Forum Discussion
Slow 4G connection only, but only sometimes -- SOLVED
I've had the T mobile home internet 5G gateway for 6 days now and it has been generally thrilling to get such high speeds after being stuck on a single-digit overpriced DSL connection for 9 years. I often get download speeds of over 100 for long stretches of time, but for me, anything over 50 is great.
So I've been reading a lot about this issue of how cellular connections work, since I just got a smartphone only last month. Although I'm not new to computers, and have been doing that for 50 years, starting with programming mainframes in college, but not as a profession. I was also on the internet starting in 1992.
In my rural area I am 5 miles from the only tower I connect to regularly, and have a signal strength of either 2 bars or 3 bars, depending where I place the gateway. I used a free tower mapper app to know I connect to only one tower and find out exactly where it is located so I could better orient the gateway.
However, I connect at three different band combinations, one which is great (over 100 a lot and rarely below 45 or so), one which is fine, (over 100 a lot and never below 30), and one which stinks, with connections between 4 and 20. I'll speak of download speeds only, but the upload speeds are good on the two combinations, and bad on the single.
Examining the GUI for the gateway at 192.168.12.1 (URL address), which shows more than the app, I know that my slow connection is a Primary signal only, which means 4G only. The good speeds are both from Primary Signal and Secondary Signal, combos in my case of B2/n41 or B66/n41. That means 5G basically, the non stand-alone pairing of 4G and 5G working together, which is the current state of 5G.
For the first five days as a new user of T mobile home internet, being switched to the slow speed was not a problem. It happened only twice that I know of. I rebooted the gateway and got a faster connection right away. However, today, I got stuck on that slow, halting connection, and rebooted six times and was still on it. What did I do to solve it?
Although it is counterintuitive, because usually higher bars means better connections and faster speeds, but it turns out sometimes not. By simply placing the gateway a few feet from the window, to a place where it gets only 2 bars instead of 3, I was able to connect right away to my fastest speed and remain there for the rest of the day.
Why does it do that? When there is a weaker signal, the gateway sometimes seeks out a better signal at the tower, maybe to compensate for a 2 bar signal? So if you are in a situation where you usually get a good signal, but sometimes get that really slow connection, then you should consider trying to put your gateway in a location where it gets one less bar.
This probably won't work with everyone, and may not work at all for those of you who know you have never connected at a good speed, and are probably stuck most off the time on the 4G single primary signal. Why? Obstructions maybe, or intense area traffic, although 5G is supposed to handle more connections better than 4G could per tower.
That said, there are instances where people get a faster signal on 4G alone instead of 5G's non stand-alone connection. But that's pretty rare.
Setting the gateway where there is a lower signal strength is worth a try though, if you are trying to reboot the gateway for a faster connection that you’ve had in the past, but are stuck on the 4G one time after time.
In the GUI, I use the STATUS category on the left, and then press both drop down arrows next to the Primary and Secondary Signal, and that where you will find what bands you are on.
Here is the T-mobile site's guide to all the bands. You see how n71 is a low-frequency band? It carries tremendous distances, and some people might get a fast connection on that, but most won't.
I'd like to know what bands people are on, just out of curiosity, if you care to share. Tell us how far you are from the tower, how many obstructions like hills or buildings (I have few obstructions) and the speeds you get on average. I hope this helps someone. That's why I wrote it.
5G
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Frecuencias que pueden proporcionar 5G:
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Band n71 (600 MHz)
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Band n41 (2.5 GHz)
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Band n260 (39 GHz)
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Band n261 (28 GHz)
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Con 5G, se pueden transferir cantidades de datos elevadas con mayor eficiencia que con 4G LTE.
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Una de las maneras en que T-Mobile está implementando 5G rápidamente es a través de la integración del espectro de banda media de 2.5 GHz de Sprint.
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Echa un vistazo a ¿Qué es 5G? ¡para aprender cómo funciona!
Alcance 4G LTE extendido
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Frecuencias que pueden proporcionar Alcance LTE extendido
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Banda 12 (700 MHz)
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Banda 71 (600 MHz)
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Nuestra señal de alcance LTE extendido llega 2 veces más lejos y atraviesa paredes para brindar cobertura 4 veces mejor bajo techo.
4G LTE
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Frecuencias que pueden proporcionar LTE:
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Banda 2 (1900 MHz)
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Banda 5 (850 MHz)
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Banda 4 (1700/2100 MHz)
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Banda 66 (Extension of band 4 on 1700/2100 MHz).
