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Re: 5G home internet keeps dropping
iTinkeralot wrote: HWhat are the actual Bands and RSRP, RSRQ and SNR reports from the web UI? It is clear when it has the 5G NR standing you get a solid down but when the signal does down are you seeing the PCI for the 4G LTE and 5G NR cells changing? That sounds very frustrating. If the behavior stays wonky after the router swap I would seriously question if there has been work going on on the tower and ask if they have had other complaints about the operation in the area. That close to the tower it should be good. So I just lost the b71 tower and I didn't have a drop thanks to my primary tower. I keep leaning towards it somehow being a heating issue. Either way I'm probably gonna ask for another device to swap out with and see how that goes. I'm at a loss of what it could be at this point. Thanks for your help, I'll let you know when/if I decide to get that external antenna you showed me via DM.Re: 5G home internet keeps dropping
iTinkeralot wrote: What are the actual Bands and RSRP, RSRQ and SNR reports from the web UI? It is clear when it has the 5G NR standing you get a solid down but when the signal does down are you seeing the PCI for the 4G LTE and 5G NR cells changing? That sounds very frustrating. If the behavior stays wonky after the router swap I would seriously question if there has been work going on on the tower and ask if they have had other complaints about the operation in the area. That close to the tower it should be good. For the primary, the PCI is ALWAYS 308, that's the B66 tower. It never changes, the primary tower is by far the most consistent connection I have had. I can't even recall a time it said I had no connection other than when I took the sim card out to try and cool it down. If I could even just disable the secondary tower I probably wouldn't have drops at all, but that would sacrifice speed from n71. It's the secondary one that's always flakey. As we have established, the cells on the second one occasionally change between the two. There's no rhyme or rhythm between when it's on one or the other. In terms of the RSRP, RSRQ and SNR, the primary tower is stable unless it's raining. Even then I don't actually lose connection. The secondary one shows quite a bit of noise. RSRQ is usually -14, and the RSRP ranges between -110 to -119, or dropping all together. SNR is usually 0, sometimes -2. Sometimes 1.Re: 5G home internet keeps dropping
iTinkeralot wrote: I have seen with my router when the secondary signal drops there will be a disruption for 2-3 minutes. The router does not handle the transition from 4G LTE to 5G NR well. That is my take. The change between 184 and 261 on the tower. Interesting. Notice the reported cell direction N 16 degrees and N 0 degrees. You need to look at your position in relation to that tower. Cell mapper reports three cells on that tower. The red dot suggest unverified tower. I have looked to try to find the tower on Google Earth via sat images but it is transparent or no image exist with it included. Probably more uploaded data would help solidify the GPS info on that tower. It might be helpful to have a call with T-Mobile support and just bring that up. There could be work being done on the tower or there might be some issue with the equipment. If they dont get calls on a given tower I would guess they take it to be good to go. My trashcan has never reconnected to the secondary tower on it's own after I lose connection. I have waited a 5 minute period and I had never gotten reconnected without rebooting. I'll give it 10 minutes on the next drop to see if it eventually reconnects on its own. I'm the only one in my area that seems to be driving off of the main road. I'll probably drive around where there's no data on the roads around town and see if I can help get a better sense of that unverified tower. Again, my guess is that the location is wrong, and that there's just one big tower in town. I'll keep an eye out though. Also, the only window I have facing S. that direction is in our bathroom, which wouldn't be a good place considering the moisture and the general awkwardness. I have tried placingit next to the wall facing South but I didn't have a stable connection to the second tower nearly at all, and much less of a connection to the B66. That's where I'm really thinking a external antenna would be a lifesaver to a stable connection to the 5GNR.Re: 5G home internet keeps dropping
iTinkeralot wrote: OK so that is helpful! I can see the 5G NR n71 is delivered from the tower on the other side of town. That is where your router links to for the secondary channel. See the screen shots attached. Both the 5G NR and 4G LTE towers are there. Close to one another but not from the same tower. Correct. And my secondary connection keep swapping between two cells on the 5GNR tower, and those cells are 261 and 184. I'm hoping that an external antenna can penetrate through the thickness of the trees. The way I am seeing it is, if my trashcan can get a n71 signal on its own, then an antenna should be able to help. Funnily enough, as I was writing this message, the internet dropped. Uptime from the last drop: 5h, 7m, 30s Temperature at the top of the grill: 87F Noticeable difference: Secondary connection wasn't connected, however primary was. I don't understand why there's this inability to keep the internet going even though the primary tower connection still exists. Makes me wonder if there's a handoff issue when the secondary tower drops off while the primary tower never disconnects? A reboot from the gateway panel fixes it, like usual. Also, every time I reboot it has no issues connecting to the secondary tower. Another thing I find odd. Not long before this, my wife started a large download for a 15GB game update for Black Desert Online. Just wanted to mention it incase it oddly has something to do with a massive influx of packets or if a massive load of data being transferred is somehow affecting it. So here's round 2 of images:Re: 5G home internet keeps dropping
iTinkeralot wrote: With the trees an external MIMO panel antenna might help out quite a bit. If you can get the n71 stronger sure that would make it more satisfying. Your router records B66 and n71 so the cell info in the second image with site 3154402 reports NB B71 but does not provide the PCI for 100% verification. I am not convinced that is quite the same. The n71 5G NR is an extension of the 600 MHz bands to enhance the 4G LTE by swapping out part of the banding to leverage the 5G. It depends upon the operation. If they are swapping 10 MHz of 4G for 30 MHz of 5G on n71 then that is where you would get a significant boost. To be 100% you really have to know the PCI of each band and identify the tower that has that PCI, physical cell ID. With the web version on my client at home using cellmapper.net I was able to get the low down on both the 4G and the 5G signals. The phone may not report or connect to the same towers as the router. It can be somewhat helpful but the PCI is important to have. Once you are 100% on the tower delivery to the router then you can really dial it in. An external