Tmobile is cracking down on data usage ?

[vigilant]

Hey Guys,
I recently had some serious network drops recently, and I figured out that Tmobile is seriously upp'ed their game on network hot-spotting detection.

For the past few days after the announcement of 5G SA, my hotspot service is no longer maintains a constant connection,
when it works it drops every few minutes, it rendering everything that needs a constant connection like WebSockets or VPN or uploads to get dropped.

The actual data connection on the phone itself is dropped I can see it happen on the phone it self.

I think they have some sort of monitoring against DNS querys or IP connections that windows pc do; that are flagging the connection to drop every few minutes.

I just wanted to share this to see if anyone else encountered the same.

[Didneywhorl]

If they updated anything on your tower, you might actually just have a tower issue. I'd called t-force and let them know your phone is dropping out off the tower constantly.

[vigilant]

If they updated anything on your tower, you might actually just have a tower issue. I'd called t-force and let them know your phone is dropping out off the tower constantly.

Here is the thing, It only drops as soon as I connect my laptop via hotspot.
Mind you, I have the (DUN) on APN and also the TTL being set.

[mtl26637]

I think the fact that they are supposedly dropping support for ICMP on the ipv4 side of things is causing all kinds of issues. I thought it was just me but found several threads on their support forums that indicate this. Several owners of the 5G home internet gateway were complaining. I have several modems that seem to work fine but my RM502Q-AE drops about 50-80 percent of icmp packets which makes any sort of connection monitoring useless. The 502 used to be my best modem but now I have to lock to 4G to get it to work. I have no idea what the problem really is but it seems to be causeing issues everywhere...

Try watching your pings and see if packets are being dropped?

[Didneywhorl]

Supposedly the latest 502 firmware had some tmo fixes in it, something about UDP though. I've seen the ICMP and ICMPv6 issues before. I wish they would standardize and stop jacking with "special carrier firmware" type jobbers.

[vigilant]

mtl26637 and Didneywhorl,
Funny you guys say that, because that's the same modem that I have that I too had to lock it to 4g inorder to get the data to work.
I and I had to fall back on my Phone hotspot but even then my work VPN and my connections via anydesk and icmp pings keep dropping like a mf every minute to 2.

Didneywhorl: I saw a post on the support forums for Quectel but I cant find a new firmware for it.
Do you know where I can source it?

[vigilant]

I think the fact that they are supposedly dropping support for ICMP on the ipv4 side of things is causing all kinds of issues. I thought it was just me but found several threads on their support forums that indicate this. Several owners of the 5G home internet gateway were complaining. I have several modems that seem to work fine but my RM502Q-AE drops about 50-80 percent of icmp packets which makes any sort of connection monitoring useless. The 502 used to be my best modem but now I have to lock to 4G to get it to work. I have no idea what the problem really is but it seems to be causeing issues everywhere...

Try watching your pings and see if packets are being dropped?

I see a few packets get dropped like < 40 %; what I'm noticing my Modem is getitng a DoD IP as well. 21.XXX.XXX.XXX

Are you seeing that stuff too? Pretty wired no ?

[mtl26637]

Been there and done that. I've tried every firmware that I could find for the 502 and its all the same problem. I have an RM500Q-AE that works just fine. I've have been troubleshooting that 502 for months and have tried everything under the sun and it still has issues. It all started when Tmo added band 41 (for me anyway). It was best I had when it was working with ENDC (NSA) with bands B66 and n71, but since the update to n41 I've had issues with it. the RM500Q-AE, and 2 T99W175 5G modems work just fine, its just the 502 and since the n41 upgrade at the tower. They have recently switched something to make it want to lock to n71 SA mode only so I have to force the 502 to anything else. The 500Q still works flawlessly with ENDC B66 + n41 and hits 300-600 down all day long. I gave up on it for now and locked to 4G only for the time being ..

I've convinced myself there is something wrong with the 502 firmware or even more likely something on Tmo's end at the tower esp. with all the problems with ICMP dropping on their own home internet setups. Something seems wacky with their ipv6 in ipv4 setups? There were a couple threads on Tmo forums where they just seem to ignore the problem.

[mtl26637]

I see a few packets get dropped like < 40 %; what I'm noticing my Modem is getitng a DoD IP as well. 21.XXX.XXX.XXX

Are you seeing that stuff too? Pretty wired no ?

Not sure what the IP is but I did notice it is a different IP and subnet than the IP of the other 2 lines which are the RM500Q-AE and a T99W175. I even built a version of openwrt with ModemManager for my WRT32X just to rule out something new with Rooter/GoldenOrb but same problems which I expected. Unfortunately I think the issue is on the other end and out of our control.

[vigilant]

I think the fact that they are supposedly dropping support for ICMP on the ipv4 side of things is causing all kinds of issues. I thought it was just me but found several threads on their support forums that indicate this. Several owners of the 5G home internet gateway were complaining. I have several modems that seem to work fine but my RM502Q-AE drops about 50-80 percent of icmp packets which makes any sort of connection monitoring useless. The 502 used to be my best modem but now I have to lock to 4G to get it to work. I have no idea what the problem really is but it seems to be causeing issues everywhere...

Try watching your pings and see if packets are being dropped?

