ZTE MF286D external antenna

[M4RRRRK]

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

[AdyLincoln]

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.

[oldgit1972]

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

[amd7000]

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

[Cedric]

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.