topic Re: ZTE MF286D external antenna in Broadband

ZTE MF286D external antenna

M4RRRRK — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 08:19:56 GMT

Hi everyone, live quite rural on the fringe of a town and signal is not ideal but it is there. 5g is patchy and used to revert to 4g so recently went in to store to downgrade from the 5g router to the 4g one as they recommended this.

I was hoping to put up an antenna on the outside of the house to try to make things a bit more stable as signal can be somewhat choppy indoors for 4g.

I can't seem to see an option in the device manager to enable an external antenna for this router? There are two sma connections on the rear, are these redundant or can they be enabled? Or does the device automatically pick the best signal wether it be from the internal antenna or the external ones?

Any help would be massively appreciated as I'm not really that techy

Re: ZTE MF286D external antenna

Cedric — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 16:45:06 GMT

Hi M4RRRRK

Just saw your post whilst doing some research. Did you get anywhere with this? I am in the same position as you. Average 4G signal on the hub, a bit intermittent. I was hoping external antenna would stabalise and maybe improve signal.

Re: ZTE MF286D external antenna

amd7000 — Wed, 12 Jun 2024 17:52:34 GMT

Yep same here. The external antenna doesn't seem to work.

Re: ZTE MF286D external antenna

oldgit1972 — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 16:03:58 GMT

having the same problem coming up blank as three so very helpful not

Re: ZTE MF286D external antenna

AdyLincoln — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 12:05:03 GMT

Interestingly, i'm in a similar rural situation and have just purchased a Panorama 4G MiMo antenna from eBay, I haven't got around to installing it as it only arrived yesterday but I've connected it up to my router and placed it in the front window where my router was before. My DL speed on a good day was maximum of 10Mbps before but it's now quadrupled to over 40 Mbps just with it sat against the window so I'm looking forward to getting it mounted up on the wall outside.

Interestingly though, I was initially disappointed as I didn't alter any settings in the router (don't know how TBH) but after a couple of hours or so, another speedtest revealed the quadrupling of the speed so I'm gussing the router learns and adapts to the new antenna over time.

Hope this helps.