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T-Mobile Launches Test Drive Program for Home Internet

I am very mixed on T-Mobile home internet. it solved my lack of speed problem with DSL followed by limited cable speeds (with exhorbident costs). However, it randomly drops out. No reason for it, I can't reproduce the issue and it never happens consistently.
I've spent hours on the phone with T-mob trying to get answers but they just don't have any. Honestly, I think its a hardware issue at the tower closest to my house. My theory is that something is going on with the 5G signal and when it drops down to LTE, the modem freaks out and just drops the signal. The only way to fix it is to reset the modem (turn it off, turn it on). I probably have to do this at least one time per day, sometimes multiple times per day.
I've given up trying to fix it with Tmob. I just deal with it now as there are no good alternatives that are affordable.
 
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Mojohanna32 said:
I am very mixed on T-Mobile home internet. it solved my lack of speed problem with DSL followed by limited cable speeds (with exhorbident costs). However, it randomly drops out. No reason for it, I can't reproduce the issue and it never happens consistently.
I've spent hours on the phone with T-mob trying to get answers but they just don't have any. Honestly, I think its a hardware issue at the tower closest to my house. My theory is that something is going on with the 5G signal and when it drops down to LTE, the modem freaks out and just drops the signal. The only way to fix it is to reset the modem (turn it off, turn it on). I probably have to do this at least one time per day, sometimes multiple times per day.
I've given up trying to fix it with Tmob. I just deal with it now as there are no good alternatives that are affordable.
Click to expand...
In your case it can be because of the type of wavelength used for 5G. Remember, 5G is using higher frequency wavelengths for data transfers. Those higher frequencies mean the signal can easily be blocked by whatever comes between the tower and a receiver. Blocking means dropped connection, slowed down speeds and/or even higher latencies.

That's why 3G and 2G were much more stable, cause they used the tried and known 800, 850 and/or 900 MHz frequencies. Now you get stuff that's sub 5GHz or even high 2GHz, quite weak.
 
PC_tech said:
That doesn’t make any sense, why would Hulu need a residential connection when it’s able to be streamed from mobile devices….
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As someone else pointed out, it was Hulu Live or whatever they have that allows you to get local stations. I don't use Hulu myself, but it and the local stations are important to my girlfriend. In any case, we called T-Mobile and they acknowledged the problem and said they'd cancel the trial and had her sent the equipment back.
 
smaffei said:
It works great until you try and use it for gaming. The Ping is usually too high and forget it if you have a Nintendo Switch (Nintendo's networking code is pretty much IPV6 incompatible).

If you want to use 5G home internet for general internet usage / video streaming, it's a great deal.
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Also CGNAT is forced on these connections. Your router doesn't have a real, public IP address. This can break gaming in other ways, and also keeps you from running your own services on your network that are available from outside.

IPv6 might work, but IPv6 is not universal yet and until it is, home networks need to have a public IPv4 address to not have hobbled access.
 
I have had the T-Mobile Nokia box for my internet for the last three months. In my very rural area the only other options are DSL or sattilite service. Both are horrible. So far it has been super great. I have not had to reset my router yet. Speeds are amazing for someone use to 1.7Mbps. Now with two bars of service I get constitently 143Mbp up/16Mbps down at peak times. At night it is even faster. Ping will be around 53 and since I do not game ping is not an issue. I have been thrilled that T-Mobile has made such an effort to service the rural areas. AT&T offers no cell service at my location. Verizon has very low cell signal strength in my area no idea if they offer home internet.
 
SoftMicro said:
BE WARNED IF YOU WANT TO USE THIS SERVICE WITH A VPN: I was given the opportunity to try T-Mobile home internet over a year ago as a beta participant. The speed was okay and nothing special. However, whenever I used it for work it slowed down to a crawl equivalent to dial-up speeds. No joke! It turned out using my work-required Cisco VPN for secure login interfered with the with this service. I contacted T-Mobile to see if they could help and they pointed the finger at my work VPN, but when I asked work to help they pointed the finger right back to T-Mobile. It was a frustrating two weeks. Not being a network engineer and not wanting to be one, I returned their hardware and canceled the service. Maybe they've resolved the issues but if T-Mobile is calling this a "Test Drive" then I don't think they've fixed it.
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This is probably due to the CGNAT forced on this type of connection. VPNs are a lot less reliable going through CGNAT.

The long term solution is IPv6, but most employers don't support IPv6 for VPN endpoints. Home internet connections still need real IPv4 addresses for now to avoid problems, especially if you work from home.
 
anshuvorty said:
At 60/month (just $10 more), I am getting 500-1000 Mbps down from ATT Fiber with close to 5ms latency.

TMo Home Internet just can't compete.
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Similar for us with Century Link fiber. It's hard to compete with fiber as long as they offer that option.
 
MacBH928 said:
Why is port forwarding important?
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Port forwarding is used so that you can access services running inside your network from outside.

For example, say you have a linux box that you want to be able to log into from outside. You would forward, say, port 222 to 22 on the Linux box. Then you can SSH into your Linux box from anywhere.

Same deal with running a web server or other type of service so you can access things on your home network. I had a temperature probe recently that I could hit from outside to see a graph of the temperature in that room. I also have a Zoneminder security camera server that I access with port forwarding too.

As soon as a provider uses CGNAT you lose the ability to do a lot of this stuff, unless you can use IPv6 which isn't everywhere yet.
 
I've had T-Mobile Home Internet for about 5 months now. I'm not a gamer so I don't care about ping times but I do get 500-600 Mbps down and about 100 Mbps up. This is about twice as fast as my previous XFinity cable modem and XFinity was charging me over $100/month where T-Mobile is $50.

