Looking for better options? Flaky Tmobile 5G mesh hardware isn't ideal. Explore alternatives to improve your setup.
Looking for better options? Flaky Tmobile 5G mesh hardware isn't ideal. Explore alternatives to improve your setup.
Hey everyone, I've been experiencing cable speeds around 15Mbps down and 0.5Mbps up from ATT for years, especially in a rural spot. Usually it's reliable, but it's often slow or even worse. Just got T Mobile 5G recently, which delivers over 200Mbps down and 4Mbps up—still not great, but better than nothing. My family chose a mesh extender because the main router couldn't reach our bedrooms. The problem is, the connection has been inconsistent. I've seen my PC constantly jump between the router and the extender across the house, staying at about 1 bar for a few seconds before dropping back to 4 bars, all while keeping the same network name. Even when connected to the extender, it keeps getting disconnected abruptly—like Helldivers. Worse, being wired to the extender makes it worse.
My old setup used two Google Wi-Fi nodes: one connected to the router/modem and another in mesh mode inside my room. That gave me about 15Mbps down and 0.3Mbps up, which was decent but not ideal. I still have my previous internet service for comparison. Switching back to ATT was much smoother during games—slower but at least I wasn’t getting kicked every few minutes.
So I decided to connect the new T Mobile gateway via cable to the Google Wi-Fi nodes and turn off the extender. That should give me more stability and speed. But even near the wired Google node, I max out at 18/4 Mbps during tests. After plugging it back into ATT, I got 15/1.5 Mbps. When I switched to the new T Mobile gateway for comparison, speeds were 150/5Mbps at the same spot.
I’m curious if these Google Wi-Fi points are limiting my performance on the mesh network. Would upgrading to a Wifi 6 or 6E device and removing the extender help? If so, what equipment would fit a budget under $400, ideally around 200 Mbps with two nodes? I’m really frustrated—after 15 years of service, the connection is more unreliable for gaming than ever. I just hope there’s a fix that keeps my new speeds and stabilizes the connection.
I was thinking about setting up a 125-foot Ethernet cable from my room to my living area, using a switch to distribute it, but I’m not alone in this issue. Please let me know what you think! Thanks for your help.
Please be informed that T Mobile employs CGNAT on its infrastructure, resulting in automatic double NATing for you. Connecting a Google Wi-Fi network would then lead to triple NATing on any connected device. Your gateway currently doesn’t allow bridge mode or IP pass-through functionality. You may want to try placing an Ethernet cable near your room and see if a Google router can operate as an access point, which could improve performance.