Forum Discussion
t-monile home internet is barely providing basic data speeds sometimds.
My t-mobile internet, especially lately, has been the worst internet I have ever bought/dealt with. My wife with her iPhone 12 Pro gets medium 5g coverage most of the time at our house. Why does our ...
Log into the gateway (forget the app useless) open a web browser go to http://192.168.12.1/ primary and secondary signal info off the Overview first tab. Then Status tab and same primary and secondary info. You have to expand them with click the down arrow to see the data.
This is the data that shows your connection.
Another thought would be to buy a 5G or even 4G LTE modem (Netgear has a range of them, including battery-powered portable ones that are much smaller, more modern and offer better network performance than the generic gateway T-Mobile provides) and get a data-only SIM card. T-Mobile's prepaid arm offers 50 GB for $50/month, not a lot but adequate for someone who doesn't play online games, doesn't stream TV shows all day, and just has basic Internet needs. (There was apparently a limited-time 100 GB for $50/month promotion, and those who have it can keep that rate. Let's hope it comes back, or that prices fall and data caps rise with the market.)
If you go this route you are sure to get better speeds, not only due to the more capable hardware, but also because T-Mobile Home Internet has close to the lowest priority on the network.
For people who like to tinker (and since we, as users of a service as immature as T-Mobile Home Internet, have to spend so much time checking frequency bands and signal strength, moving the gateway, rebooting, calling support, etc., most of us are tinkerers by definition), I’d even recommend getting a 4G LTE (cheap) or 5G board from SixFab and using a Raspberry Pi. You’d end up with a very high-performance, secure, infinitely configurable cellular modem + WiFi router setup.
