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

blue240sx44 wrote:

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

I can see why you're losing hope. I'll be frank and say it sounds kind of hopeless. You didn't mention your signal strength or your distance to the tower, and how many obstructions there are between the tower and you. Are you city or rural?

The only hope is that they are doing tower work, or have temporarily shifted you to a tower that is farther away and it will be this slow until the work is done. This is a slim chance, but it is possible. Call T mobile and ask if that is what is happening at your tower. Leave your number for the callback instead of waiting two bloody hours to speak to someone. (I just happened to have called them once, but it was about my account, to make sure  I was on autopay.)

Yeah, a ping of over 150 is bad, and if it is frequently over that into ping like 800, that will make your connection lag, stop, and be unusable most of the time. They are not throttling your speed. That would not influence ping.

Assuming there is no work being done on the tower, there is a possibility you're in a dead zone with a lot of interference. This interference can be caused by overlapping signals from two towers, or something like a nearby electrical power station.

Do you have a 4G smartphone, and what provider is it, and what kind of speed were you getting with that?

If you were getting a speed of over 30 on a 4G smartphone, or better yet, were able to find someone with a T mobile 5G smartphone who could do a speed test in your house and got good speeds on 5G, I would say that could point to something being wrong with your gateway.

But reading about people’s experiences, and the ones who tried getting another gateway before giving up, it rarely is the gateway that is the problem.

I have my own story about encountering a dead zone, at my brother's house. He is much closer to a t-mobile tower than I am. According to their coverage map, both T mobile's 4G and 5G are a level better than what I can expect in my location. I went to his house with my 4G smartphone -- he doesn't have a smartphone yet -- and I got a speed of 12 download, and went out to the park near him -- same speed. But looking at his tower location, there is a massive electrical substation located between him and the tower, about 6 blocks from him, and I wonder if that is it. I don't know what his 5G speeds are but we'll just wait until one of his friends gets a 5G phone and can test for him, before he tries the T mobile home internet.

Your pattern of getting a better signal at night, as bad as it is, is the same as nearly everyone. If you haven't done it yet, you might also try doing a factory reset, using the hole located above the two yellow LAN ports on the gateway. Stick the end of a paper clip or something in there for 4 seconds. Then you're going to have to start over with the app.

I admit that I consider myself to be terribly lucky, to be 5 miles from a tower, and that this tower has n41 instead of n71. But it was also predictable. My 4G speed on the T mobile smartphone was between 10 and 60 (with the high speeds at night only), and then with the 5G on the same tower, I expected to get 2x the speed and got 3x the speed instead.

But if you give up and turn it back in, which I probably would do in your situation, try to keep in contact with neighbors or something via a message board and find out what provider is getting the best 5G service in your area, because it may not be there now, but it most likely will be coming soon.

And remember if there is a store near you, you can turn the gateway back in to the store and not have to mail it back in, if that is more convenient.

Lastly, the traffic of cell phone use and streaming videos, video chat, downloading things and other things during the day is what gives most people faster speeds late at night or in the early morning hours when people aren’t doing those things.

And as I said before, ping is what is really killing you. Even if you were getting speeds of 300, a ping of 800 would cause so much lag, halting, well, that would be a problem.

But who knows, maybe with a tower in a different location from Verizon instead of T mobile, and this could work for you.

I have done multiple factory resets and even purchased a external router for wifi instead of using the built in wifi so all the ssids are turned off with a ethernet cable going to the router that i connect my wifi devices to.

There are two towers i connect to the daytime one that i get primary b71 with no secondary signal from even though the tower says it has it on cell mapper is about 3 miles north in a idk small populated area im on the outside of town i find it weird that it connects to the tower that is in a more populated area during the daytime i only get 2 bars of b71 never had a secondary connection from this tower there really isnt any tall buildings in the area .

