NEW T-Mobile 5G Home Internet Service & Home Automation

[Brianmac]

I have also noticed, my Pixel 4a 5g, plugged in to car and as a hotspot runs pretty hot and will actually stop working till it cools down, if I am taxing it....
For $50/month, I'm looking Lan speeds in car, a secondary home internet connection(when storms knock everything out), and a really cool add-on to tailgating....

 

[krzykat]

The difference is this provides unlimited data unlike the hot spot on your phone.

I thought Visible is unlimited

 

[kenn10]

I thought Visible is unlimited

Visible Hotspot Limits and Speeds​

---

Visible includes unlimited mobile hotspot with its cell phone plan. However, there’s a bit more to the story here:

• Visible limits mobile hotspot data speeds to 5Mbps—most carriers don’t have speed limits for hotspot usage.
• Visible only allows you to connect one device at a time—the single connection makes sense, though, considering that the 5Mbps speeds don’t really support multiple devices.

However, applications such as Fox-Fi / PDANet allow you to connect on your Android phone and look like you are the phone instead of the hotspot. http://foxfi.com

For iPhone, your tethering choices are very limited unless you jailbreak your phone.

 

[hawk#1]

Visible is unlimited data, but I believe that you are limited to how many devices and speed of data thru the hot spot on the phone.

 

[tbrummell]

However, applications such as Fox-Fi / PDANet allow you to connect on your Android phone and look like you are the phone instead of the hotspot. http://foxfi.com

For iPhone, your tethering choices are very limited unless you jailbreak your phone.

PDANet is still around? I used that back in the old days on my Nokia E62, or something like that, Windows 5 phone. And that was a llooonnngggg time ago. LoL

 

[kenn10]

PDANet is still around? I used that back in the old days on my Nokia E62, or something like that, Windows 5 phone. And that was a llooonnngggg time ago. LoL

Its still around but largely redundant on modern phones unless you have limited hotspot data. I've had it since my original 4G Verizon Thunderbolt(? Been too long to remember the name.) It has continued to be reloaded on the many, many Android phones as I migrate each time. I paid for it long ago and keep it but haven't needed to use it. On something like Visible, it masquerades the hotspot as your phone and breaks through speed limits and data caps.

 

[dhoppy]

It does, but I should have been more clear. Locally, the device does not have an IPv4 address. The 172.58.x.x address you see is part of a pool of "exit IPs" for their 464XLAT. Your IPv4 traffic is converted to IPv6 at the T-Mobile cylinder, sent by IPv6 to their remote gateway, and converted back to IPv4 for routing over the internet. This pretty much guarantees no inbound connections. I don't know a lot about this; I just learned of it yesterday. I am looking for a way to make this work nicely with my router and act as a seamless load-balance/failover with my cable connection. I haven't figured that out yet.

Have you looked into other ways to make inbound connections? Mainly I just am looking for a way to access my Plex server. For $8 a month I have a service called Hoppy Network working right now.

 

[billsimon]

Have you looked into other ways to make inbound connections? Mainly I just am looking for a way to access my Plex server. For $8 a month I have a service called Hoppy Network working right now.

There's really no way to get inbound connections through the T-Mobile other than to make an outbound connection, e.g. initiate a VPN tunnel and then from an external location, connect back through that tunnel IP.

 

[Bob Helbush]

I can connect to the machines on the T-Mobile using Chrome Remote Desktop. I assume this is a man in the middle connection, so it is not actually inward, but it works for me.

 

[billsimon]

I can connect to the machines on the T-Mobile using Chrome Remote Desktop. I assume this is a man in the middle connection, so it is not actually inward, but it works for me.

Yes, I believe the Chrome Remote Desktop is webrtc and uses a TURN server as the man-in-the-middle.

 

[dhoppy]

I've been using the T-Mobile 5G router at my house for over a month now, and have an issue with Clearly Anywhere or Groundwire app not connecting. I am double-natted at my house. Anyone else have the same issue?

 

[KNERD]

I've been using the T-Mobile 5G router at my house for over a month now, and have an issue with Clearly Anywhere or Groundwire app not connecting. I am double-natted at my house. Anyone else have the same issue?

I heard the other day TLS is very good with NAT. Maybe try TLS with Groundwire?

 

[dhoppy]

I heard the other day TLS is very good with NAT. Maybe try TLS with Groundwire?

