Forum Discussion
Two weeks with our new Sagemcom Fast 5688W Gateway.
We started our Home Internet service with the Nokia round trash can (rightfully named). I had two of those. Both responded the same way. The Nokia gateway was fast but would lose its connection about once a day on average. Then, being ever so hopeful, we switched to the Arc Gateway. It was much better not losing its connection, but it was slow, and all of our streaming TVs buffered all of the time. I had that one replaced with another Arc, same problems. Two weeks ago I went to the local T-Mobile store and switch out my Arc square trashcan for the NEW Sagemcom gateway. Praying this was FINALLY the solution. Sadly, it is not. I had high hopes. It is fast like the Nokia, but it also loses its connection often. On the plus side, it eventually reconnects by itself most of the time. The other thing about the 5G Home Internet that drives me crazy is it seems that T-Mobile is constantly messing around with the signal from the tower nearest me. I'm not EVER going back to cable, but really for this Home Internet to be viable it needs to be reliable.
Thanks for the info, but that is all above my pay grade! I can see the "metrics" in the app, but the info there is meaningless to me. I'm a consumer. I want to plug it in, and then I want it to work. I don't want to have to troubleshoot it constantly to make it work. And if that is necessary, then T-Mobile will not be successful with the Home Internet service since most users will be consumers like me.
OK then. I hope the signals do get more stable. Just in case you are curious as to what those numbers translates to here is a "free" decoder ring. 😎 The bars on the gateway are pretty much nothing but a general average reference.
I translate the bars as:
1 - this stinks, Master I am not so sure how well this plan was thought out
2 - hum… needs work, hope this is not as Good As It Gets
3 - Nice, not bad lets see if I can tinker a little for another
4 - Now we are getting someplace, this has promise
5 - Cool, I can probably kick back and Be Happy
Maybe someone reading the post will find it useful. After taking retirement my pay grade took a big hit.
So, currently you have been through 2 - Nokias, 2 - Arcadyans and now are on a Sagemcon gateway?
Did you record the cellular metrics the gateways reported over time and did the cellular signal metrics ever change much from one gateway to another? If you did record the metrics it might be good to compare those just to see how much or if things changed. It sort of reflects how some locations are a bit more problematic than others for cellular signal reception. You should look at the cellular metrics and record what is reported when conditions are good and when things taper off. It will be harder to do now using the mobile application but still the cellular metrics are there minus the identification of the cell ID.
When you see a "disconnect" are both the primary and secondary signals down or only one? If both are still up and the metrics have not changed it might be a DNS issue. I saw the clients on my network report no internet available only to find it was a DNS issue and I could set the client's DNS to Google DNS or Quad9 and keep right on without a reboot. I still have the original Nokia I was provided back in January of 2021. Pretty much the bulk of, if not all of the issues with disconnects here, had nothing to do with the gateway other than an occasional firmware upgrade. The three major periods since the start were related to tower equipment issues which required maintenance. The third was when the n71 signal disappeared and low and behold the n41 surfaced. Then about a week later a blip and yes n41 is here and n71 is not to be seen. Still stable and rocking faster than before. Signal strength is not as high as with the n71 signal but signal quality improved and the noise is less in relation to the signal so performance is good to excellent. I know people have seen gateway issues with each flavor of the month but tower/cell related issues seem to be the prominent source of aggravation when it comes to drops. From watching the community conversations and my experience that is just my take.
So what that sounds like to me is that when the gateway is not responding it may not be updating its DNS information. If the client i.e. laptop/pc has the DNS configured NOT directed to the gateway IP address then it should not suffer issues with DNS resolution. When I have seen my gateway with both cellular signals and client's reporting "no internet connectivity" though they are connected to the wireless network via the gateway my response is/was to hard set the DNS server information for the network interface connection on the client. This commonly resolves the problem. The DNS is commonly changed on the client's network interface as an advanced IP address configuration. I remove the GW address and add two different DNS servers. 8.8.8.8 - 8.8.4.4 - 9.9.9.9 or Cloud Flare 1.1.1.1 in place of the 192.168.12.1 gateway address. IF the problem is due to DNS failure from the gateway this will resolve the problem.
Just in case you have a Windows 10 PC/Laptop and have not set the DNS static:
If you have a Windows 10 client and get to the Wireless Status dialog box then at the bottom select Propiedades then you will see the dialog box open that shows “Connect Using" and it should have the wireless adapter in the window. Below there is a set of various parameters in a listing and the title is, "The connection uses the following items.” From that listing you select, “Internet Control Protocol IPv4 (TCP/IPv4) y luego selecciona Propiedades. Of course this is a diaglog box which should have a radio button with a dark dot in the middle of Obtain IP address automatically. Below is the Obtain DNS options and then the selection of the radio for Use the following DNS server addresses and enter the DNS addresses. In effect a primary and a backup DNS server IP address. Back out after selecting OK after changes.
I went through the “Control Panel” vs the newer Window boxes but the end result is the same.
Gracias.
iTinkeralot wrote:
So, currently you have been through 2 - Nokias, 2 - Arcadyans and now are on a Sagemcon gateway?
Did you record the cellular metrics the gateways reported over time and did the cellular signal metrics ever change much from one gateway to another? If you did record the metrics it might be good to compare those just to see how much or if things changed. It sort of reflects how some locations are a bit more problematic than others for cellular signal reception. You should look at the cellular metrics and record what is reported when conditions are good and when things taper off. It will be harder to do now using the mobile application but still the cellular metrics are there minus the identification of the cell ID.
When you see a "disconnect" are both the primary and secondary signals down or only one? If both are still up and the metrics have not changed it might be a DNS issue. I saw the clients on my network report no internet available only to find it was a DNS issue and I could set the client's DNS to Google DNS or Quad9 and keep right on without a reboot. I still have the original Nokia I was provided back in January of 2021. Pretty much the bulk of, if not all of the issues with disconnects here, had nothing to do with the gateway other than an occasional firmware upgrade. The three major periods since the start were related to tower equipment issues which required maintenance. The third was when the n71 signal disappeared and low and behold the n41 surfaced. Then about a week later a blip and yes n41 is here and n71 is not to be seen. Still stable and rocking faster than before. Signal strength is not as high as with the n71 signal but signal quality improved and the noise is less in relation to the signal so performance is good to excellent. I know people have seen gateway issues with each flavor of the month but tower/cell related issues seem to be the prominent source of aggravation when it comes to drops. From watching the community conversations and my experience that is just my take.
@iTinkeralot - How did you set the client's DNS to google (8.8.8.8)? Is it on the computer? FYI I have the Sagemcom gateway. Better than Arc from a reliability standpoint - I mean runs longer without reboots. Speeds has never an issue for me with both Arc and Sagemcom (maybe because I can literally see the TMo cell tower from the window where I have placed the gateway). On an average I get about 460-500 mbps down and about 40-60 mbps Up - gateway cell metrics report n41 (5g) and b2 (LTE) - Arc used b66 (LTE). However, I end up rebooting the gateway once in 3 days. I noticed most of the time gateway kinda goes into sleep mode in the night when there is no internet activity - In the morning there is no interner but the app reports no issue! Weird. So what I have done is on my laptop I run a continuous ping to 8.8.8.8 - just to keep the internet activity alive in the night as well as. Not sure if that is helping - but so far the gateway has gone beyond 3 days. Any thoughts?
Gracias @iTinkeralot for the additional information. I use Windows 11and I was able to change the DNS in the settings.
