17 ms·

Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

329 points by jimmcslim 10y ago

tbrock 10y ago
Ubiquiti is the best. Their stuff rivals and even beats lots of the more expensive stuff at a fraction of the price. It's all very high quality but so cheap that you think they are joking when you see the price. Edge router: amazing Edge switch: amazing AC access points: amazing I've never tried any of the unifi stuff though.
- dlgeek 10y ago
  The AC access points are UniFi unless you have some now-discontinued product.
  - tbrock 10y ago
    I meant the unifi switches and routers
    - dajohnson89 10y ago
      Then why did you say you never tried the unifi stuff?
      - tbrock 10y ago
        Because I meant those lines of switches and routers. I think it its pretty clear from context if you know anything about their equipment that they have two lines of routers and switches but only one line of wifi gear and that I'm clearly referring to the routers and switches above in my reply.
- trome 10y ago
  Their AC APs are pretty power intensive, last time I tried them they were drawing well over 20 watts each, which would have required we replace our switches due to the power requirements.
  - graton 10y ago
    https://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/unifi/UniFi_AC_APs_DS.pdf https://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/unifi/UniFi_AC_APs_DS.pdf UAP-AC-Lite & UAP-AC-LR: 6.5 watts maximum UAP-AC-Pro: 9 watts maximum UAP-AC-Edu: 20 watts maximum, but it does have a speaker for doing announcements
    - pmlnr 10y ago
      Power drained from the network != power consumption if the device. There is a power adapter in between, and depending on it's quality, that thing can make a lot of watts disappear.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - kiallmacinnes 10y ago
    Looking at the data from my Unifi switch, each UAP-AC-PRO is drawing 2.5 to 4.5W.
mmastrac 10y ago
I have Unifi AC APs in my house. Expensive, but 100% worth it. They've struck a really great balance between configurability+power/ease-of-use. I compare it to my Mikrotik switch that while being able to do pretty much anything I could want to do, has such a steep learning curve that I ended up just using it as a slightly fancy home firewall/switch. I'm considering pulling the trigger on the Ubiquiti switches and another three AC units for my house to cover the last few dead zones. It's been one of my favorite purchases. I really want to play around with VLANs for guest networks.
- gh02t 10y ago
  Yeah I have a Mikrotik manages switch and Ubiquiti router. The Mikrotik UI feels like I can do absolutely crazy stuff but I can't figure out how. Ubiquiti can do the same stuff but is a little more reserved in how many knobs and options it shows you. Both are great hardware, but different bends - Mikrotik is "here is everything you could ever com figure out what you want" while Ubiquiti is "with great power comes responsibility." I like both a lot, but I think Ubiquiti has the edge if I had to choose.
mrbill 10y ago
Love my Edgerouters and UAP access points. Currently running an ERX and a UAP-AC-LR.
nikcub 10y ago
The best side effect of buying proper WiFi gear is breaking up what is for most people usually an all-in-one device into devices - modem, router, access point - that are dedicated to each distinct task. The high-end gear many get for running open firmware can get expensive. It isn't hard to spend less money on dedicated devices and get better performance. What I spent on an EdgeRouter, AP AC Pro and a good managed switch is less than what the top recommendation from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113766 cost - $250 for the Linksys EA8500 vs $130 + $50 for the UniFi setup and add $50 for a TP-Link switch. I now want to get a bit fancier with the router - so i'm swapping it out for an eBay sourced Cisco or similar (I want dual WAN and failover, along with routing some traffic over VPN's) - still cost the same but much better (and a setup that is applicable up to 100+ users)
- jon-wood 10y ago
  Which Edgerouter did you get, because at the firmware level its quite capable of WAN failover and routing over VPNs if you've got enough ethernet ports on it.
  - nikcub 10y ago
    I got the X - added it to my shopping basket as an afterthought and ended up using it as my primary WAN router (replacing pfSense on VMWare ESXi) I had someone tell me on Twitter to try out the better models because there is a lot you can do with them, and i've seen references to it before on other forums (it seems it is common now to do VPN routing setups on EdgeRouters) I might give it a go - I do like trying different things out to get some experience across diff products
finnn 10y ago
Since we're all saying nice things about Ubiquiti, I feel obliged to point out that they are actively violating the GPL: http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/ http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/
- supercoder 10y ago
  Oh well.
- sargun 10y ago
  So are the following: -Tesla -Eero -Pluot
  - esaym 10y ago
    Doesn't make it ok. But dang hate to see Tesla on there :(
  - nine_k 10y ago
    Having a somehow famous name does not make a deplorable action magically virtuous.
    - duopixel 10y ago
      OP made no moral claim, just stated unreferenced facts.
      - noja 10y ago
        Nothing is so black and white. If you point out that others are engaging in bad behaviour, then it makes that bad behaviour look less bad.
        rhizome 10y ago
        That depends entirely on the ethics of the looker, but are you really saying that people would engage in fewer acts of bad behavior if other people didn't point them out when they did?
nodesocket 10y ago
Great write up, love all the details. Surprised that nobody is mentioning Cisco Meraki gear in the recent HN networking posts. My ideal (budgeted) setup is: - (1x) MX65 -- 12 GbE with 2 PoE+. PoE+ powers the access points. - (2x) MR33 -- 802.11ac Wave 2 powered via MX65.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Doesn't the MR33 cost around $400 each? You can get 3 Unifi AP Pro's for the cost of one MR33. The MX65 costs around $600 -- a 24 port (all with PoE) Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch costs about half that much. I think the reason Ubiquiti gets a lot of write-ups for home use is that it's priced reasonably for the quality. I've had an 8 node small office deployment running flawlessly for 3 years now.
  - nodesocket 10y ago
    Yes Meraki is absolutely more expensive. MX65 - $1,072 with 3 year enterprise subscription https://www.amazon.com/Meraki-Branch-Security-Appliance-250Mbps/dp/B01BSZEW5O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481605491&sr=8-1&keywords=meraki+mx65 https://www.amazon.com/Meraki-Branch-Security-Appliance-250M... MR33 - $646 each with 3 year enterprise subscription https://www.rhinonetworks.com/product/device/meraki-mr33?gclid=CIPemoSz8NACFU6BfgodkF4PLw https://www.rhinonetworks.com/product/device/meraki-mr33?gcl...
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  I wonder how the UI and firmware updates compare to Ubiquiti. Is it IOS or something else?
  - helper 10y ago
    Meraki is completely cloud based. Firmware upgrades happen automatically although you have some options about when they get applied (and you get notification before hand). Having built a software platform that integrated with the big enterprise wifi vendors, I can comfortably say meraki's is the most intuitive and easiest to use.
Thaxll 10y ago
Well unifi had huge issues in the past, and by huge I mean there is a 1000+ page thread on the forum with a super bugy firmware that makes the AP useless for most devices. As of today I still have issue on my iPhone6 / nexus 10 with the patern "full wifi bars slow internet"
peckrob 10y ago
I run UAP-AC-Pros in my house (along with pfSense for a router) and have nothing but good things to say about them. Eliminated the wifi problems I was having and they just work. Rebooted the three I have the other day to install newer firmware after 122 days of uptime. It's nice to have something I don't have to think about much. And they're just a bit more expensive than a good wifi/router combo. For the features it feels like I'm getting the biggest bargain.
boot13 10y ago
Interesting, but not really all that useful for people who don't have loads of money. The rest of us have to make do with consumer grade crap, or do the extra work of finding good hardware and installing useful firmware into it. I'm running an Asus RT-N66U with Advanced Tomato and it works beautifully. Of course, I don't live in a mansion.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
