I've been using the home internet service since the beginning of March. It had been working really well, with me getting speeds between 25-100 mbps, which I've been super happy with since I'm in a rural area and it's hard to find internet that works here. However, since the beginning of June, my speeds have been around very inconsistent, but around 1mbps more often than not. Previously when my speeds were that slow, a simple restart would fix it. But I have rebooted/restarted the device many, many times, as well as tried doing a factory reset a couple times. Sometimes these things help..for a short period of time. Most of the time they don't change anything. Sometimes, after rebooting/restarting, my speeds will go back to 10-25 mbps for anywhere from a minute to a few days, but will then revert back to around 1 mbps. I've also moved the device around my house to see if I got a better signal elsewhere, which also did not help. I thought my device was overheating, so I've been using a fan to cool it, which hasn't seemed to change anything either. I contacted T-Mobile support when I first started having issues, but they just sent me the gateway troubleshooting guide with everything I have already tried, so I don't have a lot of faith in them being able to help me if I contact them again. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening or know of anything else I can try? I'm just getting frustrated at this point, but don't have a lot of internet options where I live so I want to make this work if I can. Thanks in advance.

erin wrote: I've been using the home internet service since the beginning of March. It had been working really well, with me getting speeds between 25-100 mbps, which I've been super happy with since I'm in a rural area and it's hard to find internet that works here. However, since the beginning of June, my speeds have been around very inconsistent, but around 1mbps more often than not. Previously when my speeds were that slow, a simple restart would fix it. But I have rebooted/restarted the device many, many times, as well as tried doing a factory reset a couple times. Sometimes these things help..for a short period of time. Most of the time they don't change anything. Sometimes, after rebooting/restarting, my speeds will go back to 10-25 mbps for anywhere from a minute to a few days, but will then revert back to around 1 mbps. I've also moved the device around my house to see if I got a better signal elsewhere, which also did not help. I thought my device was overheating, so I've been using a fan to cool it, which hasn't seemed to change anything either. I contacted T-Mobile support when I first started having issues, but they just sent me the gateway troubleshooting guide with everything I have already tried, so I don't have a lot of faith in them being able to help me if I contact them again. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening or know of anything else I can try? I'm just getting frustrated at this point, but don't have a lot of internet options where I live so I want to make this work if I can. Thanks in advance. Above, I'm linking to a video from YouTube where a T mobile home internet user named Nate (his YouTube channel is "Nater Tater") explains things about gateway location and how number of bars is not always related to best speed or connecting to the right band or band combination (2 bands for 5G) that will give you the best speeds.Instead, it is about finding a location for the gateway that gives you the highest speeds on speed tests. In other words, let's say you get only 2 bars. All 2 bar locations aren't alike. You don't say whether you were doing speed tests at each location you tried.Nate explains how finding your tower location, and locating the gateway, perhaps in a window, closest to a that tower, can help you get the fastest and most stable connection for you. And then even fine tuning your gateway location, by rotating it, can improve the RSRP or SINR (or SNR). RSRP is a finer indication of signal strength the the more rough "number of bars." He explains how higher figures are better on both of these, so an RSRP of -95 is better than an RSRP of -98, and with the SINR, which is signal to noise ratio, a 15 is better than an 11.I'm in a rural area also, and at home, my 4G phone can alternate connecting between two towers, one which is 5 miles away and one which is 10 miles away. Fortunately, I don't get this on my 5G home internet gateway. It connects to the closer tower only, and that has the desirable n41 mid-frequency 5G band, which gives me good download speeds of between 35 and 170, with no lagging problems.To answer your question, what could have happened, that you were getting such consistently good speeds for a few months, and now in June you're getting terrible speeds. Well, I can only guess, from the things I've read. If you have a 5G phone with a T mobile service, or have a friend who does and can do a speed test from your house, you can at least eliminate something going bad with your gateway. I know these 5G phones are still scarce. Still, if the speed on a T-mobile connected 5G phone is good from your house, then you know you need to replace the gateway.T mobile and other companies can make equipment changes to a tower, and also do "tuning," which could conceivably change your speed or signal, either way, for the better or the worse.By "tuning," that means making some adjustments, perhaps lowering or raising the transmission power, or adjusting the backhaul, which is equipment that is between the wireless tower equipment and their substation fiber connection to the internet.Suddenly, they make some change, and the signal you're getting, in the few degrees of coverage to your location, is worse. Maybe it helped others, but yours is worse.As happened to Nate, sometimes a company will be working on on a tower and then shift everyone to a neighboring tower for a while. But you would expect this is the type of thing they could have told you when you called up to tell them you got this bad speed drop in June. But maybe they give this kind of boiler plate steps to go through first to people. They'll do that before they file a repair ticket, which I believe is something they do to more seriously check that your tower is functioning properly.The GUI Nate speaks about, which is where you can find whether you're getting a full non-standalone paired connection of a Primary and Secondary, and what bands you are on, is at:192.168.12.1Just stick that in the URL box of any page, and click on Overview on the left, and later, Status on the left, and the dropdown arrows to find the information. If you're getting only a 1Mbps connection, they usually tend to go along with terrible connection period, so you might have to wait until you have some speed to even bring up the 192.168.12.1Knowing and understanding all this stuff probably won't help you get a faster speed, but it will help when you call T mobile, if you can tell them. "Hey, I'm connecting to a Primary signal only and not getting a 5G paired connection of Primary AND Secondary, what is up with that?"Some people with a really slow connection do get a 5G pairing, but the GUI will allow you to see what it is, example B66/n71 or B66/n41.I've read of instances where they install new equipment, and it takes them a week or more to ramp up the power, or tune it properly. They don't always use full power at first because they are monitoring for possible signal conflicts with other towers.City people have it easier when it comes to some of these problems, because they have more customers who are affected by a problem at the T mobile tower, and calling up to alert them to the same problem. In rural areas, you might be one of the only ones in your area that even has this service.On the lack of information end, partly because 5G is so new, and companies are installing new equipment at a rapid pace, if you go back through older threads of other people who had speed drops like yours, few to none ever get a resolution, or they don't get back to the board and tell how they resolved it.

