TMobile Home internet

BouseBill wrote:

you are correct Tim LOL, I didn’t call them for the gateway movement, but the status of the cell tower.

My problem with working the unit outside is, being the Arizona desert the temps in the shade are over 100 degrees this time of year :) so outside is not an option.  Still working the situation on the inside a little every day.

It has been hot. That's for sure. If you get nighttime temps that are like a low of 85, the A/C is probably running 24 hours a day. Air conditioning units, I assume even the whole-house ones, can sometimes interfere with a wifi signal if you are anywhere near it. To cover all bases, you might try turning that off for a few minutes and do a speed test.

Another way to test and see if it is anything wifi related instead of cell related, you could try to connect the gateway to your computer using the included CAT 5e cable to the ethernet port. That bypasses the wifi and gives you a direct connection to the modem. My new laptop doesn't even have an ethernet port, because it's a netbook.

But your whole house and property might be in a semi-dead zone. That can happen even close to a tower.It's probably a good idea that you're trying it for a few more days though, because what if they turned down the power on your tower, or are doing some maintenance, and it just happened to coincide with you getting your equipment, and it'll be done on Monday.

OK, this morning at 5:45 a.m.  on my 4G phone  with 4 bars showing on the NOK 5G

1.   Ping 34ms  Jitter 7ms  Download  24  Mbps   Upload 40.2Mbpb 
2.   Ping 39ms  Jitter 8ms  Download  28 Mbps   Upload  37.1 Mbps
3.   Ping 36ms  Jitter 14ms Download 25.9 Mbps Upload  40 Mbps

On the laptop   ping  59    Download 19.37   Upload  37.11ing on the

I’ll try it again later this afternoon and we’ll what happens then :)

BouseBill wrote:

OK, this morning at 5:45 a.m.  on my 4G phone  with 4 bars showing on the NOK 5G

1.   Ping 34ms  Jitter 7ms  Download  24  Mbps   Upload 40.2Mbpb 
2.   Ping 39ms  Jitter 8ms  Download  28 Mbps   Upload  37.1 Mbps
3.   Ping 36ms  Jitter 14ms Download 25.9 Mbps Upload  40 Mbps

On the laptop   ping  59    Download 19.37   Upload  37.11

It's Monday. Maybe your calls about your poor daytime download speed made them put out a service ticket and they'll tweak or tune the equipment at the tower. They aren't going to do that on a weekend. And they might not do it at all if you're the only person in your area reporting an issue with very slow download speeds.

Your ping and jitter are both fine, quite good. That is not your problem. A person responded to a comment of mine telling me their ping was 800, and their connection is slow and not working right, not even loading a web page.. Well, that's a problem. Any ping over 150 is bad, but 800 is a disaster.

A reading you haven’t given me can be found in the GUI at 192.168.12.1 and clicking on “Overview” on the left and the dropdown arrow for Primary signal and Secondary signal, and writing down what the SNR is on both.

SNR is Signal to Noise ratio. My signal to noise ratio tends to be around 10db, which isn't very good. An SNR higher than 25db is desirable.

But since my SNR of 10db works fine for me, I suspect the real problems can happen when you have an SNR of more like 1db to 8db. The NOISE part of signal to noise is the erroneous background transmissions that are emitted from either other devices that are too far away for the signal to be intelligible, or by devices that are inadvertently creating interference on the same frequency.

So when your noise is too much, it interferes with the signal and it lowers your speed or gives you a bad connection.

SNR at 08:30 

Primary Signal  24dB

Secondary Signal 36db

BouseBill wrote:

SNR at 08:30 

Primary Signal  24dB

Secondary Signal 36db

Well, that is some great SNR! No problem there.

I read an article from PC Magazine four days ago, on the author's experience with T Mobile Home Internet. I will link it at the bottom. This part, however, made me think that if T mobile has done what they can do on their end, a new gateway could be worth trying.

From the article linked below:

I really struggled with my first month of T-Mobile service. Google and Yahoo web pages would stall out. Video calls kept being interrupted by latency spikes. Sometimes the network would drop out entirely for minutes at a time. When I went looking for more information online, I found muchos similar quejas from T-Mobile Home Internet customers on Reddit.