I was in a similar conversation with another friend about networking gear. We both have similar philosophies which are split networks, one guest and one private. The guest network gets things that want to phone home, the private network gets things which are supposed to be on the network, both networks have their outbound accesses logged. Firewall in the router, deep packet inspection with source/destination IPs to identify rogue (or hacked) devices, QoS limits on things that should never get the whole network to themselves. It is way more complex than one would think it should be, except that we've seen time and time again how crappy network configurations screw up everything. It is also helpful to have historical data when complaining to the ISP. It is also amazing to see the guest network which has given out 60 leases, sure some of those are the phones of people who came over but a lot of them are things that want to be "online".
- jon-wood 10y ago
  I keep meaning to set something like that up but get stuck on the problem of giving devices on the private network the ability to interact with the guest network, for example I make pretty heavy use of Spotify Connect for streaming music to speakers, and have Philips Hue lights, both of which need some way of communicating with them from my phone.
andrewfromx 10y ago
silly question could https://eero.com/technology https://eero.com/technology work for this guy much cheaper?
calebm 10y ago
How does the Enterprise Ubiquiti gear differ from their Amplifi system?
swayvil 10y ago
I use Ubiquiti gear (security cams). Solid stuff.
rb2k_ 10y ago
The only thing I'm slightly sad about with my ubiquiti setup is that the Edge Router PoE doesn't integrate with the controller. It's basically the same hardware as the security gateway, but no way to manage it :(
- rblatz 10y ago
  I've been debating getting the USG, why did you pick the edge router? Would you get the USG if you had to do it again? I currently have a UAP AC PRO.
  - rb2k_ 10y ago
    I wanted less devices and I wanted PoE. I would love to see everything in the webinterface for the controller, but I can't really find a good reason to replace my one device with two...
- feistypharit 10y ago
  Truth is once you set it up, I stopped running the Java controller. I got the edge router because it's half the price. One thing I really dislike is it doesn't do DNS name injection for statically configured hosts. You can use Dnsmasq instead and make it work, but then you can't see the leases! I ended up using a raspberry pi to run pihole and do DNS. This video had a good overview: https://youtu.be/XvWOx3PvYFM https://youtu.be/XvWOx3PvYFM The edge router is nice cuz it also has doing and great firewall. One annoying thing is there's no idiot protection... You can lock yourself out of the admin interface and only way to recover is restore factory defaults.
  - rb2k_ 10y ago
    > One annoying thing is there's no idiot protection... You can lock yourself out of the admin interface and only way to recover is restore factory defaults. Been there, done that :)
im3w1l 10y ago
Reads like an ad.
thaumaturgy 10y ago
I'm happy to see Ubiquiti getting some exposure here and on Reddit and other places recently (and also a bit worried that this means they're about to start releasing garbage and/or get bought by Cisco, since that seems to be a phenomenon that happens). We've been installing and using their gear in deployments all over the place for over 5 years now and it always just works. I think we've had to replace two faulty units in that time, out of, I dunno, several dozens. Their software is getting better and better too, and their security camera system is IMO way ahead of most of the competition in the same price range (with the exception of a network disconnection issue that has had us and Ubiquiti tech support tearing our hair out for weeks now). I hate that their management software requires Java though, it can be fiddly and annoying to install and I think one of our techs finally set up a VM specifically for their management software.
- Godel_unicode 10y ago
  Icymi, there are several dockerfiles you can use to install unifi on a Linux box. From earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13158468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13158468
  - zackelan 10y ago
    Yes, but the problem with Dockerizing the Ubiquiti controllers (or at least the Unifi one - I haven't attempted with the others) is that the Java app requires MongoDB, and chooses to spin it up as a child process and treat it as an embedded database. Unless you're careful with volume mounting, restarting the Docker container will lose all your wireless connection info, forcing you to reset the AP to defaults or restore the Mongo instance from a backup.
    - pokemongoaway 10y ago
      Why can't we have docker store it on a mounted volume that it attaches at startup?
      - 10y ago
Cieplak 10y ago
Does anyone know how to tell if a wifi device uses beam-forming versus omnidirectional microwave emissions? I imagine that beam-forming devices expose people to less microwave radiation (2.4 and 5 GHz). Somewhat alarmist but an interesting perspective: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI
- striking 10y ago
  > Somewhat alarmist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Effects_on_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Effects_on_health Microwaves can't hurt you unless you focus the hell out of them, right at yourself. Even then, they can't make you experience the health effects that this handsome fellow was talking about (insomnia, really?). You might get buzzing in your ears if you're right next to a radar dish... and that's about it. FCC guidelines on radio emissions are pretty strict. If people were baking themselves with their Wi-Fi routers, someone would've filed a lawsuit by now. This is what's wrong with TED Talks, and with pop sci / pseudoscience in general. It's all excitement, no truth. See also, "power poses": http://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Big-Ideas-Go-Bad/238544?key=yop9k7-B1QiWD6aZpWTJrwQaFFjhgu-cumdsNS97tdI-aTlXSFvHWZIy2iA1Y0UfSDdsb1ZES1NjYnd5QTllSDNlSG9LVjAzRUl3NVNrVGZhUzRMSWJ5Q1BGdw http://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Big-Ideas-Go-Bad/23854...
  - baobrien 10y ago
    The linked talk is also TEDx -- even less vetting than normal TED.
  - Cieplak 10y ago
    I agree with your overall point that the talk's claims are overblown. > unless you focus the hell out of them By this you mean, increase the intensity of the radiation? Obviously, a person would die inside a microwave oven that uses the same frequency as wifi (2.4Ghz). But it seems myopic to dismiss the possibility that there are no other dangerous effects besides heating. There is still much ongoing research on the effect of pulsed/modulated microwave radiation (as opposed to continuous radiation). As another example, certain RF harmonics are particularly dangerous: At frequencies near the body's natural resonant frequency, RF energy is absorbed more efficiently, and maximum heating occurs http://www.arrl.org/rf-radiation-and-electromagnetic-field-safety http://www.arrl.org/rf-radiation-and-electromagnetic-field-s...
freen 10y ago
I'll repeat what I have said on previous threads: if you have a low RF noise environment, ubiquiti is ideal. Anything else, you need to buy a real system with three radios per node and a smart controller that adjusts channel/power on the fly.
- mey 10y ago
  What would you classify as a real system? Cisco?
- rblatz 10y ago
  I live in an apartment with probably 15 wifi networks visible at any time. Plus my xm radio has recently started cutting out in the parking lot of my apartment, it's either the microwave radio tower or noise coming from the high voltage lines/electrical substation behind my complex. I "upgraded" last Christmas to a Linksys AC router, it was awful had to reboot it daily to get wifi to work, got annoyed and picked up a router and put the Linksys in wireless only mode. Still didn't fix it. So I bought a UniFi AC Pro and it has been rock solid. I can also pick up my wifi network from an incredible distance from my apartment now. So it may not be as good as some of the enterprise stuff, but it's also reasonably priced. I'm extremely pleased with it.
  - jon-wood 10y ago