antenna might help considerably but would have to be located properly to really make it rock and roll. So that last Cellmapper picture from my phone that occasionally shows the red dot I was able to pull up on the Cellmapper website. When you click on the red dot, one of the PCI cells matches the PCI for my secondary connection on my trashcan (n71). Link Here But with the first picture, the green dot closest to me does not show the same PCI for any of the cells for my secondary connection. Link Here So I have one of two guesses. Either the first link is on the tower to the second link and just inappropriately placed. Or there's a tower I'm missing when I drive by, perhaps on top of a building or something. Seeing as though I live in the middle of nowhere in a rural farming area, I'm thankful to get what I currently can. The only wired option for me is Windstream which at most I can get is 10 down and 1 up. I noticed on the Cellmapper app there's an option to take pictures for the cell towers, I might try doing that because I have seen under the CellMapper reddit that a lot of people like to try and identify who and what is on each tower. Anyways, I'm going to keep an eye out for the next time internet drops and I'll update as I get more information. Thanks for your help Tinker, hopefully the techs are reading this and are able to get some kind of idea on what might be going on.Re: 5G home internet keeps dropping
iTinkeralot wrote: Do yourself a favor and use www.cellmapper.netto learn where the T-Mobile towers are. Record the information about the ones close to or around you with attention to the PCI (physical cell ID). If you go into the router with the web UI at 192.168.12.1 you will see the primary and secondary channels/signals on the overview page. That will show you the connections and RSRP/RSRQ/SNR values to know the signal strength, signal quality, and signal to noise ratio. Then go to the status page and record the band, and PCI information from the primary and secondary signal reporting. If you proceed to the "statistics" page you can select cellular and record the statistics there. See if there are packet errors or packet drops. If you have problems using cellmapper.net open a call with T-Mobile support and ask them point blank where is the tower my router is serviced by. They have the PCI information and can tell you the coordinates of the tower. You can use Google Earth and a drive about to confirm what you know and get a good ideal how to improve matters. Use your phone to locate the tower. If you use an iPhone put it into field test mode and read the PCI value it knows. Chances are both may use the same tower. It is not a given but a good datapoint. With the PCI information for the primary and secondary channels and the bands used you can use the information from cellmapper.net to determine where the tower is that sends to you. With this and some testing you may be able to better locate your router. Watch out for metal screens or buildings in the path to the tower. If a window has a screen that is metal either put the router above the screen or remove the screen from the window to prevent shielding of the signal. Don't just rely upon the bars on the top of the router. They are actually rather generic as vendors don't have a MUST directive for how to deal with those but a recommended use. One feature of the LED display on the top of the router is the alarms. If the router does have temperature issues it will or should report an over temp alarm. The only way I have seen to get the alarm is to use the LED display on top of the router. Forget the mobile application it is about as useful as well blah…It is very unreliable and not much value. If you only have say the 5G signal dropping from time to time it could well be T-Mobile engineers are working on the equipment on the tower in your area and that is the cause not the router itself. I highly suggest to not just accept mediocre service but talk with T-Mobile support engineers, try the router in different locations, get the information about the tower location and be patient. Record your findings from trying new locations and then dial it in. If you do the same thing, expect the same results. If I can help you understand what you see and help you dial it in I am happy to do so. Oh I have moved my trashcan around the entire property (using an extension cord) and then later on found out that my primary connection is to a tower farther from me, but nearly a direct line of sight (not quite though). The window I currently have it in is the best connection spot I could find after tirelessly moving the trashcan around inside and out. The band to the primary connection is ONLY B66 (The tower offers no others AFAIK), whereas the secondary connection (Behind a ton of pine trees) is n71 (5G). For science I don't mind doxxing myself a bit here. As I'm writing this reply, here's my current stats from the gateway: And here is my location in reference to the cell towers: Sometimes, however, I see this on my phone but I have driven to this point and I believe it's not appropriately placed or was just estimated as a location: My next fun project was to try and buy an external antenna and play around with trying my best to increase my signal to the n71 connection. That will have to wait a bit, though. As long as I'm connected to both, I can reach download speeds between 60-110. When I'm connected to the B66 tower only, it averages a download of 30-40down. I don't have any errors on any of the tabs under statistics. I have previously, but not as of my latest reset.Re: 5G home internet keeps dropping
You can add me to this list as well. I was having drops nearly every 2-3 hours2 days ago. That's when I discovered this forum and learned that my problem wasn't unique. So far what I've done is taken the outside cover of the trashcan off (Similar to the YT videos of people adding an external antenna but not reassembling it), and placed a fan under it (Fan is inappropriately sized) and that had given me a 1D,12HR and 58MIN uptime. After that time,all devices (Two wired and one wireless) said there was no internet connection from the trashcan (but were still technically connected to the trashcan itself). Looking at the gateway panel,it had showed that I had 3 bars connected to my cell tower at the time of the disconnection with a -96 dBm value. I measured the temperature at the top grill at the time of disconnection and I found that it was 88F. The trashcan is placed near a window with a light window curtain, at the time of disconnection it was sunny. Temporary setup attempting to cool the trashcan down I haven't had issues in terms of staying connected to at least one cell tower at all times. However, I do occasionally have issues with the trashcan stayingconnected to two towers at once, but I have learned that isn't the issue that's causing the drops (AFAIK) and have attributed that to living in the woods. On a sidenote: I had also removed the battery from the device in an attempt to see if that was causing some type of internal voltage issue as I saw someone somewhere mention that everytime the battery hit 100%, they'd have a dropped connection.
