Three 4G Home Broadband Review ZTE MF286d 2022 

Thank you for the kind feedback Freckles glad you found it useful!

this is very crappy garbage router! Buy either Asus 4G-AC86u or Mikrotik Chateau LTE 12. Mikrotik is for advanced users.

Cheers David

I’m sorry to hear about your experience with Vodafone’s Full Fibre service usually Full Fibre broadband is the most reliable it may be worth trying another provider that sells on the full fibre network you have. If you send me an email to info@fttppro.co.uk I will be more than happy to help with your situation and see what other options are in your area.

Hi Brian unfortunately there is no setting to force the router to use just an external aerial it will use it together with the internal ones. Would be better if they did have a setting!

@@nsmmedia magic. Thanks so much for reply. I've been searching and scratching my head for days!

I have not tried the USB port myself as have a TrueNas for File sharing it may be a feature on the unlocked firmware?

@@nsmmedia probably works on stock firmware zte branded models and maybe fell to 3 cost cutting like the back up battery

Hi Herronbill they are two SMA antenna connections and unfortunately due to the locked down firmware you can not switch to just using external and it’s difficult to know if they work properly. During my testing using an external antenna it did not make much difference. You may be able to use custom unlocked firmware to give you more control but that is at your own risk. Checkout my review of Threes 5G home broadband service the Zyxel Nr5103e has a physical switch to use either internal or external antenna and does work really well with external antennas for both 4 and 5G

This particular system is designed to work just off 3/4G mobile broadband signals no need for a fixed line. So yep you can take it anywhere(within this country) and as long as you have a good enough signal on Threes network your good to go 👍

I no longer have this router but I recall it did do 4G+ aka band aggregation

I don’t think Three throttle the connection assuming your on a home broadband contract? Which APN are you using? If you use the 3Internet APN that does not use CGNAT and may improve your experience.

Hi Keefhk, which model?

The one in your video. I assumed, obviously wrongly that you got the comments attached to the video? Very odd if you just get them out of nowhere. ;)

Apologies I did not look properly at the video this comment relates to as also have a recent review video of the 5G home broadband service where I reviewed two routers! In regards to the lights on the front of the router the signal indicators ( - Red means either no signal or no/issue with SIM card - blue flashing means 4G service and data is being transfered. -Blue means connected at 4G -Green flashing means your connected at 3G and data is transferred - Green solid means connected at 3G

@@nsmmedia no problem. Thanks for the explanation. Managed to get four blue bars on mine so it works. Guess I will have to wait till 5G is here as it's pretty slow. Still a good back up, I suppose.

Hi Porcu the router does not come supplied with external antennas just the built in internal ones and while the router does come equipped with external ant ports they don't work very well. If your getting a poor connection and tried the usual things like finding where your nearest mast is and placing the router high up in the window etc then you will need to contact 3 and if they can not resolve cancel the contract. Even if your getting a good signal if the local mast has issues and or congestion then you will face issues its the nature of the beast I'm afraid.

Hi Premium, yes you can connect a 3rd party Wifi mesh system to one of the ethernet ports and then disable the built in WiFi.

Hi Graham, You need to first click on disconnect on the mobile broadband connection and then it will let you change the settings

Hope it all goes well for you. Feel free to use my refferal link to get upto £40 aklam.io/87y4pp

Yeah I don’t think the WiFi on this router is the best your better getting a mesh WiFI system to improve the WiFi speeds.

I have not had any hands on experience with the Huawei Router so would not be able to say if it performs better than the ZTE.

Hi Audiobooks & Chill, you can take the router anywhere and providing you have a signal on the Three network for 3/4G it will work. You can also take the Sim card out of the router and put into a different device (that is unlocked) and that also works!

@@nsmmedia top man! i bought the mifi version 2 weeks ago for #21 a month. however this one seems 10 times better. I will try to change it on monday, cheers

At the time of making this video yes that was part of the issue. See my 5G review video for an update on my signal. The thing with 4/5G services is you don’t know really till you try as everyone’s experience will be different.