Hey Man, I saw a post on the Q forums about this issue and another guy mentioned that (RM502QAEAAR13A02M4G) on this modem fixed the Issue with 5G SA.. I want to know what baseband firmware are you on.

[mtl26637]

These are the FW I have flashed:

Code: Select all

RM502QAEAAR11A02M4G_01.003.01.003
RM502QAEAAR11A04M4G_01.003.01.003
RM502QAEAAR11A04M4G_01.004.01.004
RM502QAEAAR13A02M4G_01.001.01.001

This is what it was originally: RM502QAEAAR11A02M4G

There were a few links floating around over the past few months with the FW. I can dig it up or find it if needed, might take some looking though. None of these FW made a difference for me. Also, I can't say for sure if that fixed SA or not cuz SA for me sucks and is worse than just leaving it in 4G only mode. At default settings at this current time the 502 will lock onto SA n71 ONLY and does not aggregate with anything else on my tower. Well that is much slower than ENDC NSA B66+n41 and honestly slower than 4G only mode with its CA so I didn't want it latching on to 5G SA mode at all. The 500 defaults to ENDC NSA still which is by far the best where I'm at without having to lock anything down or lock it out.

The 502 used to act just like the 500 but not these days. Like Didneywhorl said in the beginning, if they would just leave it alone to begin with, LOL. Hey maybe locking to 5G SA is Tmo's way of slowing things down a bit and taking some load off their network as none of the other providers come even close to what they offer with their NSA 5G speeds out in the country. They even get to promote it as a 'good thing' or an upgrade as your on full 5G core network, woohoo, heh.

[mtl26637]

Looking back to the IP/subnet part of things. Pretty sure it has something to do with it and I have no idea what factors decide which you get.

I have 3 lines which all receive ipv4 and ipv6 addresses. Here are the ip/subnet of the 2 working lines with no issues:
100.96.xxx.xxx/30
100.97.xxx.xxx/30

Here is the ip/subnet of the line with the 502 and dropped ICMP packets:
26.138.xxx.xxx

Now how the tower decides which device get assigned which ip/subnet I do not know but I have a feeling it has something to do with it. It is not IMEI related and pretty sure its not ICCID related as all 3 lines are very close to the same. So how is the tower making this decision?

[vigilant]

Looking back to the IP/subnet part of things. Pretty sure it has something to do with it and I have no idea what factors decide which you get.

I have 3 lines which all receive ipv4 and ipv6 addresses. Here are the ip/subnet of the 2 working lines with no issues:
100.96.xxx.xxx/30
100.97.xxx.xxx/30

Here is the ip/subnet of the line with the 502 and dropped ICMP packets:
26.138.xxx.xxx

Now how the tower decides which device get assigned which ip/subnet I do not know but I have a feeling it has something to do with it. It is not IMEI related and pretty sure its not ICCID related as all 3 lines are very close to the same. So how is the tower making this decision?

That's exactly what I'm seeing, I keep seeing those DoD IPs, which is strange. Typically you'd expect to get a 10. or a private IP.. but it looks like tmo is just handing out DoD reserved IPS for their private network... technically yeah it works but its a frowned-upon thing.

https://ipinfo.io/26.138.12.4


I updated my modem to RM502QAEAAR13A02M4G thinking it would fix the issue; but it still just won't connect to anything 5G. (5G NSA or 5 SA)
I keep getting 'connection returned : "call failed" '

I have no other idea what to do.

[mtl26637]

DoD?? WTF..

I didn't figure any firmware versions would change ICMP behavior. As far as 5G failing, have you specified any ipv4/ipv6 info in your connection settings? Mine will fail with any settings other than default (ipv4/ipv6). If I try to set to ipv4 only or ipv6 only it will fail.

[vigilant]

Hey,

Yeah I have (IPv6+IPv4) there is a "default" option available that i did not try.

18.11.2022_14.59.13_REC.png

Is that what you have selected?

[mtl26637]

I have protocol: Default, but i do believe it is the same as "ipv4+ipv6". I do use TTL of 65 for all of my providers however, might try that? I doubt that will do it but worth a shot I suppose.

[vigilant]

mtl26637,

I was able to fix the modem not connecting to 5G.
Check out my post here,

viewtopic.php?p=26079#p26079

[techtaxi]

I'm having the same problem but I'm tethering direct to my laptop and my regedit settings for ipv4/6 are set for defaultTTL to 65....
Tmo sent me sms saying I was 80% of my hotspot... Just to see, I checked my ping results just tethering, it was giving me a 114TTL instead of the 65 it was supposed to be.

[vigilant]

I'm having the same problem but I'm tethering direct to my laptop and my regedit settings for ipv4/6 are set for defaultTTL to 65....
Tmo sent me sms saying I was 80% of my hotspot... Just to see, I checked my ping results just tethering, it was giving me a 114TTL instead of the 65 it was supposed to be.

Techtaxi, I had issues like that too. On my rooted phone, I simply download a application called TTLMaster and set it to TTL 64 and it works beautifully!
You'd also have to make sure your APN has DUN.

If you dont have a rooted phone, use PDANet, it does a great job for teathering! It just requires everything tunneled via a socks proxy.
Not sure if thats a dealbreaker for ya.