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

drarig wrote:

 

In my case, my secondary signal drops from time to time. When that happens my connection is basically useless. At that point, I run a continuous ping [ping www.google.com -t] and see ping spikes that always look the same. They build up over 4 pings and then drop back down. Something like this:

 

ping 1: 78ms

ping 2: 245ms

ping 3: 679 ms

ping 4: 1084 ms

ping 5: 84 ms

ping 6: 455 ms

ping 7: 872 ms

ping 8: timed out

 

After a while, magically, the signal will stabilize and reconnect on the secondary signal and all my pings are sub 100ms.

What I don't understand is why the secondary signal drops, at all. Why not just stay connected?

Any insights on that?

 

Thanks for your kind remarks. If you told me the timing out on your continuous ping test was happening all the time, instead of only when your secondary signal is dropped, I would suggest turning your firewall off, at least temporarily, to see if it stops that. You might try that anyway, to see if might stop you from dropping the secondary signal.

To turn the firewall off in Windows 10, you hit the Windows key, type in “firewall” and then OPEN, and then on the left you can go to a menu item that gives you the option of turning the firewall off.

If it works, then you’ll  want to explore what firewall setting you can change to keep it working, but get the firewall back on, because you don’t want to just leave your firewall off.

Your continuous ping pattern being rather high and then timing out when you have the primary alone suggests its unstable and that’s probably similar to my experience where I live, that the 4G LTE signal is less stable, on my phone anyway. 

Now that I’ve had the gateway for over a month, by finding the position in the window facing the tower, I haven’t had the issue of dropping to a slow primary-only signal even once.

Have you fully explored trying all manner of positions for your gateway, seeing if there might be one that helps stop you from dropping the secondary signal? (You didn't say, so that's why I'm asking that.)

Also, just to see how my continuous ping is -- I haven't done that test in years -- it's of note that my continuous ping does not time out and fluctuates between 50 and 150, even though I rarely get a ping of over 50 on a standard test. So that you are getting continuous pings of sub 100ms is good on the 5G signal pair.