The second tower i usally only get connected to at night with the b66 2 bars /n71 3 bars connection is 2 miles south maybe less i would be surprised if there was 500 people that lived within a 3 mile radius of that tower lol its all farmland basically. i do notice the b71 4g signal on the tower with no secondary connection is stronger usally by a couple digits than the tower with b66 4g so i think its choosing that tower witch idk seems broken or something as no data hardly gos through it lol

Also i just noticed my boost mobile phone that has been horrible for the last year comes up as t-mobile ip address on speed test and has the same horrible connection. before this boostmobile was on sprint network and i had great speeds on 4g always 50mbps and up with 5 bars of service-i thought t-mobile merged with sprint i dont seem to get access to those sprint towers anymore as the same phone and service only has 1-2 bars of signal now and has been ridiculously bad ever since this changed not sure if that means anything.

im just thinking the t-mobile service is really bad in the area along with every other provider-currently i am on visible wireless that uses verizon towers and has unlimited hotspot data i get ok ping 90-150 usally but speeds are often 1-3 mbps during peak hours but it always works and is pretty stable i only get 1 measly bar of service on this and the ping times are so much better it works like regular internet lol but i also game so downloading/updating doesnt get you very far at these speeds.

its weird because it seems like they have put up new cell towers all over around here but none of them are on cell maper and no provider seems to have good service in this area but im surrounded by towers maybe they are all causing interference or something im really confused about how i used to have great connection to sprint towers and t-mobile has those towers now but it seems that they have them turned off or something.

anyways sorry for the ramble i basically have given up and try not to think about it as much as i was and idk most likely will be returning it at some point-also there is probably a store for every provider you can think of within a few miles i just dont understand why they would have storefront in small areas with no service lol the only one i havnt tried is at&t they are supposed to be pretty good around here but idk its expensive i do plan on trying cricket or puretalkusa next month witch is based on at&t towers it just sucks because this all costs money weather the service works or not doesnt mean you get stuff for free.

blue240sx44 wrote:

I have done multiple factory resets and even purchased a external router for wifi instead of using the built in wifi so all the ssids are turned off with a ethernet cable going to the router that i connect my wifi devices to.

There are two towers i connect to the daytime one that i get primary b71 with no secondary signal from even though the tower says it has it on cell mapper is about 3 miles north in a idk small populated area im on the outside of town i find it weird that it connects to the tower that is in a more populated area during the daytime i only get 2 bars of b71 never had a secondary connection from this tower there really isnt any tall buildings in the area .

The second tower i usally only get connected to at night with the b66 2 bars /n71 3 bars connection is 2 miles south maybe less i would be surprised if there was 500 people that lived within a 3 mile radius of that tower lol its all farmland basically. i do notice the b71 4g signal on the tower with no secondary connection is stronger usally by a couple digits than the tower with b66 4g so i think its choosing that tower witch idk seems broken or something as no data hardly gos through it lol

Also i just noticed my boost mobile phone that has been horrible for the last year comes up as t-mobile ip address on speed test and has the same horrible connection. before this boostmobile was on sprint network and i had great speeds on 4g always 50mbps and up with 5 bars of service-i thought t-mobile merged with sprint i dont seem to get access to those sprint towers anymore as the same phone and service only has 1-2 bars of signal now and has been ridiculously bad ever since this changed not sure if that means anything.

im just thinking the t-mobile service is really bad in the area along with every other provider-currently i am on visible wireless that uses verizon towers and has unlimited hotspot data i get ok ping 90-150 usally but speeds are often 1-3 mbps during peak hours but it always works and is pretty stable i only get 1 measly bar of service on this and the ping times are so much better it works like regular internet lol but i also game so downloading/updating doesnt get you very far at these speeds.

its weird because it seems like they have put up new cell towers all over around here but none of them are on cell maper and no provider seems to have good service in this area but im surrounded by towers maybe they are all causing interference or something im really confused about how i used to have great connection to sprint towers and t-mobile has those towers now but it seems that they have them turned off or something.

anyways sorry for the ramble i basically have given up and try not to think about it as much as i was and idk most likely will be returning it at some point-also there is probably a store for every provider you can think of within a few miles i just dont understand why they would have storefront in small areas with no service lol the only one i havnt tried is at&t they are supposed to be pretty good around here but idk its expensive i do plan on trying cricket or puretalkusa next month witch is based on at&t towers it just sucks because this all costs money weather the service works or not doesnt mean you get stuff for free.

