Forum Discussion
Unable to use T-Mobile Home Internet with work VPN, any suggestions?
I've recently been told by work Information Services that I cannot use my work laptop with T-Mobile Home Internet. Here is there response to my support request.
T-Mobile's primary service called "5G Broadband" is not true wire-to-site broadband. While Cisco AnyConnect can work over 5G and other wireless connections, MTS does not recommend its usage unless absolutely necessary, and if you utilize a phone line such as Cisco Jabber call quality cannot be guaranteed.
The issue is that while 5G can provide broadband level speeds and bandwidth wireless solutions, such as 5G, have a higher tolerance for "packet loss." Packet loss is when individual pieces of data are dropped/lost during transmission. For most applications this is a minimal issue that 5G speeds may render unnoticeable, but a live connection, such as the AnyConnect VPN or Voice Over IP phone services, will experience connection degradation or be completely disconnected forcing you to reconnect.
This is not an issue MTS can mitigate. For this reason the only recommended Internet service types are fully wired based connections including DSL, Broadband, Cable, and Fiber Optic services.
Does anyone have a suggestion on a way to work around this issue? It does not need to be perfect, but being able to work from home is essential, and if I can't use TMHI to do that… it would be a deal-breaker for me.
Ketch22 wrote:
Gfiz247 wrote:
AJ1234 wrote:
My company uses Cisco AnyConnect VPN. I've been having all the same issues mentioned in this thread and gone down the IT rabbit hole trying to remedy this issue. Finally found a knowledgeable T-Mobile technician that explained if personal or work VPN or systems are operating on IPv4 then you need to go into your T-Mobile home internet app > select network > click "+" to add network > name network > create password > select 2.4 GHz band > select WPA/WPA2 > WPA "TKIP & AES" > then save the new network and connect. Worked out my VPN issues and my security cameras are working now.
THANK YOU!!! My company uses the same VPN and it worked perfectly until Monday, 1/22, probably the same change you experienced. I followed your guidance and it works perfectly. I'm back to the same full speed I had previously, maybe even faster, and now I have a second home network dedicated to work from home.
Trying this now, Makes sense and I can see this working. Similar to others that have posted about this, I have been on T-Mobile for 2 months and have not had an issue until a couple of days ago. I used this at our cabin and don't have traditional internet as an option. Previously I used a Verizon hot spot. That worked fine, but wanted to be able to use this to stream tv as well and there just isn't enough data with a hot spot. I won't be convinced otherwise, T-Mobile had to have changed something and doesn't like VPN's on their network.
Unfortunately, this worked for about an hour and back to losing connection.
We were sent one of the new gateways, model TMO-G4SE but had the same problem connecting to an AWS VPN endpoint. The general Internet works great. The diligent phone tech support rep Marlin helped me try the 2.4 Ghz wlan change with no effect. I tried adjusting the MTU on the laptop interface as low as it could go but it had no effect. But if I set the equivalent on the VPN client so that the max segment size was 1280, down from 1500 for Ethernet, I can now connect. It is not as stable as the 4G hotspot from a competitive carrier but it mostly functions with the occasional tunnel drop and has a higher throughput.
hjones wrote:
We were sent one of the new gateways, model TMO-G4SE but had the same problem connecting to an AWS VPN endpoint. The general Internet works great. The diligent phone tech support rep Marlin helped me try the 2.4 Ghz wlan change with no effect. I tried adjusting the MTU on the laptop interface as low as it could go but it had no effect. But if I set the equivalent on the VPN client so that the max segment size was 1280, down from 1500 for Ethernet, I can now connect. It is not as stable as the 4G hotspot from a competitive carrier but it mostly functions with the occasional tunnel drop and has a higher throughput.
Thank you for the post. Exact the same thing happen to me. would you please elaborate how to set equivalent on the VPN client so that the max segment size is 1280?
