Now, here's the thing. When I first set up the gateway using the T-Life mobile app for Android, I configured it (innocently enough) with the same wifi SSID and password as that used by my TP-Link router (which supports the newer WIFI 6 standard, as does the 5G gateway). Therein lies the problem, as I found out with reasonable certainty.
The wifi 6 standard among other benefits enables you to not have to create unique SSIDs to use around your house, say. Instead of creating one SSID for say each wifi extender you might have on every compass point of your home as you might have with wifi 5 and older, now you can use a single SSID to be smartly managed by the router in a mesh setup (as I delve into here).
However, as I discovered, that does NOT mean that separate wifi 6 gateways or routers play nice, wifi wise, with each other. Computers, tablets, even wifi extenders all cope nicely within the wifi 6 standard, but "royalty" in the form of gateways and routers that actually serve as upper management for your local wifi device community can clash.
I followed steps in the T-Life app to do the following:
- From the Overview => My Wi-fi screen, create a new wifi network named TMobile (with SSID hidden).
- From under My Networks, tap the current SSID I originally configured on both my gateway and router, let's call it DARTH.
- Tap on DARTH, and on the Network Details screen, tap Delete Network, and confirm. Note also the reminder from T-Mobile, you must have at least one Wi-Fi network to be able to access the gateway from the T-Life app itself.
In retrospect, that little warning T-Mobile provides turned out to be prophetic, and I wish I took the hint early on that hey, maybe dueling wifi networks are part of the problem, here. Indeed, by setting up the T-Mobile gateway to use the exact same wifi network as my router, I can only imagine the constant radio frequency duel going on between the two devices, each with the same valid credentials and security, each vying for control of the wifi devices on my LAN.
Now, having that TMobile network on the gateway, not only hidden but completely unique to DARTH which my router manages exclusively, and the T-Life app connecting by wifi from the former network's only connected device, my phone, I now am enjoying bandwidth much like my desktop PC from my laptop.
Much better! At this point the only things stifing connectivity are what you'd expect, obstacles impeding signal between the wifi extenders and the router, the relatively elderly Intel Centrino onboard adapter this particular laptop uses, etc. Not a pitched battle between gateway and router over which one serves as the official conduit for local network traffic.