much stays on b41, sometimes on b66. I hope the service continues to improve like this! 

Thank you for responding. This is the kind of thing I'm interested in. The phone app gives out information but for some reason leaves off the secondary signal, so that's why I use the GUI for that.

Are you using the GUI or just the T mobile home internet phone app? And when you say the speed is great, what kind of speed we talkin about here?

"Great" is relative to what you had in the past or expect. For some people 40 is great, and others anything under 200 is disappointing.

Also, what’s your signal strength, on both your 5G phone and your gateway?

A commenter responded to a post of mine on another thread saying he got 400 down and 50 up on T mobile's home internet 5G but dropped to 60 to 80 when on a primary 4G signal, and he gets stuck on that 4G signal for long periods which is totally unacceptable for him because he's used to  steady speeds in the hundreds on cable. He gets 5 bars signal strength and indeed, by lowering that down (by putting foil over the gateway)  he can connect to 5G only with fewer bars, but then his speeds drop off way too much. 

However, if you are using the GUI at the address I mentioned in my first post, and showing no secondary signal, chances are your B12 and B66 are 4G only. And that isn't bad! As long as the 4G works reasonably well for you. Also, the near future could be dramatic for you, when they install the 5G on your tower like n41, and you start getting that as your secondary signal. 

One form of 4G they put in Chicago, I read, and people can get speeds of 500Gbps if they are close enough to the tower.

About the 5G icon on your phone, here is a quote from an article:

T-Mobile has been adding this icon on their phones even when they are not connected to the 5G network, so if you are unsure, download the app Signal Spy (on Android) or enter Field Test Mode on your iPhone

justintyme2 wrote:

My phone and home internet used to use b66 and b12 a lot. Service went downhill for over a month, then I noticed my phone started connecting to b41 and speeds and service have been great. My phone shows 5g but I've never seen my router connect to a secondary signal. The router pretty much stays on b41, sometimes on b66. I hope the service continues to improve like this! 

I want to add that I'm also connecting to Sprint b25 as well. But mostly staying on b41 on all devices.

Timsw wrote:

justintyme2 wrote:

My phone and home internet used to use b66 and b12 a lot. Service went downhill for over a month, then I noticed my phone started connecting to b41 and speeds and service have been great. My phone shows 5g but I've never seen my router connect to a secondary signal. The router pretty much stays on b41, sometimes on b66. I hope the service continues to improve like this! 

Thank you for responding. This is the kind of thing I'm interested in. The phone app gives out information but for some reason leaves off the secondary signal, so that's why I use the GUI for that.

Are you using the GUI or just the T mobile home internet phone app? And when you say the speed is great, what kind of speed we talkin about here?

"Great" is relative to what you had in the past or expect. For some people 40 is great, and others anything under 200 is disappointing.

Also, what’s your signal strength, on both your 5G phone and your gateway?

A commenter responded to a post of mine on another thread saying he got 400 down and 50 up on T mobile's home internet 5G but dropped to 60 to 80 when on a primary 4G signal, and he gets stuck on that 4G signal for long periods which is totally unacceptable for him because he's used to  steady speeds in the hundreds on cable. He gets 5 bars signal strength and indeed, by lowering that down (by putting foil over the gateway)  he can connect to 5G only with fewer bars, but then his speeds drop off way too much. 

However, if you are using the GUI at the address I mentioned in my first post, and showing no secondary signal, chances are your B12 and B66 are 4G only. And that isn't bad! As long as the 4G works reasonably well for you. Also, the near future could be dramatic for you, when they install the 5G on your tower like n41, and you start getting that as your secondary signal. 

One form of 4G they put in Chicago, I read, and people can get speeds of 500Gbps if they are close enough to the tower.