I have had periods when the T-Mobile/Nokia 5G gateway connection runs slower & this past month have experienced repeated, random, frequent tower signal drops. I have repeatedly made trouble calls with T-Mobile support and provided lots of information. The conversations finally did come around to work being done on the tower where upgrades were being made. For me I went through the GW relocation process to try to improve the signal. I found a site waveform.com which is a vendor that sells external MIMO antennas that are compatible with the Nokia 5G router/gateway. The information was interesting & helpful to me to improve my connections to the tower. I discovered that the internal design of the router has the antennas in a vertical orientation all the way around the router. Think of it as an 8 sided device. There are multiple "5G" and WIFI radios. What I found most interesting was the rotation of the gateway in order to improve signal. From my extensive testing with rotation of the device I found the best 5G or LTE signal wash over the can from the tower is a little tricky to work out. It appears to me the antenna to the left of the back of the device is the 5G antenna & the one to the right of the back of the router is the 4G LTE antenna. I have not confirmed this 100% but if I direct the back of the can northward to the tower line of sight 5 miles away the signal strength of the 5G and LTE are a little reduced. If I rotate the back of the can to allow the 5G signal to improve a bar then the LTE signal usually drops a bar. Well, my preference is to favor the 5G as latency is lower and speed capability is higher. Keep in mind as you read the dBm values for the tower signals that they are negative values and lower is better than higher. Signal strength is NOT the only value to understand. The signal quality is also important. If the signal quality is good or excellent as well as a strong signal then this will help improve the traffic to/through the gateway. The values for RSRP, signal strength, and RSRQ signal quality can help you "tune" in the signals once you understand them. The SNR or SINR, signal to noise db value is good to understand as well as it is listed as a positive value vs a negative value. Anything in the 10-12.5 is good and above 12.5 is excellent. If you have a strong signal but it has poor quality well this is not a good equation. I did a great deal of research and reading to be able to work through this. You can search online and find information to read that explains all this in detail. The end result I came to is that if you are on the outer limit of the tower signal but still have a fairly strong signal with good quality then an external MIMO antenna can make the difference to really improve the communication. The external MIMO antennas run ~$200 and waveform.com has a guide that very clearly explains how to add an external antenna to the gateway. It is a good option for people on the edge in a rural area like I am in. With the T-Mobile push to roll out 5G they have been working on the towers & equipment so even with an external antenna maintenance work on the towers can still cause, and do, cause disruptions. The web interface to manage the device is, in my opinion, a bit flakey at best. With a direct CAT6 cable connected to the device on LAN1 or LAN2 that is the best solution but I still see it a bit flakey and the advanced features listed on the documents are just not there. I have the software version 1.2003.03.0178 in operation on the gateway & there are still limited options and no parental controls or QOS or MAC address handling etc… It is just a very dumbed down interface that is not mature yet or T-Mobile is not actually interested in providing the features yet as they have their hands full with the bigger roll out picture. For me it is the only internet solution I have here. My tower connections ran stable and rock solid, for the most part from January-June and then in July it went flakey at random intervals. Now T-Mobile has improved the tower, it appears, and it is back to stable. Don't just give up as there are ways to have improved signal and communication if you are persistent.

