Hacker's ramblings

I had a chance to setup a modern 4G/3G/2G router. Of course I took pics and share the details here!

This is what a ZTE MF910 looks like:

Pretty much the first thing that comes to my mind is: "It's a cell phone!" Yes, indeed. It is. It is an Android phone. My guess is, it is 99% of a cell phone when compared to an Android in your pocket. It is small, it has an USB-charger, runs hours from a battery. It is shiny (pretty difficult to get decent pictures of it). It has a display (no touching or anything expensive). And it costs 99,- €. There is very little differentiating it, except that it doesn't have a speaker and a microphone. I didn't pop the hood of it (that thing isn't mine, I was just helping to set it up), but I'm thinking it has all the chips and electronics a phone would have.

Screen will indicate connection type (2G/3G/4G), bars, Internet status (ok, both arrows up and down), Wi-Fi enabled, how many clients are connected to the Wi-Fi, battery charge level, operator name, cumulative time connected and the cumulative transmitted bytes.

On the back there are out-of-the-box defaults and mandatory IMEI-information. The TAC-code for this one is 86415402 and I couldn't find it from any TAC databases. Must be quite a new one. What I didn't find is how to replace the battery. I guess you cannot, it is like a cell phone. It doesn't feel hot or anything when running, looks like the electronics design is also modern. It puts all the electrons where you'd expect them to go, not to dissipate heat.

Here is a clear difference to a phone:

There are two antenna connectors (TS9) on the sides. As all LTE equipment always has 2 antennas (your phone does, you just won't see them), there needs to be connectors for both of them. The intended purpose for this is to convert cellular connection into Wi-Fi. As sometimes the cell network connection is poor, adding a proper antenna (or two) can make a difference. Power button has one extra feature including the obvious one. If you press it shortly, it will display the default WLAN SSID and password on the screen. Funny thing: if you change them, the screen won't display the new ones. On the as-expected, there is a mini-SIM -slot and mini-A USB for the charger.

The antenna connector is a quirky one:

I couldn't find anything to connect to it. Any typical small appliance (like Huawei USB-sticks) have CRC9-connector, or the bigger routers (like Huawei B593) have SMA-connectors. I guess the new TS9 is suiting better for some reason.

When the SIM-card in inserted, power button pressed and box is up and running, it connects automatically to internet. It distributes an IP-address to any client devices and enables the management web-console. It looks like this:

There is a decent selection of langauges for the GUI:

And the top right corner status indicator is good one:

It provides a lot of information without need to login. This is what it looks like once in:

There is no need to look for Wi-Fi settings. They are right there after a login. In general I really love their approach, lot of useful features and really well thought web-GUI implemented. Also the existence of 5 GHz WLAN tells about a modern design. A while ago only 2,4 GHz existed in routers such as this.

The Internet connection details are:

APN I didn't touch, it just worked. Network mode (2G/3G/4G) may be necessary if reception has issues. The most important thing is, that this box has a built-in freq lock in it. No need of hacking or any quirks. This is by far the most commonly asked question nowadays, how do you lock B593 into a frequency. With this el-cheapo box, setting is right there! Nice.

I also love the status screens:

Lot of relevant information right at your screen! This is exactly what everybody else should be doing. Unfortunately the network status screen is optimized heavily for LTE-connections and on UMTS it won't tell much.

As a conclusion I have to recommend this cheaply built piece of plastic for any router needs. It certainly is worth the money and has just the right features in it. The only thing that worries me is the constant charging: will it survive future years? I don't care if the thing wouldn't run from the battery, but will the charger alone be enough to run it?