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4G LTE ofrece velocidades de descarga rápidas, velocidades hasta 50% más rápidas que 3G. Consulta Velocidades de datos.
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Los servicios de voz y de datos solo funcionan al mismo tiempo si tienes activada la función VoLTE en tu dispositivo. De lo contrario, LTE solo proporciona datos.
Just got the Gateway last Saturday. Speeds were terrible.
Overnight the firmware updated to 1609. Performance is better. 100 down and 10 up. Band b41. No 5G.
Did factory reset last night. This morning I was b2, then b66. Speeds still bad. Moved it upstairs. Now I am back on b41 with 100/10.
I think cellmapper has issues.
I think the major problem is people look at the cell towers as omnidirectional. They are anything but. They are phased arrays that can steer the energy beaming it where they want.
I have ordered a panel antenna kit from waveform. We'll see how that works.I am north of Ringgold GA
Retired electrical engineer that did control systems used to make cookies.
Dennis
DWomack wrote:
Just got the Gateway last Saturday. Speeds were terrible.
Overnight the firmware updated to 1609. Performance is better. 100 down and 10 up. Band b41. No 5G.
Did factory reset last night. This morning I was b2, then b66. Speeds still bad. Moved it upstairs. Now I am back on b41 with 100/10.
I think cellmapper has issues.
I think the major problem is people look at the cell towers as omnidirectional. They are anything but. They are phased arrays that can steer the energy beaming it where they want.
I have ordered a panel antenna kit from waveform. We'll see how that works.I am north of Ringgold GA
Retired electrical engineer that did control systems used to make cookies.
Dennis
IMO Cellmapper at least in my area is next to useless none of the tower data is even close to accurate.
What I have done is just drive around with my phone and do testing at the tower and out towards my home. The can is really fussy in rotation makes a big difference. Since I got the new firmware my can will not hold the 5G signal as the SNR is near 0 so it stays locked on LTE b66 I get 60-70 ish but seems stable. Note I am in a Ultra 5G coverage area so I have no idea why my can does not get att the very least an ok 5G signal. I am on the fence about the external antenna as I don't know how much it will really help. Testing with my phone very close to the towers only shows speeds in the 100 ish area. There is only one tower that is 3.5 miles away that gives 200ish speeds but my can will not ever lock on that tower as there are 2 closer towers one half mile, one 1 mile, oh yea another 2 miles. So if my 5G phone is not getting the speeds next to the towers I don't see how the can can.
One very odd thing is once in a while in just one window of my home the can and my phone can get 500+ speeds. It does not last sometimes I see it for minutes sometimes longer but then it's gone and speeds in that window drop to10. Makes me think of the old days on CB and shortwave when signals would bounce off the atmosphere and I would be talking to someone on the other side of the world.
In my area n71 band is on towers next to the interstate. At least cellmapper says they are there. That is 600 MHz band. What used to be used by UHF channels like 39-55.
My b41 tower was a Sprint cell.
The app really needs some work as does the firmware. At least there needs to be a search button to force it to find another tower. It needs to remember and display previous towers along with SINR. This is not hard to do.
Dennis
I hooked up an external antenna and it helped not one bit. I still just get 2 bars on 5G as a secondary connection to go along with my 3 bars of 4G coverage, Walking around doesn't seem to improve the connection but it's hard to tell since the meter on the cylinder just shows the best 3bar connection and not specifically 5G. I don't have a 5G phone to test with.
Looking at the Cellmapper web site I don’t see the only 5G connection I can get; N41 / PCI 7.
Supposedly my area has "5G Ultra Capacity" coverage but the towers to support that don't show up on cellmapper.net; mostly just along the freeways. I guess it only has what users submit.
Maybe I should hook up the external antenna to the 4G line and try to get more than 3 bars.
Usually the 4G is much better than what I used to have but sometimes it's spotty with even poorer performance than my old 10 megabit DSL.I suspect that the router doesn't do that great of a job handling the drastically shifting speeds available so I get lots of bufferbloat and whatnot. Upload speeds are often < 1 megabit with tests often failing to even complete when there are slowdowns.
Edit: I still get 2 bars on my antenna for 5G even with the antenna disconnected so maybe I didn't get it connected right. The again, it was the same with the internal antenna so perhaps I just can't get a freaking 5G signal at my house despite being in a "5G ultra capacity" zone. :|
Cellmapper has multiple entries for T-Mobile when you search. I found that when I looked up the b41 tower/cell I am connecting to. Turns out it came from Sprint. I think one of the cell tower metrics is CID. Long number. First 6 digits are the carrier. It showed up as T-Mobile Sprint not T-Mobile.
