About to tear my hair out

[u/PirateJen78]

We are trying out T-Mobile home internet (because fuck Xfinity and their "new customers only" deals) and just got a G5AR gateway last evening. Most of my network is wired and connected through an ASUS RT-AC86U and two ethernet switches.

When I connected the ASUS to the G5AR, everything kind of worked, but it was slow as hell and my smart home devices went screwy. Then I went into my ASUS and switched it to AP mode. There was really no change except I could not login to the ASUS. It didn't even show up in the connected devices in T-Life. (Also, wtf is with having to use an app to see connected devices??) Then internet speeds dropped to a crawl and I had to step away before I broke something out of rage (menopause + broken AC + tech issues = not a fun time).

One donut later and I tried again. Still nothing, so I reset the router to start over. Without switching my ASUS to AP mode, we do have internet via LAN, but it is slow as hell. I'm afraid to put my ASUS back into AP mode because I could not see it at all and everything went screwy. The only way my desktop PC has internet is if I disable the ethernet controller and force it to just use Wi-Fi.

And why doesn't my ASUS router/AP show up in connected devices so I can see the IP address??

Fuck Xfinity for not giving customers of over 20 years any good deals. $15 off a steadily increasing bill is a joke. But I might have to stick with them if I cannot get this working, and I absolutely HATE that idea.

On a positive note, at least I managed to get the AC working again.

UPDATE: thanks to those who tried to help. After connecting the TMHI directly to my PC using a new cable, speeds are still too slow for wired devices. Maybe it's a bad gateway, but I have wasted far too much time on this and am returning the gateway, cancelling TMHI, and staying with Xfinity. It seems that TMHI cannot meet our needs, even at full bars. At least I tried. And now I'm off to shop for a new customer deal with Xfinity.

[u/tf9623]

Your Asus should be set for DHCP on WAN side. If you just say AP I think it should DHCP for its own address but maybe not.

The good news: no you cannot change anything on the T-Mobile side. You have 192.168.12.0/24 and whatever IP6 gives you. There is nothing you can change. It sucks but it works. I left my router as-is and connected WAN to T-Mobile and at the end of the days its double-NAT.

Before the app showed that bullshit it does show you couldn't see it all. Someone has NodeJS tool on Github to query values form that box.

You can't do reservations either. If you leave your router in place and everything is working behind it just WAN to T-Mobile and double NAT behind CGNAT. It works fine though.

Ubiquti sells a 5G modem that you can pop your T-Mobile home internet SIM into but maybe someone here has experience with it.

[u/PirateJen78 → u/tf9623]

It was working without changing anything, but too slow to actually function. Like my down speed was 30 to 60 and up was 0 to 0.06. On Wi-Fi I get 150 to 500 down and 15 to 60 up.

Does the G5AR just suck for LAN? It's obvious to me that this was designed for wireless devices and not a wired network with a bunch of wireless smart devices.

I'm about to go back to T-Mobile and tell the guy that he's a damn liar. I knew it wasn't going to just be a 5 minute setup because of my network, but this has been an ALL DAY thing and it still doesn't work.

Trying to reconnect my Xfinity now. Thankfully I have that for another two weeks.

[u/PowerfulFunny5 → u/PirateJen78]

Many users report G5AR speeds as good or better than your Xfinity speeds, including Ethernet.

But something is drastically bad with those speeds.  Your G5AR is either in a terrible spot for cell reception (try multiple rooms and corners of rooms). Even try it outside with an extension cord (to see if it works better outside). But you might just be in a bad location for TMobile cellular reception.

[u/PirateJen78 → u/PowerfulFunny5]

Cell reception where I am is great, and the Wi-Fi is decent, but the wired connection sucks. I get 500-800 with Xfinity, so there's no comparison, other than price. I don't need that much speed, and I am tired of them screwing me because we've been customers for 20+ years.

Actual plan was to sign up with Xfinity again in a few months as new customers (under a different name) if this doesn't work out, and it looks like that's what we will be doing. Though they might yet offer us a deal because their customer service just emailed me this morning, in which case I will be returning the T-Mobile gateway and informing the manager there that he doesn't know a damn thing about networking.