I would add when rotating the gateway to improve the signal exposure to the 5G or 4G LTE radios be patient and take your time. Expect to make a slight change, watch for improvement, then make another, and watch again. Don't expect immediate results. Tap the LED panel on the top, review the number of bars and repeat the process. Go all the way around if you want or need to. The more you play with it the more you learn how it works. Being connected to the web interface from the ethernet connection is good as what the LED panel reports is NOT as much detail as the web interface information. When you see the negative dBm RSRP, signal strength values, read as lower numerical values you will know you are improving the signal connection with the tower. > -80 dBm RSRP is excellent / >= -10 RSRQ is excellent / >=20 dB SINR is excellent. Watch the values rotate the gateway, record your results. ¡Buena suerte!

There are various ways to find the T-Mobile towers. The best confirmation I had was asking direct the coordinates for the tower from the support engineer on a call. I can see the tower, which I suspected was the one, and the T-Mobile support engineer was nice enough to verify that. It is important to know where the tower is, and more local router/gateway information to really isolate where the problem is. There are a number of variables to consider so if you have more than one client and a phone that is 5G as well then testing and figuring out why things are slow can be made easier with more points of reference. The router software interface shows you values but does not allow you much in the way of testing tools to verify with. From a couple of clients on the local LAN ping a couple of DNS servers, like 8.8.8.8 and 9.9.9.9 or 1.1.1.1 (google, quad9, cloud flare) and read latency. Using speedtest.net is helpful as well but if the signal goes up and down a bit the latency record from PINGs to DNS servers are a good reference.

Just make sure if you are by a window that your screen is not metal as that will cut the signal in half easy. If you have fiberglass screens no issue if you are unsure remove and test.

Slow Home Internet | Comunidad de T-Mobile

iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 4 años
With the secondary at -95 dBm it appears to have your RF in the "Mid Cell" for the signal. The primary is a bit of a weak signal but at least the secondary n71 is good. You might still try rotating the orientation of the router to influence the signal wash over the 5G antennas. I found the antenna orientation is an alternating pattern of the WIFI and 5G antennas. From the back side the 5G-1 is at 5 o'clock, 5G-2 is at 2 o'clock etc and the WIFI-1 is right at the back along with the LAN ports etc and WIFI-2 is at 3 o'clock along with the GPS and BT. WIFI-4 is at the front with 5G-2 at 2 o'clock. I discovered I could rotate the router to point the 5G-4 antenna at 7 o'clock toward the tower and improve the signal by several dBm. It is worth a little experimentation. See if you can get the coordinates of the towers where your signals originate. It will help you improve the placement possibly. Hopefully T-Mobile support has shared the actual location of the towers with you as it really does help to know. I am 5.3 miles line of sight of the tower that sends the 5G signal and I obtain speeds up to 153 Mb down and ~50 Mb up at times. It is more common to see 120 Mb down and 25-30 up but that is still not bad. Until I started really tinkering with placement I did not get the signals optimized. It also really helps if T-Mobile is not working on the tower equipment. For me that did account for some of the disruptions. You sound like you are aware of the signal values but here is a handy table I found that you might find useful to have about.
djb14336
Bandwidth Buddy
Hace 4 años
Looks like they have been tweaking in my market again (Florence, SC… routed to the Charlotte, NC hub).
band 2 hasn't showed up in use at all tonight. Strictly been band 66, and it has been teetering right on the edge of good/excellent on the metrics where it used to sit squarely in good, occasionally dipping to fair on quality.
b66 has always been the one it fell back to when b2 would get overloaded. Throughput was always lower because of the weaker quality metrics, BUT... latency was always better when it was in play. But tonight it has been keeping my CQI in the better half, so it has been landing 80-120 depending where I was pulling from--even in the middle of an ugly thunderstorm!