We will see when the panel antenna gets here.
I hope the software jockeys that wrote this are running it at their houses. They need to eat their own dog food.
I wrote control system software for a living. I know all software has bugs, those you know about and those you don't. The latter you really worry about.
In the software business there is a saying…
“if builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.”
Users today are debugging the software. Why do you think apps get updated so frequently? Throw that spaghetti code against the wall and see if it sticks.
Dennis
Metric is not CID, but CGI.
Just correcting the record.
Dennis
One more rant for the developers…
Around 8% of males in the US are colorblind. Red-green. I am one of those.
The color choices for the signal strength bars on the top of the can are terrible. Difficult to distinguish.
I hate the combo red/green LEDs I can see it change color but can’t tell you what it changed from and to
Climbing down from soap box…
Dennis
Depends on combination of bands as what download speed is. B2 with n71 I average over 50 Mbps download. But a lot more buffering trying to watch tv. B66 with n71 getting 15 to 40 Mbps has much less buffering. The horrible scenario is no secondary band. I too often get B71. Two bars but only a few kbps. Usually if I get any at all on B71 it's 100 - 150 kbps!
Hello, I wanted to reply here to bump this post up and say thanks to the community for helping me fix my issue. I didn't get into the depth of signal and tower mapping that others did here, but a specific part of the OP's comments here stood out to me, and I thought might be helpful to others struggling with their connectivity/signal strength issues as well.
TL/DR from the OP:
"Although it is counterintuitive, because usually higher bars means better connections and faster speeds, but it turns out sometimes not. By simply placing the gateway a few feet from the window, to a place where it gets only 2 bars instead of 3, I was able to connect right away to my fastest speed and remain there for the rest of the day.”
More on my specific experience, if you are interested...I have been wrestling with spotty connectivity since I got the service a couple weeks ago, and experiencing similar problems as others are (overwhelmingly) reporting here. Super intermittent speeds, frequent drop-outs, needing to reset the gateway multiple times a day. For the most part it was working well enough, and even with the disruptions slightly preferable to the 40mbps DSL I was moving away from, but...really not ideal. So I spent 2 worthless hours on the phone with T-Mobile support, and a lot of time here combing through threads, considering buying a fan, asking for a new gateway, etc.
Ultimately, the most important thing to me was the reliability of the signal to my main home PC, which acts as a media center for the house. We have lots of other devices that were working pretty well (Sonos, Fire TVs, phones/laptops, etc.) but the Windows 10 PC is down in the basement, and I could not get a dependable connection there even after buying a new PCI wifi card (TP-Link AC1200, fwiw). I was messing with the gateway settings, frequency bands, etc. and nothing really worked. I could sit at that desk with my laptop and pull 100+ mpbs while the PC was struggling to maintain single digits. Not great!
After reading this thread, I decided to revisit the very first assumption I made when setting up the gateway. It should be on an upper floor, by a window, to get the strongest signal, right? The best placement upstairs got me 3 bars, and seemed intuitively better than putting it in the basement, where I could only get 2 bars. But I found a location by a basement window (just 10 feet below my original placement), where even though I am only getting 2 bars, it DRASTICALLY improved my connectivity and signal strength to the PC and everywhere else. A little trade-off for a couple of the Fire TVs that it is now further away from, but still getting durable 40-80mbps for those, so no noticeable loss in streaming performance. I think moving it resulted in a change in the primary band I was connecting to (from 12 to 2) and this seemed to make the difference.
So that’s my story, and my recommendation. Even though you might sacrifice a bar, do not be afraid to get creative with your placement, and see if you get better results with 2 bars then with 3. This really seemed to solve the issue for me, and will likely make the difference with me keeping the service rather than going back to DSL.
Best of luck to everyone...this was pretty frustrating and while I typically appreciate T-Mobile's customer service, they are apparently pretty terrible on the home internet front. So while we are left to our own devices I'm glad there are helpful people like you all out there! :)
Just switched from Verizon to T-Mobile mainly for 55+ savings but was also hoping for better data. it's terrible! T-Mobile 5g is less than 2 Mbps! I had much faster 4g lte with Verizon. I live in rural area but still that was not an acceptable speed even 5 or 10 years ago. So much for "Faster 5g in more places." I get 35 Mbps with our home internet provider.