    You could probably be a good neighbour and turn down the transmit power on your router, your current setup is equivalent to dealing with not being able to hear a conversation in a crowded room by shouting at the top of your voice and forcing everyone else to get louder as well.
    - rblatz 10y ago
      Good point, didn't really think about that. I'll dig in to the settings tonight and see what I have to do to lower th transmit power.
pbarnes_1 10y ago
You can get basically this for multiples of $99 if you buy a bunch of Google Asus OnHub's on eBay and backhaul them over Ethernet with the latest firmware. It has no knobs what-so-ever, but it's as good as Ubiquiti for far less $.
- untog 10y ago
  IIRC OnHub devices are also compatible with the new Google WiFi devices.
drewmol 10y ago
Long time HN listener, first time caller. I've used Ubiquiti products in multiple deployments over the last few years, in both business and residential environments. I have nothing but praise for their hardware quality as well as software features, stability and ease of use. This includes EdgeRouters, PoE switches and UniFi AP's (AC-LR and PRO models). Very satisfied customer, and with lots of experience and headaches involving various mgfs. configuration interfaces or hardware quirks, my only regret is not trying out Ubiquiti products sooner!
remir 10y ago
Would Open Mesh be a good alternative to his setup?
- post_break 10y ago
  We are playing with open mesh for our new building. So far it seems amazing.
sandGorgon 10y ago
what is a good way to connect router or access points OVER WIFI. i dont have wired backhaul in my office and it would be fairly cumbersome to build one. are there APs with two radios each - one for backhaul and one for service?
- esaym 10y ago
  Most netgear prosafe products have a wifi bridge mode (a few variants of it actually) Just search for "bridge" in one of their user manuals and see if that is what you need: http://tinyurl.com/j9nwuqs http://tinyurl.com/j9nwuqs
- nine_k 10y ago
  With packet-switched network, one radio may suffice for both purposes. Likely you're looking for a wifi repeater.
  - MartijnBraam 10y ago
    The wifi repeaters are horrible because they interfere with the source AP so the total signal quality goes down if you use them.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Aren't they directional? They would make no sense at all unless they were directional. Or wired and sufficiently far from the source.
- gh02t 10y ago
  Lots of routers support this, even single-radio consumer stuff with DD-WRT but it dedicates half your bandwidth to uplink and half to clients. Others you can use e.g. the 5ghz radio for uplink and 2.4ghz for clients. I presume there is some enterprise gear that does it too. I know there are consumer products like Eero or Ubiquiti's AmpliFi line have mesh networked repeaters. Especially the AmpliFi might be good enough for you, depending on how demanding your usage is.
shmerl 10y ago
> I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware... No, no, a hundred times no... Silly. If the author doesn't want to follow good advice, too bad for him. I'm using WRT1900ACS with DD-WRT. It works like a charm. > if I buy a product then I expect it to work as advertised and not need to implement hacks to keep it alive. It's not a "hack". It's installing a better quality OS on the device. Again, if the author doesn't want to do that, there is no reason to complain.
- mey 10y ago
  The Author wants support from the MFG for their product to perform as advertised and expected. That isn't silly.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    I suppose Linksys can offer him support. Slowly, and probably after a long time of figuring out what's going on. Author can be upset that it takes time, but that's how things are. Or he can save himself time and install a better OS which probably already fixed this problem and gets more frequent updates. So again, he got a good advice. But he prefers to say no and complain and go buy new hardware. I don't find that a pragmatical choice. And before he said about trying to save time...
- pyre 10y ago
  I think it's a fair criticism of the product that it doesn't work correctly without dd-wrt.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    Oh, I agree that criticism is fair. I just don't think his approach was optimal or even the fastest way to fix those issues (and he said in the beginning, that he wants to save time). Those who recommended him DD-WRT were right, but he didn't listen. That "no, no" answer sounded more like a rant.
    - 10y ago
mitchty 10y ago
So I just got the ac pro access point last week. Its fine, about my only complaint is my laptop will continually drop from ac to n constantly and I'm not more that 15 feet from the AP. My phone stays on ac all the time. Not sure how to fix it. That and the stupid java application needed to configure were not my most favorite on boarding experiences. Seems an ok system but not super great for getting set up. Its definitely enterprise though.
- noja 10y ago
  Did you try enabling band steering?
  - mitchty 10y ago
    I tried logging in but the java app is giving me the middle finger. I seem to recall turning it on, but will have to set that all back up again tonight. I couldn't logon to the AP via their web app but ssh worked. So I just reset it to factory defaults and I'll try again tonight after setting it back up.
    - noja 10y ago
      I've never had problems with the java app, so that surprises me.
      - mitchty 10y ago
        It was weird, but anyway I've data now. Band steering to 5g: same spiel. Balanced: seems to still do the same. Off no big deal. Without mapping the signal to find out if my laptop is in some dead zone while being in direct line of sight of the AP, I can't find a great pattern to it.
        noja 10y ago
        What network card do you have on your laptop? Did you try manually clicking "check for driver update" on the network card itself in device manager?
esaym 10y ago
I've thought about Ubiquiti in the past, but they are not "stand alone" units right? Meaning I am forced into allowing the units to phone home so I can manage them through Ubiquiti's cloud service? (something I don't want or need for a small home set up) Last year I bought my wife and I our first set of "smart" phones. Yes I'm serious, I've been in IT all my life but never felt I had a need for anything other than a flip phone. But I noticed Samsung selling a Galaxy Core Prime for $90 and I bought my wife the LG Stylo for $180 since I wanted her to have a better camera. For my home network, my modem runs into a linux box with Shorewall where it is natted/firewalled and split into two subnets. I've been a fan of the netgear prosafe access points for the last 10 years, as I could always find older models on ebay for cheap. Currently I was using a WN203 (2x2 802n). For the most part it was just my laptop and a Roku box connected. never had problems. But enter in these new smart phones... Within a few weeks (of buying the phones) I noticed random times of terrible wifi lag. Looking at the AP's management webpage, I noticed during these random times of lag, my wife's phone would be connected at just 1M. I'd tell her to restart her phone and the problem would go away for a day or two. But it kept happening. I wasn't sure what the problem was but I used it as an excuse to get another access point, I was wanting one that had 5ghz anyway. I sniped a netgear WNDAP660 (3x3 802n) off of ebay, new in box for $95. They are normally $350 new. Figured that would solve my problems. To my horror after a few days of having the new WNDAP660 set up, I started getting the same terrible lag and my wife's phone would be connected at 1M again. This time though the WNDAP660, through the web interface had an option to save wifi traffic packets. During the next time of lag, I saved a few minutes of packet captures and opened them in wireshark. I was surprised to see that even though my wife's phone was connected at 1M, it was not the issue. My phone (the Core Prime) was spamming pwr_mgt request packets, 100's per second. It was basically using up all the bandwidth. In disgust, I moved everything to the 5ghz band (gave it a different id), and left only my phone on the 2.4ghz. So all was well.... But that was just a couple of months ago. I've since out grown my core prime (which doesn't take much) and bought a Galaxy S6. I turned off the 2.4ghz band on the AP, and now everything (including my new S6) are all connected to 5ghz. And then you guessed it... I was sitting at the kitchen table and noticed lag while trying to browse the net on my laptop. I looked up and noticed the Roku box playing on TV was also stuck loading. I reached over and picked up my new S6 and put it into airplane mode. Instantly all was well on the airwaves. I haven't actually done a packet dump yet, so I don't know if the S6 is spamming pwr mgt requests or not. But this is really annoying. I don't know what is at fault either. It seems smart phones don't play nice. But I've also caught my Roku box spewing RTS requests, even after rebooting it. I thought it had been hacked or something and was trying to dos me, but after restarting one of the cell phones all went back to normal. Its as if certain devices don't play well with each other. I mean, in my original lag case, the core prime was spamming packets, yet restarting my wifes phone would solve the problem just as good as restarting my phone. Makes no sense.... So I guess if you get random lag on wifi, try turning off a cell phone or two until you find the culprit. And once you find it, then.... Well actually I don't know what you do then. Any tips? lol