You answered all the questions I asked, thanks, and like many people’s slow speed problems, yours sound mysterious and/or complex, and out of the realm of my own short time (I’m in my second week) of having T mobile home internet.

I'd like to remind anyone reading this that I created this thread to offer a suggestion to people who had a specific problem. That is, they get good speeds for their area, like 50+ download consistently on a primary and secondary signal, but occasionally they get switched to a primary-only 4G LTE signal which is much slower, or slower and glitchy (with lag), and they can't reboot the modem/router off it.

My suggestion is to move the router/modem to a place where it gets one bar or even two bars less signal, to see if when you reboot, it connects to the faster 5G primary and secondary pair, which is actually at 4G/5G pair of a "B" band with an "n" band. After it reboots to the faster speed paired signals/bands, you can then either leave the gateway where it is, or even move it back to where you get the best signal.

From a reader, I learned you can also temporarily knock a signal strength bar off your connection by covering it with foil (but don't block the vents on top) and then you can connect to the faster bands, and take the foil off. This might be necessary for people who have only the same signal available pretty much everywhere in their house and can't reduce it, even temporarily through placement.

What I lack in experience though, being retired and having time, before I got the 5G gateway and this service was even available in my area, I watched dozens of videos, and tried to read all the articles and about the experiences of people setting it up and using it.

Not only did I want to see patterns in people’s experiences how to get the best speed and signal I could in my situation, I thought it would be nice to help others starting out, that maybe have busy lives and aren’t retired with so much time to be reading about the experiences of others.

What I found in my reading of the experiences of others is that there are certain general patterns, like faster speeds as you get closer to a tower. Or people that connect to any B band paired to n41, usually get better speeds than people who get the B band paired to n71.

However, there are exceptions all over the place also, like people who have really bad connections who are less than a mile from the tower where they get the desirable n41 pairing. And some people with 200+ download speeds who are more than a few miles from a tower.

There are also people who get download speeds averaging over 100 for a few months, and then it  stops and they can’t get a good speed again and turn in their gateway.

Conversely, I've read of people who got low speeds on the first day of use, maybe 40 download, but then on the second day their speeds were doubled, to 80. One person had the n41 installed on their tower and their speed went way up.

I've read of some of the variables involved in the installation of new equipment, like it may take them time to tune the equipment (transceivers and antennas), and get the backhaul working properly. Backhaul is the connection between the tower and wireless equipment with the high speed, high capacity lines like fiber that connect to the internet through a substation or larger station.

In other words, it isn't just a matter of sticking the new equipment up in a few hours, turning it on, and bang, fast speeds for everyone. You can see the evolution of this on youtube by watching people, a year ago, very close to new installations of 5G, and they were getting speeds in the 50 to 100 download area, and a year later people who are close to towers can get between 200 and 600. Sometimes when the installation is new, like a few days old, the speed isn't fast. 

I read an article about a tiny town locally where only 30% of the residents can get any cell signal at all, and it is only if they have expensive boosters. The poorer people in town want a cell signal and from the time the town council approves getting a tower, it will take 4 years for the a company to build that small tower. This was a recent article. There are some residents who are objecting to the tower being unsightly.

But to your problems...it could be a tuning issue. The companies have their own challenges with a new technology like 5G. And there's an unknown in this I would very much like to know. That is, in the first wave of 100,000 users of T mobile home internet, how many found the service functional enough to keep. Is it 50%? Is it 90%?

And then there are the various standards of users, like the person who gets over 300 download, and for whom it is $30+ cheaper than their cable, but it’s totally unacceptable because it doesn’t work with Hulu. What I would say to those people is I understand your priorities, but maybe you should have spent an hour or two looking into this service before you ordered it, you would have found that it doesn’t work for Hulu.