Hopefully this is a sign of better things to come in our market!
Toolman
Network Novice
Hace 4 años
iTinkeralot wrote:

With the secondary at -95 dBm it appears to have your RF in the "Mid Cell" for the signal. The primary is a bit of a weak signal but at least the secondary n71 is good. You might still try rotating the orientation of the router to influence the signal wash over the 5G antennas. I found the antenna orientation is an alternating pattern of the WIFI and 5G antennas. From the back side the 5G-1 is at 5 o'clock, 5G-2 is at 2 o'clock etc and the WIFI-1 is right at the back along with the LAN ports etc and WIFI-2 is at 3 o'clock along with the GPS and BT. WIFI-4 is at the front with 5G-2 at 2 o'clock. I discovered I could rotate the router to point the 5G-4 antenna at 7 o'clock toward the tower and improve the signal by several dBm. It is worth a little experimentation. See if you can get the coordinates of the towers where your signals originate. It will help you improve the placement possibly. Hopefully T-Mobile support has shared the actual location of the towers with you as it really does help to know. I am 5.3 miles line of sight of the tower that sends the 5G signal and I obtain speeds up to 153 Mb down and ~50 Mb up at times. It is more common to see 120 Mb down and 25-30 up but that is still not bad. Until I started really tinkering with placement I did not get the signals optimized. It also really helps if T-Mobile is not working on the tower equipment. For me that did account for some of the disruptions. You sound like you are aware of the signal values but here is a handy table I found that you might find useful to have about.

Thank you for your reply.
Sorry for the poor discription of my issue. I was a bit concerned I may have run to many details together clouding what I was trying to convey. My issue is with the replacement gateway I received about 4 weeks ago. The secondary (5G) signal is weak. What I currently have right now is:
Primary (B66): RSRP: -106 dBm, SNR: 13 dB, RSRQ: -11 dB.
Secondary (n71): RSRP: -112 dBm, SNR: -1 dB, RSRQ: -14.
I have rotated the gateway a full 360 degrees looking for the best signal strength as well as the best quality. I've tried to favor SNR and RSRQ over RSRP. What I posted above is the best I can find. Oddly, I get the same reading with the front of the Can at 0 degrees facing the tower and at 90 degrees (3 o'clock) to the tower.
As I stated, this is a replacement gateway. The first gateway had better secondary signal performance (-95 dBm). The 5G signal (n71) is a 600 MHz signal and I would think should perform better (penetration and range) than what I'm seeing with this replacement gateway.
I can't get a good 5G signal regardless of where I go in the house and how I rotate the Can. As a result, the speeds have dropped off significantly. And, to make it even more frustrating, occationally the speeds will come back up to close to what I had back in May, June, and then drop back down again. And then there is the occational signal drop, sometimes the secondary, other times both requiring a reboot to re-establish a connection.
This is why I’m thinking I may have a faulty gateway that is not performing as it should.
djb14336
Bandwidth Buddy
Hace 4 años
may be getting hots pots inside the unit? From the disassembly videos I've seen, it doesn't really have decent ventilation.
There have been a lot of reports of people stabilizing the Nokias by rigging up a fan that can push/pull air up/down through the unit. Some sit it on a fan, some put a fan on top… have even heard of people doing both.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 4 años
Hum… sounds as if there are significant obstructions for the signal delivery to the router from the tower. I agree that the penetration and range 600 MHz signal should have a pretty solid range out to ~10 miles without obstructions and line of sight. With the RSRQ on the secondary signal at -14 the signal quality is degraded. There could be significant obstructions for the signal delivery to the router. I considered a MIMO external antenna to boost the signal reception here and reduce the limitations of the router placement. Being 5.3 miles from the 5G tower puts us in the mid range but that is not bad here. The design of the "can" style router may not be good for some solutions. If you have a 5G phone when the router drops the n71 channel check and see if the phone sees 5G or not. When calling T-Mobile support I discovered they had other complaints that related to that tower. They did work on the equipment on the tower and the signal drops have not been a major issue since. I did suspect this router or the software upgrade that it took but after the work on the tower equipment operations improved back to the 5 month period prior to the month of chaos. I investigated the possibility of heat related influence and even put the router outside on a day when it was 88 degrees and it did not have any issue or have any over temp alarms. If it does have temperature problems it should provide the alarm when the LED menu panel on top of the router is used. Unfortunately the software interface via the web has no temperature reporting.
If you are interested go to waveform.com and to their hotspot guides and check out the "T-Mobile High Speed 5G Internet Gateway External Antenna Guide" According to waveform improving signal quality is the best way to improve data rates. If the signal is cleaned up the data rates should improve as there would be fewer retransmissions due to packet damage. Their guide is fairly informative and is worth the time to read. They provide free shipping for orders over $100 and "Easy Returns" with satisfaction guaranteed. I have not confirmed all that but I have been considering the external MIMO antenna as placement of the router in the bathroom window on the NE corner of the house is not very convenient plus the moisture would probably not be good for the router either. Sending the WIFI signal across the length of the house also makes it a less attractive solution. I am thinking the external antenna is a better option for me as the 802.11ax from the Nokia router is actually working fairly well. The choke point will always be the signal to the tower.
liawriter
Network Novice
Hace 3 años
none of these solutions was very helpful, and tech support is not very helpful either. I wanted to know if I could A) use a wifi extender to improve signal and was hoping someone here who has same issues might have tried it, or 😎 can I buy/use my own router/modem that would work better? I have no tolerance for internet that goes in and out and can't call tech support and be on the phone for hours, when they say they can "fix it" no worries, and then next day it doesn't work again! The most confusing part is I have an "excellent" signal, but no wifi connection or slow internet speeds (like below 10 20) more often than not! Calls either drop or they can't hear me. On a speed test, it allows me to pick a closer tower, but it doesn't let me keep it at that or automatically go to that one all the time! Every time I have to reset the gateway, I have to add ALL my devices which are all time consuming steps (ie. my nest, security camera, smart lights, etc.) and I just don't have the time or patience for that!
If it's not going to work in my area yet, then they need to admit that and I can go back to my previous service, though that was more expensive and not 100% either, but at least more consistent and didn't require me to physically do all the work! They said they still don't have a tech that could come to the house because of covid, even though I live in Florida and everyone is "open" here, some take precautions like wearing masks when they come, but not that there is "no one available" to help me! I'm willing to pay someone, but don't even know who to ask for? This is just unacceptable!
tomwil
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
liawriter wrote:

Every time I have to reset the gateway, I have to add ALL my devices which are all time consuming steps (ie. my nest, security camera, smart lights, etc.) and I just don’t have the time or patience for that!

Can’t you just do a reboot, rather than a factory reset?

That way, you don’t lose your configuration.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
With the inconsistent numbers between the two routers I would question if either router is 100%
“I wanted to know if I could A) use a wifi extender to improve signal and was hoping someone here who has same issues might have tried it, or 😎 can I buy/use my own router/modem that would work better?”
A wifi extender is not going to help with the cellular signal. It will only help if the area you need to cover in your home is too large for the coverage by the Nokia wifi radios.
The key is to get a solid cellular signal. If you do not know 100% where the cellular tower is then that is a good place to start. Confirm with T-Mobile where the tower is in relation to where your router is. They should be able to provide coordinates for the tower. The PCI for the tower would be helpful as you can confirm it is recorded in the tower data on cellmapper.net. What I found is that the PCI for the 5G NR signal was not on record in our area as a 5G tower location but the 4G LTE PCI information was available and the cell was pretty easy to identify. Data on tower locations with cellmapper.net is roughly 70-80% complete. It does contain significant data on 4G LTE towers. The data for the 5G NR equipment may or may not be updated in some locations.
Once you know 100% where the tower is, what 5G NR band(s) T-Mobile are sending and how far out you are from that source then you can dial things in possibly. If you are out on the cell edge it might just be an exercise in futility. The reason I made the reference to the external antennas is that this can be one possible avenue to improve things. Of course if the Nokia routers you have are not solid then no external antenna can do much to help.
To my knowledge T-Mobile does NOT support third party routers. I have seen nothing to suggest they will support the T-Mobile SIM loaded into another vendor router. Maybe someone has done it but I don't believe T-Mobile would offer any support on a non-Nokia router. In Florida you don't have large ridges and mountains as we do here so buildings could be a factor or distance to the tower. Find out how far you are from the tower and what the 5G NR bands used are then you can determine if you are within reach of the signal with a good chance to hold it.
iTinkeralot
Bandwidth Buff
Hace 3 años
The 4G LTE signals, in theory, can cover many miles but as you get farther away from the tower the speed drops off. The 5G NR channels can reach out but the n41 does not reach out as far as the n71 signals as the wave lengths are not the same. The n41 is a higher frequency than the n71 and the n41 does not have the penetration that the longer n71 has.
You provided this as signal data:
Primary (B66): RSRP: -106 dBm, SNR: 13 dB, RSRQ: -11 dB.
Secondary (n71): RSRP: -112 dBm, SNR: -1 dB, RSRQ: -14.
So, we know it is a n71 5G NR signal on the secondary and 4G LTE on the primary signaling. We can also tell the signal strength on either is NOT stellar. If the SNR on the n71 is as stated that is very poor signal to noise ratio. The combination of barely fair signal and poor SNR does not fare well. It is not promising. If the tower is line of sight and no obstructions an external antenna could help some but I am not sure if it would be sufficient to compensate for the weak signals. It looks to me as if the tower is just too far away for a solid signal. Tower location and distance to the tower is important.
Adam8
Network Novice
Hace 11 meses
The web interface (192.168.12.1) appears to have changed and I no longer shows the Cell signal metrics. Why??