uean 10y ago
I've taken over deployments of UniFi gear and do not have nice things to say about them. We typically deal in the Aerohive and Meraki world and I find the Ubiquiti zero-handoff to be terrible (I see real-world handoff times of up to 8 seconds in some cases) auto channel selection inneffective, band-steering implementation completely broken, and then just some basic lack of features of things that, to be fair, I wouldn't expect at this price point (L7 firewall, etc) but, given how aggressive some of the marketing has been that the Ubiquiti gear can compete with enterprise grade stuff makes you start to miss the enterprise features. It's too bad that my experience with them is not good as I want to like the stuff, but anything over 3 access points in a typical office environment with competing RF and need for seamless handoff, this stuff just doesn't cut it. I'm a network admin for a small managed service provider. Happy to provide more detail if needed:)
- mrb 10y ago
  Sounds like you have been dealing with older gear. Zero handoff is a deprecated feature which is no longer supported in current products. Nowadays Ubiquiti simply recommends roaming: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-What-is-Zero-Handoff- https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-What...
  - uean 10y ago
    Yes - probably, though our most recent takeover was in August and I didn't see that link. Just knew it was broken and sounds like they're admitting their implementation of an 802.11 standard is broken to me :) The particular link is another gripe I have with Ubiquiti - most of their articles are left up with referral links to new documentation. Here's an example - up until Dec 3rd (from at least October) Ubiquiti marked their only documentation on setting up the UniFi Controller to run as a Windows service (1) as 'Outdated' (2). Dec 3rd they updated it with new instructions (1) - https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144550--Outdated-UniFi-Run-the-controller-as-a-Windows-service https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144550--Outdated-... (2) - https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Run-UniFi-as-a-Windows-service/td-p/1713105 https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Run-UniFi-as-a-...
csmajorfive 10y ago
For those of you well versed in Ubiquiti, what's the recommended approach to connecting two switches that don't have wired backhaul between them? Right now I am using two consumer ASUS routers and one is in "wireless bridge" mode. I don't think the Ubiquiti access points support that model. So what's recommended? The distance between is fairly small but with many walls in between.
- newman314 10y ago
  Maybe their mesh product line would be of help?
  - csmajorfive 10y ago
    I've had bad experiences with other mesh products (Eero, namely) but perhaps.
    - eplanit 10y ago
      Oh -- I'm curious. I just bought a set of Eeros. So far they've made a big improvement (old house, thick walls, etc.). What problems did you have with them?
      - csmajorfive 10y ago
        I found them to be slower than my ASUS AC87 in good coverage areas. Improving areas with spotty coverage was nice but outweighed by the speed hit.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Depends how much bandwidth you need and what the distance is. A pair of Unifi Nanostations (available in 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, 900Mhz models), will give you 100Mbit, a pair of Nanobeams will give you up to 450Mbit. I use a single Nanostation 5Ghz out on the front porch to bridge back to my Unifi Wifi node
  - 10y ago
colanderman 10y ago
For the rest of us with budgets of less than a month's rent, I'd recommend Mikrotik. Just as reliable as an Ubiquiti (as in, never needs a reboot), yet is still a single box you can set in the corner and forget about if you wish. Or set up a mesh of their $20 units to blanket your three-story house if you're so lucky. (Nothing against Ubiquiti which I'm sure is great, but I've been a very happy Mikrotik user for years. Recently updated my main AP to their gigabit (wired and wireless) hAP AC and loving it. I use a second Mikrotik as a fully-bridged repeater, and have an IoT wired+wirless virtual network firewalled off from the rest.)
- tjohns 10y ago
  The two also play very well together, since they're all single-purpose devices. I use a Mikrotik RB2011 (non-WiFi) router for Internet connectivity, and Unifi APs spread throughout the house for wireless. I've had nothing but good things to say about the setup.
- fencepost 10y ago
  The problem with the Mikrotik stuff (speaking as one who uses it) is a level of user friendliness that makes Cisco IOS command line interfaces seem like a good idea. It's possible to do some amazing things. It's also possible to screw up trying to do amazing things (use safe mode for automatic rollback in case your changes lock you out).
- lobster_johnson 10y ago
  I have a Mikrotik HAP AClite. It's a great OS, I love the techy admin and shell access; it's great as a router, and rock solid (haven't needed to reboot it since I bought it last year). But as much as I admire it, I can't recommend it as a wifi access point. It doesn't have an external antenna, and its performance compared to consumer routers is pretty mediocre. I have it running in my office, and in my living room (5m away, only a single wall between them) my AppleTV and Xbox One would continually drop out. Installed my old Asus RT-N56U as an access point connected to the Mikrotik via Ethernet, and haven't had an issue since. Admittedly, I never tried fiddling with it to see if different channels or settings might work better.
alfredxing 10y ago
I have a Ubiquiti setup for WiFi at home (though not as complex as in the blog post - just an EdgeRouter X and UniFi AC Lite). It has never gone down once, and performance is the same as on day 1: ubnt@ubnt:~$ uptime 06:16:26 up 140 days, 13:15, 1 user, load average: 1.08, 1.03, 1.05
ioquatix 10y ago
For something just as awesome but a fraction of the price take a look at MikroTik/RouterBoard Hex GR3 and wAP AC.
- mlvljr 10y ago
  And then know, there is NO documentation for their RouterOS, but rather a wiki (the users are meant to fill ...somehow). Interestingly, wasn't the case with earlier versions of the s/w.
- ianal_uanal 10y ago
  And then good luck configuring them.. UniFi is plug and play. Mikrotik, while relatively easy, requires much more work.
ioquatix 10y ago
For something just as awesome but a fraction of the price take a look at MikroTik/RouterBoard Hex GR3 and wAP AC.
xupybd 10y ago
Ubiquiti is getting some golden press on HN lately.
mahyarm 10y ago
I don't understand why he needed the expensive PoE switches although. He could of used cat 6, consumer non-PoE switches & standard $15 PoE injectors close to the switches themselves. He wouldn't get the fancy interface for the switches, but he would of had similar wireless and wifi performance. Or does Ubiquity require you to use their switches for anything to work properly?
- robotmay 10y ago
  Their UniFi stuff runs on 24v PoE, rather than the standard 48v, so it requires either one of their switches or a compatible injector. Their cameras, oddly, do support standard PoE, however.
- pythonaut_16 10y ago
  I have a Unifi AC Lite and I just use the power injector that came with it. I think for the non-pros they use a non-standard POE, but I'm pretty sure the Pro's can use either Ubiquiti or standard PoE equipment