Enabling TLS worked. Thanks for the suggestion.

I think it has to do with, as was mentioned earlier in this thread, the T-Mobile device is blocking SIP. Using TLS encryption prevents the device from knowing the traffic is SIP traffic. At least that is my theory.

 

[KNERD]

Enabling TLS worked. Thanks for the suggestion.

I think it has to do with, as was mentioned earlier in this thread, the T-Mobile device is blocking SIP. Using TLS encryption prevents the device from knowing the traffic is SIP traffic. At least that is my theory.

I have heard from someone using Comcast. They could no longer use port 5060 to connect an endpoint, and switched ports. A week later that was also blocked. Ended up putting the phone on a VPN.

 

[wardmundy]

Enabling TLS worked. Thanks for the suggestion.

I think it has to do with, as was mentioned earlier in this thread, the T-Mobile device is blocking SIP. Using TLS encryption prevents the device from knowing the traffic is SIP traffic. At least that is my theory.

I can confirm the SIP blocking of at least UDP 5060. The simple solution is to create an OpenVPN connection between your client phones and the server. That keeps Visible from sniffing the packets and works reliably.

 

[Twilight Sparkle]

TOS: During congestion, Home Internet customers may notice speeds lower than other customers due to data prioritization. Network Management: Service may be slowed, suspended, terminated, or restricted
- hard pass *sticking to my $100 a month spectrum trash 300mbps down 21up.

only time i ever got true no throttled 4G LTE was metropcs 2015 $75 a month and ebay $150 verizon hotspots.
- used over 800GB never once slowed/throttled.

probly not someone who uses it for game-in
- just thinking about it... downloading a playstation update/game could be well over 150GB 30 seconds into hitting download poof prioritization kicks in. 5 minute download turns into 5/10 days

ill wait to hear from you how much data used and if prioritization kicks in what what usage.

 

[wardmundy]

We've now had our T-Mobile 5G Home WiFi unit for several months, and we're using it outside of Charleston, SC with 2-3 bars to do literally everything we used to do with Comcast: four computers plus Incredible PBX for RasPi, two Sonos devices, four HDTV's, four Blink security cameras with recording, a dozen WiFi light bulbs, two Amazon Echo devices, and two Google Home devices. We watch nothing but streaming content about 5 hours a day with YouTube TV, Netflix, HBO Max, and Discovery+. No gaming. We use two Google WiFi devices to extend the range to our parked cars for over-the-air firmware updates. I use my iMac at the farthest distance from the router and regularly compile new builds of Incredible PBX using VMware, VirtualBox, and Vultr. SpeedTest reports 90-130 mbps down and 10-50 mbps up on my iMac. It's double that speed closer to the T-Mobile device. T-Mobile doesn't provide data usage info. We've had zero issues, no throttling, and at $49.99 a month, it's a steal.

 

[wardmundy]

Verizon has a similar offering if you're not in T-Mobile country. Haven't tested this one yet.

 

[billsimon]

Just a follow up from a few months ago. I have been using the T-Mobile gateway as a backup ISP and it has worked flawlessly in this regard for all purposes (incl. voip which I do over TLS connections).

 

[cosmic]

For those who have said that SIP works if you use TLS, I have a question. I am not using Tmobile's service (at least not yet) but one of the users of my PBX is, and since he switched he's been unable to connect using SIP. We were able to get a softphone working with IAX and that works, but his PJSIP extension is weird - he has an Obihai phone (basically like an Obihai ATA but with more service provider slots) and it will connect to the PBX using SIP (I assume registration happens) but he cannot make or receive calls. If he tries to place a call absolutely nothing appears in the Asterisk CLI, and if I try to call him it just rings until it goes to voicemail on my end but his phone never rings. If I do "pjsip show endpoints" it shows his extension is available. This all worked fine when he was on Comcast, but not on Tmobile.

So I was wondering if anyone knows what settings would need to be changed, first on the Obihai and second in the PJSIP extension settings, to make this work, if that is possible. The Obihai doesn't do IAX. Note I am not necessarily trying to achieve encryption here, I'm just trying to make his damn phone work. If anyone knows of any good articles or videos that explain how to make this work using TLS, (or whatever will make a PJSIP extension and an Obihai device work in this situation), I'd really appreciate it if you'd post links to them here. Thanks!