I did just start a new job so I'll have to test the VPN for when work from home. It would suck if I had to go back to XFinity for a VPN connection.
 
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I would definitely go for this, rather than switch from spectrum to AT&T (I talked to the AT&T fiber guy who was replacing some fiber next door. He says the squirrels really love to chew on it). The thing is, though, I looked at a map of cell Towers in the neighborhood, and the 5G ones don’t really cover my residence, which is down in a little valley. So, it would just be a 4G cellular Internet. Nice for back up, but otherwise just another PITA. Pity!??
 
PC_tech said:
That doesn’t make any sense, why would Hulu need a residential connection when it’s able to be streamed from mobile devices….
Click to expand...
He is actually correct. The issues with certain Hulu service (same for YouTubeTV) is that they need to you know approximate physical location to air local channels. It’s rights issues I believe. So when Hulu live can’t figure out where you are at it won’t work.

This is why for example if say you sign up for YouTube tv say in NY and you take a long trip to LA it will continue to work for a while but eventually it will ask you to go back to your “home” location and run the app to “refresh”. This also prevent people from sharing such kind of service.
 
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zorinlynx said:
This is probably due to the CGNAT forced on this type of connection. VPNs are a lot less reliable going through CGNAT.

The long term solution is IPv6, but most employers don't support IPv6 for VPN endpoints. Home internet connections still need real IPv4 addresses for now to avoid problems, especially if you work from home.
Click to expand...

k1121j said:
So what’s the data cap?
Click to expand...
none as far as I know.
 
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smaffei said:
It works great until you try and use it for gaming. The Ping is usually too high and forget it if you have a Nintendo Switch (Nintendo's networking code is pretty much IPV6 incompatible).

If you want to use 5G home internet for general internet usage / video streaming, it's a great deal.
Click to expand...
Bro I game all the time on it and let me tell you IPV6 even in WoW is compatible! I get between on average between 30-90 ping, many times at 50 with cable I had 30s often sometimes higher! I have seen it go past 100 but honestly never experienced issue in game in any game! I have gamed fine! I think the numerical difference is beyond human perception or a minor inconvenience, well worth the cost!
 
SoftMicro said:
BE WARNED IF YOU WANT TO USE THIS SERVICE WITH A VPN: I was given the opportunity to try T-Mobile home internet over a year ago as a beta participant. The speed was okay and nothing special. However, whenever I used it for work it slowed down to a crawl equivalent to dial-up speeds. No joke! It turned out using my work-required Cisco VPN for secure login interfered with the with this service. I contacted T-Mobile to see if they could help and they pointed the finger at my work VPN, but when I asked work to help they pointed the finger right back to T-Mobile. It was a frustrating two weeks. Not being a network engineer and not wanting to be one, I returned their hardware and canceled the service. Maybe they've resolved the issues but if T-Mobile is calling this a "Test Drive" then I don't think they've fixed it.
Click to expand...
I have been using it for a year now and I also use CiscoVPN for work and it has been rock solid. Maybe it is something they fixed with the new device (I have the one that looks like a grey cylinder), where you testing the 5G or 4G version of the service?
 
stephenschimpf said:
My girlfriend tried it last year when she had bandwidth trouble with her HOA-provided internet service. It seemed like it would be a great solution for her. We set it up and connected all her devices, but when we got to her television, Hulu refused to use her new internet because it requires a residential connection at her home, and Hulu doesn't recognize the T-Mobile internet service as such. So, the device quickly went back into the box and was shipped back.
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I have been using it for a year and have no issue using Hulu (or are you talking about HuluTV?), in any case, that sounds like a Hulu issue not a TMobile issue.
 
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Mojohanna32 said:
I am very mixed on T-Mobile home internet. it solved my lack of speed problem with DSL followed by limited cable speeds (with exhorbident costs). However, it randomly drops out. No reason for it, I can't reproduce the issue and it never happens consistently.
I've spent hours on the phone with T-mob trying to get answers but they just don't have any. Honestly, I think its a hardware issue at the tower closest to my house. My theory is that something is going on with the 5G signal and when it drops down to LTE, the modem freaks out and just drops the signal. The only way to fix it is to reset the modem (turn it off, turn it on). I probably have to do this at least one time per day, sometimes multiple times per day.
I've given up trying to fix it with Tmob. I just deal with it now as there are no good alternatives that are affordable.
Click to expand...
I had the exact same thing happen to me at first, the first few months the connection would suddenly stop completely and had to restart the modem to get things going again (happened a few times a week). Then at some point it stopped happening and haven't had any issues in half a year (knock on wood).
 
I used it for 2 weeks about a month ago and I had very good luck with the service, 600 Mbps down / 50 Mbps up. Worked great for streaming services and not too bad for gaming. I had to send it back though because you can't open up any incoming ports for things like Home Automation or hosting gaming servers, and you can't change anything in their router. It's basically just a glorified hotspot, so I switched back to Spectrum. If you use your internet for surfing the web, streaming TV and casual gaming, then it's perfect, as long as you have good strong T-Mobile 5G signals.
 
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Has anyone tried taking it with them when they travel? I often work from the beach and would love to bring the router from home when I go to the beach.
 
scuac said:
I have been using it for a year and have no issue using Hulu (or are you talking about HuluTV?), in any case, that sounds like a Hulu issue not a TMobile issue.
Click to expand...

I don't know which version of Hulu she has. Yes, it's a Hulu issue, but it's the reason why she couldn't use the T-Mobile service.
 
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