myrandomcomment 10y ago
So I have posted this before as there has been a ton of Ubiquiti threads. 3 story house, 1 AP AC Pro per floor 1 AP AC Pro in the detached office 1 Switch 16 POE in the house 1 Switch 16 POE in the office - 2 x Cat6a between switches in a LAG 1 Security Gateway 3P 1 Cloud Key I upgraded all the firmware on the complete system as I was typing this message using their app for the iPad. Run a FreeNAS Mini in the office 2 x 1g in a LAG. Run Insteon home automation for lights, plugs, HVAC, Camaras, leak & door sensors. 3 TVs with Intel Compute Stick with Kodi plugged into the TV HDMI. Added USB to 1g on the stick and wired to switch. Logitech Harmony remotes (same in every room) for control. Lots of laptops, phones, pads all wifi. TVs are Wifi for their apps (used Ethernet for Compute Sticks). Every product here is rock solid and just works (okay Kodi is buggy as is the Windows 10 it runs on). I love the Ubiquiti gear. We use the APs in the office at work as well. 2 older APs (2 year old models - plan to upgrade soon) with 35+ devices on it at any time (most are developer laptops with lots of traffic to the DC). We use TrueNAS to boot all the servers, etc (FreeNAS commercial version). So for wifi Ubiquiti is pretty dang good and love FreeNAS (and the IXsystems hardware) if you need a NAS. For less technical I have recommended Eero to a few people and they all say it is quite good so far.
- jagermo 10y ago
  any specific reason you went for the Pro and not the LR?
  - myrandomcomment 10y ago
    Proper coverage is lots of APs at low power. Remember the device on the other end of the connection could be a phone. Just because is can see the LR does not mean it can talk to it.
  - kiallmacinnes 10y ago
    Don't buy the LRs (Long Range versions for those not familiar with the Ubnt naming) unless plan on a low density+large+wide open space (e.g. an auditorium where only staff have wifi access). The trick to GREAT wifi coverage is to turn the power down on each access point as low as you can, and have as many APs as you can. Wifi is a two way street, e.g. even if your AP can blast a signal through 5x 10ft thick walls, it won't matter in the slightest, since your phone or laptop etc won't be able to do the same. In fact - that's a lie :) It will matter, it will hurt the end user experience. The phone etc will see a "strong" signal, select it, but outbound packet loss will be terrible.
sprite 10y ago
I have Eero but not 100% happy with it. For some reason it sometimes drops the connection to my Macbook Pro. Disconnecting and reconnecting wifi bring the connection back up. I've been thinking of making the switch to Ubiquiti and think that is probably the way I should have gone in the first place.
ksec 10y ago
Ubiquiti is nice. But, it is not a consumer brand, most consumer dont need all the options and setup. Its consumer version AmpliFi, doesn't rhyme with me. Hence why i am very sad when I heard the rumors of Airport Extreme being shoved. Most consumer Router as of today, still requires a reset from time to time. Please name me one which doesn't, Linksys, Belkin, Buffalo, Netgear, Dlink, ASUS. Some of these brand may have some router that doesn't require reset, but it is likely 90% of their Range do. And if you think the top end router may be better, think again, sometimes it may overheat just because it was trying to push the top speed, or too new with buggy firmware. Router should only be a one time setup cost. Most Enterprise Router brand, Ubnt, Ruckus ( God they are good ), Aruba are all good. And Apple is the only one i can recommend in a consumer brand, and you only get 2 models to choose from ( Excluding Time Machine ). Cant go wrong, and it is using NetBSD being a bonus.
- amiga-workbench 10y ago
  Sadly those Apple AP's are now discontinued.
tehwalrus 10y ago
Deep packet inspection accessible by a cloud portal?! Sounds like a bug, not a feature...
ErrantX 10y ago
Beware; ubiquiti stuff is pretty good. But the unifi line is amongst the worst they do; the wireless AP's are actually great. But the unifi switches have a tendency to blow up and trip the power circuits. We went through about 3 in 6 months.
b3lvedere 10y ago
Great story. Unfortunately i do not have the luxury to spend $2200 on the network infrastructure in my humble home. I do however have a lot of 2nd hand hardware and am able to invest some time into optimizing them for my family's internet needs. It may not be perfect, but it works 90% of the time and i learn a lot about connecting lots of different devices and (virtual) machines.
- ianal_uanal 10y ago
  You don't have to. You can do it much cheaper with Ubiquiti's products. EdgeRouter X + AP AC (Pro)
- jon-wood 10y ago
  Unless you've got a huge house you don't actually need to drop two thousand dollars on networking gear. I'm covering a three bedroom house using one of Ubiquiti's cheapest AC capable access points and the EdgeRouter-X, the whole lot cost me about £120 which is in the ballpark of a consumer router with wireless, yet massively more capable and reliable. Since installing it I've been able to just stop thinking about my home network. It just takes whatever we throw at it, and the wifi is plenty fast enough to stream HD video to the TV.
- jagermo 10y ago
  1 Unifi LR, 1 Unifi Lite covers all my 150 sqm and cost less than a "high end consumer Wifi Router", about 130 Euros. You don't need so many aps, Troy went a little overboard, imho. And you can start with one LR and just expand the network if you need more.
- pnutjam 10y ago
  Check out RouteOS stuff from MikroTik. It's a little less user friendly, but solid. https://routerboard.com/products/group/20 https://routerboard.com/products/group/20
gaspoweredcat 10y ago
its great gear for an amazing price, its amazing how many inferior setups cost more
legulere 10y ago
As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Wifi won't be the only problems that are caused by such a waste of resources. How are those problems making your life better? Here DSL router/modems by AVM (Fritz!box) are really common and they do their job extraordinarily well for being consumer grade hardware. They also regularly get regular updates and offer most things you need as a consumer in one device. (No you don't need a special DHCP server device). There are also other decent consumer grade wifi routers like the now discontinued ones by Apple
- madeofpalk 10y ago
  > As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Surely some Europeans live in large houses, right? He's living in a freestanding house in a more regional part of Australia. Travel into the city in Australia and you'll find smaller dwellings, like my 56sqm apartment :)
  - spiderfarmer 10y ago
    Still, Australian houses (on average) are 2 times the size of German houses: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-home-size-by-country/article27181802/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-ho...
    - madeofpalk 10y ago
      You're right, now that I think about it 500sq is quite large. He does mention it's a three-story house (which is still quite large). That's a great source though I never knew that Australia has the largest average home size. It's interesting considering Australia very large and very sparsely populated (on average), yet most people live in cities.
      - Klathmon 10y ago
        It seems like it's no big deal depending on where you live. I could move a few hours away and get a 3-story 500sq meter house for about as much as it would cost me to own my condo where I do live. It's all about location, and in places like australia or america where there is space galore in some places, it's not unsurprising that people build bigger (especially when it doesn't really cost all that much more comparatively)
IshKebab 10y ago
I wish he/they would use '2.4 GHz' and '5 GHz' instead of '2G' and '5G' which are already things. That's definitely going to cause confusion.
technofiend 10y ago
Based on Reddit threads and an immediate need due to hardware failure I tried the edge router. I have to say I like UI and it was painless to set up. There a plenty of sample configs to choose from and the community seems active and helpful. Unfortunately, the internet being the hostile place it is, my edgerouter struggles to stay up for more than a couple of days before I have to power cycle the device. There may be a fix based on packet filtering beyond a simple NAT ruleset I'm using but it wasn't really worth my time to fix a $60 device when another refurbished PC from Microcenter is twice that and will stay up for months. Move two NICs, a hard drive and done. Still at some point I plan to set a bridge mode packet capture device between the edge router and cable modem to see what's knocking it over. But at least for a painless setup that my wife doesn't have to reboot the edge router didn't work out, which is too bad. I would otherwise recommend them on price alone.