But that's not your situation or the rest of us. It's the first year of their rollout, and we are all taking a risk, being the first ones in our neighborhoods in many cases to get this, in the case of rural areas.

Sure, it’s got to be massively disappointing, especially for people who have such problems like yours, but weren’t miles and miles from a tower or towers in your case.

For me, I expected a possibility of being disappointed, because my 4G phone sometimes gets only one bar, and my 3G phone used to drop calls unless I went outside. Instead, I'm relieved and delighted I get such good speed (average download of 90, never below 35), and I haven't gotten a one bar signal even once on the gateway. I get a steady three bars when the gateway is in the window, and two bars that work well in a few other places, the best of the two-bar spots being below the window.

And the window I use happens to be the one that is closest to the tower 5 miles away, where there is only one wall of my chicken wire and stucco (faux adobe) house to get to the signal through if it is below the window.The rest of the house shields me from connecting to the tower 10 miles away in another direction where I would probably get a slow speed. 

I presume that T mobile had enough success among their first 100,000 users, one-third which was rural with two-thirds city, that they will continue their expansion plans with 5G home internet.

A year from now more people will have 5G phones, and they won’t be the first in their neighborhoods finding out if T mobile home internet works for them.

About what you said at the end, that it all costs money to try. I agree it is a bad situation.

One commenter who was trying T mobile home internet, said that when he discontinued his high-speed cable service, they sent him an offer to reconnect for $20/month for one year. He was paying $110/month. So he's going to keep both his services, and see if his T mobile will get better maybe. Right now it was working well for a while, but started glitching out. He has that luxury.

Those kinds of offers are sometimes available to city and suburban people, but never to people in rural areas. As I have mentioned before, I was considering Starlink, but then the $500 for equipment and $100/month, keeping snow off the satellite dish in winter, slower speeds in the rain. I thought I'd wait.

T mobile has an offer for certain models of  iphone, that customers with any phone plan can download a special T mobile app and use T mobile's service for one month free, just to see how it is in their area. No signing up for anything, giving out credit card info or anything.

I consider your situation and story to be among the 10% worst cases, probably. But when you consider that 5G was hardly anywhere a year ago, and now it is all over, almost, even though there are pockets where it won't work or it's terrible, maybe in 6 months that will change.

In 2001, I was living in a more isolated area than I am now, and there was talk of the “last-mile” connectivity for rural users about a new wireless technology WiMax. For 8 years they were talking about it as a wireless solution for rural users, and it never went commercial in the US at all.  

5G is different. 5G is going to only get better and better from a technology standpoint. From a practical standpoint through, maybe with more people crowding the towers, that could still be a problem. But that shouldn't be the problem for rural users, only city users.

I think it would be nice if T mobile would at least tell you that if in a few months, they get the issues worked out in your area and speeds are up, they give you the offer of trying it free for a month, and if you like it, the $50 price, if that's what you were paying before. But they probably don't do stuff like that.

I felt like I was in the clutches of telephone companies decades ago, up until I ditched my landline. This is the first time I'm the one doing the clutching, hanging on to this amazing 5G service I get, hoping it continues through the future months and years.

blue240sx44 wrote:

I have done multiple factory resets and even purchased a external router for wifi instead of using the built in wifi so all the ssids are turned off with a ethernet cable going to the router that i connect my wifi devices to.

Did someone say your wifi could be the problem, and that you should try an external router? An external router is usually only necessary if the wifi isn't reaching all the parts of your house you want it to be reaching. (That can easily be the case with the T mobile 5G gateway because the wifi range of it is not very good.)

Another thing using an external router can do is relieve your gateway (modem/router) of its router duties, thereby helping to keep it a little cooler, in addition to making the wifi signal go farther.