I spent a week talking to support techs as they made network-side adjustments that didn't make any difference. Then T-Mobile swapped out my modem and everything got better, so I'm comfortable blaming the hardware rather than T-Mobile's network.

https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/t-mobile-home-internet

Well, I’m totally confused now.  2:45 in the afternoon

SNR Primary = 23  Secondary = 33

Three speed tests:

1. Ping 83  Jitter 227  Download 1.85  Upload 31.8
2. Ping 139  Jitter 208  Download .81  Upload 35.9
3. Ping 86  Jitter 487  Download .88  Upload 6.97

The NOK 5G is in the same location as this morning.

Still waiting for Tech support to call.

Will be interesting to see the results tomorrow morning.  The article in PC mag gives some hope...but we'll see.

BouseBill wrote:

Well, I’m totally confused now.  2:45 in the afternoon

SNR Primary = 23  Secondary = 33

Three speed tests:

1. Ping 83  Jitter 227  Download 1.85  Upload 31.8
2. Ping 139  Jitter 208  Download .81  Upload 35.9
3. Ping 86  Jitter 487  Download .88  Upload 6.97

The NOK 5G is in the same location as this morning.

Still waiting for Tech support to call.

Will be interesting to see the results tomorrow morning.  The article in PC mag gives some hope...but we'll see.

It’s the same as your problem from Day 1 -- download speed way too low during the daytime.

T mobile basically says that the for the areas that are eligible for their home internet service, they've been tested at providing at least 25Mbps download. So you're getting less than 1/25th that speed if your download is less than 1.

Here’s the statement on speed from their website:

We anticipate some T-Mobile Home Internet customers will see average download speeds in excess of 100 Mbps, and all eligible households will see average download speeds of 25 Mbps or more. Las velocidades pueden variar según la ubicación, la fuerza de la señal y la disponibilidad, la hora del día y otros factores,

Even considering your "average" speed, it is less than 25. And your speed shouldn't be falling to below 10 at any time of day, no matter the traffic.

When I read back through some older posts on this board, people with the speed problem being very low, under 20, there aren't a lot of happy endings. But there aren't a ton of posts about it either. As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, for one person 70 was too slow for a download speed. For rural users though, the standard of what we're used to is much lower.

This is where being an early bird user with problems isn't good. There aren't enough people participating on the board who solve their problem with the tower being tuned, getting a gateway replacement, putting their gateway up in the attic, or whatever. Once there are a couple million users, maybe patterns will emerge of what to do when. And as I've mentioned, as 5G phone use becomes more common, at least people with 5G phones will be able to test and know when it is a problem with the gateway. That is their phone will have good speed and work fine, but the gateway, when connected to the same tower, has a slower speed or keeps disconnecting on them.

Bill I would also try moving the device to different locations to see If that works. Try to make sure that there is no obstacles in the way like microwave or furniture and try to put the device like near a window. Also some people said that the equipment needs to be much better as they think that could be the problem.

Hi Fred, I’ve moved it all over the house and the present location is the best it’s going to get.

At 5:00 a.m. this morning the ping and jitter were both very low and down and up speeds were

25 Mbps +.  I would be happy with those speeds if they were consistent.  But if you've read my previous posts…….by the afternoon things go to hell in a handbasket :(

I’ll wait to speak with tech support when and if they call, but if things don’t improve,then it’s going back,can’t see paying for something that does not work.

This is a new technology so it has a new challenge. I got my device week before and I was getting just 25-30mbps. I started digging into it and found that it is connecting B2 on primary but n71 on secondary. I used cellmapper.net and found that I am actually on intersection of two towers, one with n71 and second with n41 and noticed that it is switching two towers time by time and when it is connected to n41 , then I get 120 - 130 mbps download speed which is really good.

I tried to position gateway. At the same spot , if I place , then I get only n71 only but if I rotate 180 degree at the same spot, then I get n71 and n41 and it stays on n41 but once a while it switch back to n71 and then I have to reboot the device (without changing position) to switch back to n41. I wish it stays on n41 forever. 

so looks like if you are on n41, then will get good speed. n71 will give low speed but still within t-mobile promise of average speed.

Also advice to new users that right after first startup , you may get very low speed (like I had 14mbps) and that is because after first startup, it takes ~2 hours (as per tech support) to fully provision to get higher speed.