loop0 10y ago
Ubiquiti Unifi APs saved our network here at the company. Because everyone here uses macbook pros our network is about 95% wireless and lately we where suffering with connection drops and poor bandwith. We changed all our APs to ubiquiti unifi ap pro, now the coverage is awesome and we don't experience any kind of problems. I like the fact that you can control everything from a unified web app. We have an average of 100 connected devices distributed in 4 aps.
- lostboys67 10y ago
  why not just move your mac users to wired which is what we did brought Ethernet adaptors for all the macs which spend most of there time on a desk and don't "need" wifi
lightedman 10y ago
One could just as easily get a few cheap laptops from a rummage sale and install Linux on them and turn them into powerful APs within a few minutes with a live environment.
- kiallmacinnes 10y ago
  While I agree that you can, and I have done so before (at home). There's frankly no way I would ever even consider something like this in a business environment. Depending on your work situation, i.e. full or most time work from home, this would include my home.
  - lightedman 10y ago
    I would especially do this in a work situation. At least with a Linux install I don't have to worry about all these typical routers and switches with their built-in hardcoded vulnerabilities threatening my work network security.
dorfsmay 10y ago
I like Ubiquiti and use them at home (switch and APs), they are the best at their price point in my opinion. They can't compare with expensive professional gear, and I'm OK with that, but what bothers me about them are weird bugs that makes you wonder about how much testing they do outside a few default cases. They fixed the most problematic one, but I gave up and work around the other one.
problems 10y ago
I was considering going the Ubiquiti way, but I'm using the dirt cheap ASUS stuff with customized firmware and getting over 500mbit on WiFi. The Ubiquiti stuff is pricy and given their nasty history with GPL violations I've abandoned it. I have to reboot my fibre terminal more than my wireless router anyways, and even that's only about twice a year.
- maratd 10y ago
  Yes, Ubiquiti is pricy. Yes, they have GPL issues ... but so does everyone in the industry. You can mod off-the-shelf hardware and get decent performance. I've done it. The issue with going that route is stability. I've modded Linksys, Asus, etc. over the years and while they might perform well for a day or two, I always end up with stability issues and weird behavior. Ubiquiti is rock solid and performs well. They provide advanced features out of the box, no need for custom firmware or purchase of licenses. There's a reason people like them.
ehosca 10y ago
+1 for Ubiquiti UAP-AC, uptime 248 days and counting
luckydude 10y ago
I had 3 of the same Linksys boxes, had exactly the same problems, moved to UniFi stuff and couldn't be happier. I've got two APs in the main house, one in the barn (man cave, exercise room), and still have one Linksys in the guest house. Which gets power cycled when I need it. I really don't get how Linksys screwed the pooch, but they did. $300 AP that doesn't work. Edit: one config that made them work better for me was to change some setting from maximum speed to maximum distance, without that the connection was pretty short range. The lower speed is still faster than my internet connection so I'm fine with it.
- flyinghamster 10y ago
  I've had cold feet about Linksys ever since Belkin acquired them.* I'm still running a couple of refurbished D-Link DIR825-C1 units (dual-band N300) with DD-WRT on both, and they work beautifully. I don't see any great need at this time to switch to 802.11ac. Since I bought them specifically to run DD-WRT, reflashing them wasn't a big deal for me, though it wasn't quite as easy to do as reflashing a classic WRT54G. * Belkin has been on my "don't buy anything of theirs except cables, and even then look for an alternative" list ever since their 2003 router spam fiasco. Sure, they backed off, but the fact that they even considered doing such a thing in the first place is asinine. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/help_my_belkin_router/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/help_my_belkin_route... (sorry for the Reg link, they weren't that bad in that era)
Icedcool 10y ago
> I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware... No, no, a hundred times no... Author didn't want to try a new OS on his device, and instead opted to spend an additional 2.1k on enterprise level devices. While this did 'fix' it, he wasn't really innovative or creative. Just was willing to spend more money. A similar example might be, "How I fixed my car" - Bought a new one.
- cc438 10y ago
  I fully agree with your take on this being an exercise in throwing money at a problem until it goes away. He probably didn't even need to go as far as diving headfirst into the world of fussy custom firmware to solve this issue either, Asus hardware comparable to his Linksys equipment is recommended so often that I can't imagine he researched the topic before making his buying decision.
vels 10y ago
Just a note for anyone who wants to try this, without spending $2k, you can just purchase the UAP AC PRO access points c. $100-150 each and connect them to your existing switch / router (dosnt have to be Ubiquity kit, have even done basic installs using an ISP provided router.
caycep 10y ago
For a ~$1500 square feet house, how are their AmplifiHD consumer WiFi Mesh network products? The reviews seem to say they are more consistent than Eero/Google equivalents. Also, my one paranoid worry about routers are the frequency of security updates...my TP-link hasn't had a patch for 2 years, and I'm hoping Ubiquiti has a better track record to avoid things like a Mirai infestation...
- zwily 10y ago
  Ubiquiti Unifi updates are pretty consistent, and I've never had any problems installing them.
ichilton 10y ago
I really like the Unifi - i've run it for a while and not had a single problem. I do have a big gripe though - it has a hard wired limit of 4x SSIDs for each access point. I run a number of VLANs, each with their own SSID - and it means I can only have the Unifi provide my main ones and have to run an old Netgear router on different wifi channels to provide the rest :( I've never quite understood why my cheap routers running OpenWRT can seemingly have unlimited (or at least a lot of) SSIDs, where an expensive Unifi will only provide 4.
no_wizard 10y ago
I know I'm a little late to the party, but the Linksys routers he did buy originally are completely openWRT compatible (and here i'm gonna plug it, www.openwrt.org), so i have to ask, why not put openwrt on these guys? I have the exact same routers, and they were terrible with the linksys stock firmware, but once I install openwrt it was actually quite nice. Had to upgrade the antennas on one though, beyond that, it was pretty good. Not that I'm knocking ubiquiti, cause they're amazing, btw.
- soylentcola 10y ago
  At least according to the article, he didn't like the option. > After venting on Twitter, I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware or that I should buy a power adaptor that can automatically cycle the power every night. No, no, a hundred times no to both - if I buy a product then I expect it to work as advertised and not need to implement hacks to keep it alive. It's his prerogative of course but I'd definitely have tried a quick software fix like this before going out and buying $2k worth of all new gear. Maybe it would've solved the issues and maybe it wouldn't but in terms of time and money sunk into it, I think trying out the improved firmware would've been the logical step before moving on to new hardware. But then again everyone has a different level of aversion to different things so maybe his aversion to messing with open firmware was as strong as my aversion to buying more stuff. In the end, the blog post was about his solution and it's still good info to have.
  - no_wizard 10y ago
    This is a completely good point and exposes that I did not read the post close enough so sorry about that. These are excellent points