Although the best YouTube vlogger on issues concerning T mobile home internet that I've found, Nater Tater (his channel name), uses a mesh network successfully, I think someone mentioned getting slower speeds with his router connected. Maybe it depends on kind of router or settings. But the router itself can't enhance signal strength from the tower or improve connection speed. I guess  you probably understand that.

You mentioned something about maps of towers. I agree. It's all confusing trying to figure out what tower has what equipment, and at what power they are operating. I've read where some towers can have more than one company's equipment attached, and know that to be a case with the tower I connect to.

The tower I connect to is owned by a private local internet provider, and when I saw it on my mapper, I realized they must rent space out on it to T mobile.

Tim… thank you for sharing your insights in your post! I have been having a similar issue and your post is the only thing I found that directly addresses the problem. You are a scholar and a gentleman!

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 again!!

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.

Thank you for the suggestions. My firewall has already been neutered so I think I can eliminate that.

Its harder for me to move my router around for reasons I can't disclose here. Lol. But, I think your point is well taken. There must be something happening with stability in my signal that is making the router drop my 5g band. I will experiment with that. Hopefully, if I figure it out, I will remember to come on here and update the thread.

Also, I'm very glad to hear that you have a stable, strong signal. I bet you are so happy! I know I will be if I can get it to stabilize. I have had CenturyLink DSL for years and OMG…. torture! Of course you had dial up so I can't complain. I mean seriously… how is dial up still a thing? :)))

Thanks for responding!

Timsw wrote:

 

blue240sx44 wrote:

 

 

 

I felt like I was in the clutches of telephone companies decades ago, up until I ditched my landline. This is the first time I'm the one doing the clutching, hanging on to this amazing 5G service I get, hoping it continues through the future months and years.

What are you kidding?  Do you repeat that 3 times while clicking your heels together?

OK very very interesting thread!!!

Just may have saved T-Mobile a customer.

Several takeaways.

-The download speed you get on your phone in the same spot has nothing to do with what you will get on the can.

-Take all the signal strength, SNR, bars, everything and forget about it as none of it matters.

-Fact you can get better download speed with less bars again forget about them.

I started out in a window that I could see the tower with m eyes. There it is line of site from the window can in that window. Good signal all looks good how can you get any better you can see the tower it's right there. Crap speed total crap speed was getting ready to send it back and stick with Comcast.

This thread popped up gave it a read yea took a while. Took the can on a UPS with my laptop moved around the house doing just download speed tests. Found several places with good download speed that just did not make sense. Not near a window, tower nowhere in sight, in the middle of a room. Crazy acceptable download speed. Tried several windows with towers not good speed this does not make any sense.

Made a list of places and found that many inside places gave good speeds. In the end put it in the center of my home and it is there now with good speed. Just for giggles I moved it to the window where I can see the tower man it is right there you can see it and 2m download speed total crap. Move it back to the center of my home where I have worse signal, worse readings, less bars, and I get speed.

So now we leave it sit here for a few days, a week, and let's see how we do. I don't need that much speed just enough to have 2 zoom calls my wife on one me on the other and maybe a kid watching a 4k show.

Again forget bars, signal strength, all that stuff the only thing that matters is speed and you may get that with less bars and worse signal.

I tend to agree the download speed of one device or another could have no bearing on the matter. The radios and antenna configurations could be very different the same as drivers etc… but as a reference point for trouble shooting having multiple devices did help here. The reporting by the software and/or the LED panel on top of the Nokia router are not very impressive. The signal strength indicator is just a quick reference so sure it is probably not sufficient. It does take effort and attention to optimize the placement of the router. I would speculate that the current location of the router in the middle of the house may have something to do with the signal bounce off surfaces in the house. It does seem crazy wrong that having it in the window with direct line of sight to the tower would not provide a better reception. It is easy to overlook screens that are not nylon or in one odd case here I discovered my wife and daughter were pulling down the "metal" blind inside the glass door which totally shielded the router. They did it to themselves but did not think about the aluminum blind between the glass when using it to darken the room.