About the 5G icon on your phone, here is a quote from an article:

T-Mobile has been adding this icon on their phones even when they are not connected to the 5G network, so if you are unsure, download the app Signal Spy (on Android) or enter Field Test Mode on your iPhone

 

The app is useless. I use the web settings to check. When I first got home internet (old gateway), my speeds were the same as my phone on LTE, usually 10mbps-50mbps. Not sure what bands the old gateway was using. I think my phone would go between b12 and b66. I got the 5g gateway 3 months ago and got the same speeds, never showed secondary signal. My signal strength on both the old gateway and new one stay at 2 bars, no matter where I put it. It's funny because the best spot is in the middle of my house, but it's a small house and one level. My phone generally has full signal, sometimes drops down to 2 bars. There seem to be 3 different towers that I can connect to. The closest being 2 miles. Last month I started getting horrible service, slow speeds, no signal, on all of my devices, including my work Sprint phone. 2 weeks ago, the service improved on all devices. That's when I noticed connecting to b41 and b25 (tagged as Sprint). I use signal checker pro on my android phone and tablet. It shows the tower/signal information in status bar. Another good app is LTE discovery. I use the web gui or app to see what the gateway is connected to. My home internet kept connecting to b12 for several weeks while I noticed the speeds slow to a crawl, under 1mbps. Now, with all devices consistently using b41 most of the time, my speeds are usually always above 20mbps. Usually hitting 100-150, even in the evenings during peak time. I'm not sure if the gateway ever connects to 5g, but my phone usually is on 5g, sometimes switching to 4g. It's funny because it doesn't seem to matter as speeds are the same and sometime worse on 5g throughout town. I never used to get 50 or 100 months ago. I would occasionally see 50 early mornings but that was it. Always consistently averaged about 15 and dropped to under 1 when they were upgrading the towers It's great because I can stream and use everything normally normally now. I think with the latest firmware update on the 5g router and the service from the towers improving, all the issues with my home devices staying connected and streaming have disappeared. I've found that I also don't have to reboot the gateway as I did regularly before because the signals were so wonky. My router still only shows primary signal and always on b41 now. Same with my phone, although I'm seeing more 4g on my phone than 5g at my house, but even on 5g it shows band as b41 or b25. I'm pretty sure at this point with the upgrades happening, even though it's hard to tell if really on 5g or 4g sometimes, it doesn't matter what "G" shows, it mattes what towers and bands you're connecting to. Right now in my area, I'm seeing way more 5g coverage and signal strength but speeds are definitely faster on 4g and sometimes better than on 5g. I have never seen n71 yet on any device. I'll be doing some more testing as I'm out and about in the next month. I'm happy with anything over 20mbps and definitely noticed when the service dropped out for several weeks. Now that I'm getting around 100 mpbs and staying well above 20mbps all the time, I'm very happy and impressed by the difference. I also don't notice any difference in speed performance between my devices. Home Internet for me always matches my phone and sometimes performs better. Hopefully that answered your questions, sorry got long winded haha!

Okay, well now I've got the full picture. Thanks. You're a real pioneer being on this home cellular with that other device which didn't have 5G.

Even though I got this just a week ago, I feel stunned being in the first year of 5G home internet by T mobile, at this price. I had to wait 7 years after broadband was available in the city 10 miles away for me to get it. So I was stuck on dialup forever it seemed, going to the library in town to do fast updates of Windows 10 using their wireless.

So I just got my first smartphone last month, and it is 4G only, and before that I was on a 3G phone that used to drop calls unless I used it in a part of my house where it wouldn't do that. But the difference for me between the 4G phone was I got speeds on that of 10 to 60, with maybe an average of 25 or so. So I think my 5G speeds on this gateway are even better than the promise of 2x the speed of 4G that many people see. Tell me if you pick up a n41 somewhere in your travels with your phone and what kind of speeds you get on that.

Well for me its primary b71 with no secondary during daytime hours. this is basically useless and doesnt hardly load a webpage and wont perform a speedtest without timing out.

At night time i connect to b66/n71 on this i get around 10 mbps nothing stable though i have gotten 40-50 mbps but rarely also the upload is .05-.5 mbps really horrible and the ping times are 800.

it seems like they really throttle the connection or kick you off towers or something nothing really works with any sort of reliability sometimes it doesnt work at night as well or its only after midnight -5 am its actually ridiculous ive spent countless hours moving this thing all over the place i even rigged up a fan mounted to the bottom idk 

losing hope