Wireless Joint

As the title suggests, has any one been able to connect to the V5GA01INTERNET APN? I thought it was because it was a 5G APN and my Orbi was 4G, but when logged into the Verizon gateway, it says running on 4G technology, or something similar. I've done magic, different TTL's, updated APN, tried VZWINTERNET, can't get a connected status. I definitely am picking up the signal because Orbi switched form AT&T Band 2, to Band 66 and the signal is PHENOMENAL, which is why I really want this to work. I'd use the VZW gateway but there is no way to add external antennas, which I need in my location for consistent connections. Do I need to change MAC address, would that even help? I don't even know how to get the MAC from the VZW gateway without SSH, which is conveniently disabled is appears. Any ideas would be great, or just point me towards some reading, there is not much information about this Verizon ASK-NCQ1338 gateway.

I would bust open the gateway. I think I saw a video on youtube of this.

Verizon is super picky on devices and I'll bet is doing something funny to a allow the handshake to pass on that APN.

I've just used V5GA01INTERNET APN on VZ INTERNET GATEWAY FSNO21VA

my findings:
while on VZWINTERNET APN router was able to connect to network with a speed of 50/20 (on VZW 4G FWA Mobile Broadband - 50MBPS plan)
switched to 5G 200Mbps business plan
after hot switching to V5GA01INTERNET without rebooting speedtest showed 5/7
after rebooting router: on V5GA01INTERNET speedtest show 1.48/7

4G Signal Strength -104.0
5G Signal Strength -97.0

my slightly educated conclusion is:
my site is within both 4G and 5G towers.
4G tower is closer to me and provide (at my place) better speed but capped at 50Mbps
5G tower is farther away or directed differently or since it has higher freqs it does not propagate as well and thus speed drops.

continuation of the story:
switched back to VZWINTERNET without reboot - nothing changed.
rebooted - model would not connect at all (while on 5G plan + VZWINTERNET APN)
switched plan back to 4G 50Mbps plan
Rebooted router and we are online again, BUT speeds are still bad. 9/7Mbps

now I am a bit lost, anyone have ideas - please share
Modem has not been moved even a bit. Same place, all changes were via LAN or on carrier side.

comm3000 wrote: Thu Dec 07, 2023 10:52 am now I am a bit lost, anyone have ideas - please share
Modem has not been moved even a bit. Same place, all changes were via LAN or on carrier side.

When I first got TMHI I did some of what you're doing but went a bit further and deconstructed the box completely out of curiosity and planned on modding it anyway. The biggest thing that stand out on these CPE devices is how cheap they are with the components. For the TMHI side though there's an app you can DL from github that gives a bit more tasty info than the web page for the device.



The nae of the app is HINT and if your box is supported you can fine tune things a bit more from different SSIDs to turning off either or both bands and some other stuff.

Now as to the cell site you're connecting to it will give you the enodeb info as well and you can dig it up o cellmapper or similar sites. To figure out the best direction to point it towards. For me though I have a cell site on the roof and most would think that's awesome for speeds but, it's not ideal as I can take the gateway outside and across a parking lot and get 5x better speeds. For TMO though most sites are cookie cutter and all bands / options are located on the same setup. I don't recall what VZW does though but, most providers try to keep things mirror image between sites to keep it simple when they need to send someone out to tune things.

VZW though IMO from over the years they used to have an edge on speed but, lately not so much. I haven't seen anyone post much info on their FWA experience though compared to TMO. ATT though is even worse from the little I've seen. They both took a wrong turn when deciding to do FWA or general network upgrades for that matter over the years.

Anyway... figure out the cell site info and dig a bit deeper into the site info. There should be a few different IDs when you drill into it. Provides got a bit silly with how they label things when stacking tech onto existing sites. If you need to go drive to the site and take some photos. Take your box with you and speed test from there as well. I use a power bank when I did my initial testing and was shocked at how much higher it was just a short distance from the building vs inside and also compared to driving around town with it.