329 points by jimmcslim 10y ago

Ubiquiti is the best. Their stuff rivals and even beats lots of the more expensive stuff at a fraction of the price. It's all very high quality but so cheap that you think they are joking when you see the price. Edge router: amazing Edge switch: amazing AC access points: amazing I've never tried any of the unifi stuff though.

dlgeek 10y ago
The AC access points are UniFi unless you have some now-discontinued product.
- tbrock 10y ago
  I meant the unifi switches and routers
  - dajohnson89 10y ago
    Then why did you say you never tried the unifi stuff?
    - tbrock 10y ago
      Because I meant those lines of switches and routers. I think it its pretty clear from context if you know anything about their equipment that they have two lines of routers and switches but only one line of wifi gear and that I'm clearly referring to the routers and switches above in my reply.
trome 10y ago
Their AC APs are pretty power intensive, last time I tried them they were drawing well over 20 watts each, which would have required we replace our switches due to the power requirements.
- graton 10y ago
  https://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/unifi/UniFi_AC_APs_DS.pdf https://dl.ubnt.com/datasheets/unifi/UniFi_AC_APs_DS.pdf UAP-AC-Lite & UAP-AC-LR: 6.5 watts maximum UAP-AC-Pro: 9 watts maximum UAP-AC-Edu: 20 watts maximum, but it does have a speaker for doing announcements
  - pmlnr 10y ago
    Power drained from the network != power consumption if the device. There is a power adapter in between, and depending on it's quality, that thing can make a lot of watts disappear.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- kiallmacinnes 10y ago
  Looking at the data from my Unifi switch, each UAP-AC-PRO is drawing 2.5 to 4.5W.

mmastrac 10y ago

I have Unifi AC APs in my house. Expensive, but 100% worth it. They've struck a really great balance between configurability+power/ease-of-use. I compare it to my Mikrotik switch that while being able to do pretty much anything I could want to do, has such a steep learning curve that I ended up just using it as a slightly fancy home firewall/switch. I'm considering pulling the trigger on the Ubiquiti switches and another three AC units for my house to cover the last few dead zones. It's been one of my favorite purchases. I really want to play around with VLANs for guest networks.

gh02t 10y ago
Yeah I have a Mikrotik manages switch and Ubiquiti router. The Mikrotik UI feels like I can do absolutely crazy stuff but I can't figure out how. Ubiquiti can do the same stuff but is a little more reserved in how many knobs and options it shows you. Both are great hardware, but different bends - Mikrotik is "here is everything you could ever com figure out what you want" while Ubiquiti is "with great power comes responsibility." I like both a lot, but I think Ubiquiti has the edge if I had to choose.

mrbill 10y ago

Love my Edgerouters and UAP access points. Currently running an ERX and a UAP-AC-LR.