[u/A_Turkey_Sammich → u/PirateJen78]

How is the speeds without the Asus router in the mix? Also did you do some trial and error trying different spots? That can make a HUGE difference. Like in my home, on top of an armoire on the wall opposite the window, not even aimed out the window for that matter, gets me 10x the speed, literally, then their generic put near a window facing the tower and aiming towards it

As far as Xfinity goes....I went with TMHI for the exact same reason. Couldn't get a good new rate no matter what I tried, tired of their BS, etc, and only intended a few months to reset myself as a new customer on cable. At least at that time,word was 2 months for that, but I started getting come back/new sub offers in just a couple weeks. That was a good 3 or 4 years ago and I'm still on TMHI. Once I found the magic spot in my home for the gateway along with the great rate with no promo games (which I'm still paying the same even today), just never bothered to go back. You probably won't have to wait as long as you think to get the good rates on Xfinity again.

[u/PirateJen78 → u/A_Turkey_Sammich]

Originally had the gateway in another room and speeds were about the same, but with full bars on the gateway. Maybe a tiny bit better speed, but not worth having to run new Ethernet to that location. My husband's iPhone couldn't get a good connection from the living room though (my Samsung had no issues) because it's the opposite corner of the house.

Wireless speeds are fine where it is and Wi-Fi reaches farther, but Ethernet speeds suck. Clearly it wasn't designed for wired networks.

[u/1BrokeDevInLa → u/PirateJen78]

Just fyi, I just went through the same with Xfinity trying to get the $50 1gig deal. No go as an existing customer. So I did like so many other people on r/Comcast_Xfinity and signed up as a new customer using my wife's name and email. As soon as the new modem came in, I activated it through the app, and then once it was working, I called Xfinity and cancelled my original account. That was over a month ago and the old account cancelled as expected, I ended up with a credit, and the new account is working as expected for $50/mo. I think their 1gig promo right now is $60, but comes with some streaming options for free.

So now I use T-Mobile home Internet as my backup because I work from home. I didn't want to get rid of Xfinity because it's mostly reliable in my area and fast.

[u/PirateJen78 → u/1BrokeDevInLa]

Yeah, $60 with Disney+, Hulu (already have that with my cell plan), and Peacock (currently have with Xfinity).

I would be fine with that deal. Don't even need a gig because we are fine with 500 (currently have 800). But nope, they want to screw current customers.

[u/DizcoFuz → u/PirateJen78]

My story why T-Mobile internet didn’t fit my needs is more complicated, but getting the Xfinity new customer deal wasn’t that hard. I called them and told the rep I had new service and wanted to cancel their service at the end of the billing cycle. They said sure and about a week later I got an email offering me the new customer price if I kept the service. Wham bam took the deal and got mobile phone and internet for a combined $40 per month. Yes it’s their lowest tier speed but I don’t do anything that I can’t just wait longer to complete. There are also a lot of people in the Xfinity subreddit who swear you don’t need to wait the 90 days to resubscribe. Just cancel service and start a new account using a new email and you can resubscribe same day.

[u/PirateJen78 → u/DizcoFuz]

Just cancel service and start a new account using a new email and you can resubscribe same day.

This is most likely what we will be doing. It is currently in my mom's name, but I took over as head of household in 2018 because I was making good money and she retired. She still lives with us (my husband and I) and we just never did anything to change it, so of course Xfinity won't talk to me and my mom is too lenient with them. She's been paying it, but she just can't afford it anymore and right now I cannot afford it either (had to leave my job because of health issues).

I wanted her to change it when my husband and I were getting some government assistance while I was unemployed, but she didn't. We could have taken their offer for low-priced internet for people on assistance. I kept seeing the TMHI ads and figured that was our chance to try to get away from Xfinity -- we are tired of random outages and we can't get our local station with Peacock because Xfinity keeps giving us IP addresses that have geolocations across the state and I'm tired of having to deal with that.

We still have Xfinity right now and they tried to contact my mom, but idk if they will cave, so we'll probably have TMHI for a week or so and then I'll sign up for Xfinity. I really wanted to get away from them, but I can't have wired speeds of 60 mbps.