I found that it made little to no difference on this model of router locked by Three as for one there is no switch to only use external.

@@nsmmedia I was thinking the same, as it's locked. Thanks for replying

You get an ipv4 address but it’s behind a CG-NAT

@@nsmmedia sorry I don't understand

@@andywinn6873 the public IP address you get on the service is behind a NAT which means you can not run a web server, port forward to an IP camera etc using this connection. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier-grade_NAT

Hi Charlie pop your house number and postcode into the checker on my website to see what you can get both fibre broadband and mobile coverage fttppro.co.uk/getfttp/ If you can’t get any fibre then see if you can get 5G from any of the mobile networks feel free to email me if you need anything further 👍

If you’re in your cooling off period then yes you do have the right to cancel your contract. You may also be able to leave if you’re not achieving the minimum guaranteed speed they gave you and have not been able to improve it. I manged to get out of a contract as our mast was having issues for ages.

@@nsmmedia i’m out of the cooling off period, but it has been working better the last couple of days. I will cancel it when my contract ends, you can’t beat fibre optic broadband. I only got 3 as its the cheapest, but as you know theres a reason for it

Yeah if you can get FTTP that is the best for sure.

I found external antenna did not really work with this router at least with the locked down Three firmware. Checkout my more recent review of the 5G service and the Zyxel NR 5103e which does have proper external antenna functionality Three 5G Home Broadband Review Zyxel NR5103e Vs ZTE MC801a ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ly09O7rWG-8.html

@@nsmmedia Cool thank you

Hi Do you mean the admin password to log into the router or the WiFi password?

Nope no wireless based internet system is suitable for latency sensitive application

@@nsmmedia thoght so. Thanks for the reply though 👍🏻

Hi Hal, Many thanks for your comment to address the points you raise: You are right speed test services are only an indication of throughput speed. I performed speed tests using multiple services including fast.com and speedtest.net and on speedtest.net using a number of host servers that are of closest proximity to myself overall this gives a good indication of the service throughput speeds. During all the speed test's as observed on the video the latency of the internet connection increased to over 1000ms and caused packet loss (to 8.8.8.8) this indicates an issue with the connection. The tests were all performed using a hard wired connection and it was the only device using that connection during the testing. More real world testing was conducted including loading webpages and watching RU-vid videos the conditions observed showed the connection speed fluctuate and the quality of the connection shown in the RU-vid nerd stats buffer page shows the issues with the connection. What i did not show on the video was while streaming Netflix and Amazon prime the quality would drop from 4K ~16mbps down to HD at times again due to the wide fluctuations in the internet speed. That is a interesting tip regarding boosting the signal and a cheap one I will have to try that out thanks! I agree you do not need fast speeds to load the vast majority of websites and services and indeed having a 1Gbps symmetric connection for example you will come up against bottlenecks form the server end I will be writing a blog about speed on my fttppro.co.uk website soon so keep an eye out for that. 4G is not effected by all the same limitations as hybrid fibre products but is effected by its own set of limitations naturally being a wireless based product and something I demonstrated in the video. Full Fibre connection's vary in price depending on if and who you can get it from in your area in some cases it can work out cheaper than standard broadband packages and even 4G packages when taking actual speed into account. 4G and 5G broadband is certainly going to be a good option for some people like yourself where you can get an acceptable consistent speed and service and do not need things like Static IP's etc . There was a lot I had to cut out of the video to keep the time down and get the balance right (i can talk for hours on such matters) Kind Regards, Nathan

Lol

:DDDDDDDDDDD you joking? any speed less than 100Mb/s is GARBAGE

Have you contacted Three’s support about this and or posted on their community forum? Some things I would try -Disable IPv6 as this is known to cause issues on their network/routers -use the 3Internet APN which is not CGNat - Change your DNS server to say Google or Cloudflare etc instead of their default.

Sorry to hear that Charter feel free to email me info@fttppro.co.uk to see if we can improve this.