ZTE MF 253, improve signal?

AstroTurf

AstroTurf

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So I have 1 of these and would like to see if I can get from 3g to LTE (or at least upp the 3g speed a bit).

http://wwwen.zte.com.cn/en/press_center/news/201307/t20130729_403165.html

What antenna would you guys suggest?

I get between 3 bars to full bars 3g at the moment.
I live half way up a mountain and the house is partially surrounded by trees, I am a bit out of the 4g coverage map (about 300meters out).

Any suggestions would be great :)

Currently my speeds are not all that bad but I would not mind pushing them, even a diy antenna may be all I need but I have no idea how to go about doing this.

I get 3 to 7meg download and about .5 to 1.5meg upload.
Ping is usually around 40ms but sometimes it drops to 120


Very stable and always on but not always super fast.
 
I am looking at this http://bcbj.org/antennae/lte_yagi_diy.htm

I am however thinking of first making a miniaturised version/prototype around 30/40cm in length.

So if I want to pick up vodacom LTE and 3g should I just work on 1800Mhz?

Any particular metal I must use?
Considering making it out of spring steel and copper/brass/aluminium.
 
I assume you've already seen the thread I'm about to post...but just in case you haven't:

The Poynting antenna discussion thread

Granted if you want to do a DIY antenna on the cheap, it's not something I can help with. I'll be watching your DIY project, should you proceed, with keen interest.
 
yea Azimuth i saw that.

I am going to try diy something and see how that ends up to start with.
There is no real rush.
 
Please share your installIon when you're ready? There's an installation thread that can be found via the link above.
 
I'm still thinking of getting lazy and buying a sheet of aluminium then cutting the boom and directors as a solid piece with the driven element cut out of the leftovers (have wirecutter/cnc machines @ work) but that is going to cost quite a bit more than just buying some piping and spring steel/galvanised wire.

Also, absolutely no idea what each of the connectors on the ZTE are for, I am assuming one is 3g and one is wifi, can't seem to find any information.
 
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Both SMA ports are for external antennas (MIMO). Quite standard in LTE devices today for receive diversity.

ZTE-4G-LTE-Router.jpg


Please do me a favour (new thread if necessary) and post the ZTE web config pages?
 
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I'll do so for you over the weekend and yes I just wanted verification before I spend time on this :) vodacom eventually got back to me as well with a pretty good response. I'll post some of it as well. Found most of the information by the time they got back to me but all good.
 
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Oh! It's also very stingy on LAN ports!

Please post more on your model? From what I've seen so far, only TM 2300MHz is supported...
 
Broken link bud. A lot of the ZTE support pages are like that. :(

Don't forget the web config pages. ;)
 
Took some screen shots, I'll upload them when near a pc again.
 
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