nikcub 10y ago

The best side effect of buying proper WiFi gear is breaking up what is for most people usually an all-in-one device into devices - modem, router, access point - that are dedicated to each distinct task. The high-end gear many get for running open firmware can get expensive. It isn't hard to spend less money on dedicated devices and get better performance. What I spent on an EdgeRouter, AP AC Pro and a good managed switch is less than what the top recommendation from this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113766 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13113766 cost - $250 for the Linksys EA8500 vs $130 + $50 for the UniFi setup and add $50 for a TP-Link switch. I now want to get a bit fancier with the router - so i'm swapping it out for an eBay sourced Cisco or similar (I want dual WAN and failover, along with routing some traffic over VPN's) - still cost the same but much better (and a setup that is applicable up to 100+ users)

jon-wood 10y ago
Which Edgerouter did you get, because at the firmware level its quite capable of WAN failover and routing over VPNs if you've got enough ethernet ports on it.
- nikcub 10y ago
  I got the X - added it to my shopping basket as an afterthought and ended up using it as my primary WAN router (replacing pfSense on VMWare ESXi) I had someone tell me on Twitter to try out the better models because there is a lot you can do with them, and i've seen references to it before on other forums (it seems it is common now to do VPN routing setups on EdgeRouters) I might give it a go - I do like trying different things out to get some experience across diff products

finnn 10y ago

Since we're all saying nice things about Ubiquiti, I feel obliged to point out that they are actively violating the GPL: http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/ http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/

supercoder 10y ago
Oh well.
sargun 10y ago
So are the following: -Tesla -Eero -Pluot
- esaym 10y ago
  Doesn't make it ok. But dang hate to see Tesla on there :(
- nine_k 10y ago
  Having a somehow famous name does not make a deplorable action magically virtuous.
  - duopixel 10y ago
    OP made no moral claim, just stated unreferenced facts.
    - noja 10y ago
      Nothing is so black and white. If you point out that others are engaging in bad behaviour, then it makes that bad behaviour look less bad.
      - rhizome 10y ago
        That depends entirely on the ethics of the looker, but are you really saying that people would engage in fewer acts of bad behavior if other people didn't point them out when they did?

nodesocket 10y ago

Great write up, love all the details. Surprised that nobody is mentioning Cisco Meraki gear in the recent HN networking posts. My ideal (budgeted) setup is: - (1x) MX65 -- 12 GbE with 2 PoE+. PoE+ powers the access points. - (2x) MR33 -- 802.11ac Wave 2 powered via MX65.

Johnny555 10y ago
Doesn't the MR33 cost around $400 each? You can get 3 Unifi AP Pro's for the cost of one MR33. The MX65 costs around $600 -- a 24 port (all with PoE) Ubiquiti EdgeSwitch costs about half that much. I think the reason Ubiquiti gets a lot of write-ups for home use is that it's priced reasonably for the quality. I've had an 8 node small office deployment running flawlessly for 3 years now.
- nodesocket 10y ago
  Yes Meraki is absolutely more expensive. MX65 - $1,072 with 3 year enterprise subscription https://www.amazon.com/Meraki-Branch-Security-Appliance-250Mbps/dp/B01BSZEW5O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481605491&sr=8-1&keywords=meraki+mx65 https://www.amazon.com/Meraki-Branch-Security-Appliance-250M... MR33 - $646 each with 3 year enterprise subscription https://www.rhinonetworks.com/product/device/meraki-mr33?gclid=CIPemoSz8NACFU6BfgodkF4PLw https://www.rhinonetworks.com/product/device/meraki-mr33?gcl...
voltagex_ 10y ago
I wonder how the UI and firmware updates compare to Ubiquiti. Is it IOS or something else?
- helper 10y ago
  Meraki is completely cloud based. Firmware upgrades happen automatically although you have some options about when they get applied (and you get notification before hand). Having built a software platform that integrated with the big enterprise wifi vendors, I can comfortably say meraki's is the most intuitive and easiest to use.

Thaxll 10y ago

Well unifi had huge issues in the past, and by huge I mean there is a 1000+ page thread on the forum with a super bugy firmware that makes the AP useless for most devices. As of today I still have issue on my iPhone6 / nexus 10 with the patern "full wifi bars slow internet"

peckrob 10y ago

I run UAP-AC-Pros in my house (along with pfSense for a router) and have nothing but good things to say about them. Eliminated the wifi problems I was having and they just work. Rebooted the three I have the other day to install newer firmware after 122 days of uptime. It's nice to have something I don't have to think about much. And they're just a bit more expensive than a good wifi/router combo. For the features it feels like I'm getting the biggest bargain.

boot13 10y ago

Interesting, but not really all that useful for people who don't have loads of money. The rest of us have to make do with consumer grade crap, or do the extra work of finding good hardware and installing useful firmware into it. I'm running an Asus RT-N66U with Advanced Tomato and it works beautifully. Of course, I don't live in a mansion.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

I was in a similar conversation with another friend about networking gear. We both have similar philosophies which are split networks, one guest and one private. The guest network gets things that want to phone home, the private network gets things which are supposed to be on the network, both networks have their outbound accesses logged. Firewall in the router, deep packet inspection with source/destination IPs to identify rogue (or hacked) devices, QoS limits on things that should never get the whole network to themselves. It is way more complex than one would think it should be, except that we've seen time and time again how crappy network configurations screw up everything. It is also helpful to have historical data when complaining to the ISP. It is also amazing to see the guest network which has given out 60 leases, sure some of those are the phones of people who came over but a lot of them are things that want to be "online".

jon-wood 10y ago
I keep meaning to set something like that up but get stuck on the problem of giving devices on the private network the ability to interact with the guest network, for example I make pretty heavy use of Spotify Connect for streaming music to speakers, and have Philips Hue lights, both of which need some way of communicating with them from my phone.

andrewfromx 10y ago

silly question could https://eero.com/technology https://eero.com/technology work for this guy much cheaper?

calebm 10y ago

How does the Enterprise Ubiquiti gear differ from their Amplifi system?

swayvil 10y ago

I use Ubiquiti gear (security cams). Solid stuff.

rb2k_ 10y ago

The only thing I'm slightly sad about with my ubiquiti setup is that the Edge Router PoE doesn't integrate with the controller. It's basically the same hardware as the security gateway, but no way to manage it :(

rblatz 10y ago
I've been debating getting the USG, why did you pick the edge router? Would you get the USG if you had to do it again? I currently have a UAP AC PRO.
- rb2k_ 10y ago
  I wanted less devices and I wanted PoE. I would love to see everything in the webinterface for the controller, but I can't really find a good reason to replace my one device with two...
feistypharit 10y ago
Truth is once you set it up, I stopped running the Java controller. I got the edge router because it's half the price. One thing I really dislike is it doesn't do DNS name injection for statically configured hosts. You can use Dnsmasq instead and make it work, but then you can't see the leases! I ended up using a raspberry pi to run pihole and do DNS. This video had a good overview: https://youtu.be/XvWOx3PvYFM https://youtu.be/XvWOx3PvYFM The edge router is nice cuz it also has doing and great firewall. One annoying thing is there's no idiot protection... You can lock yourself out of the admin interface and only way to recover is restore factory defaults.
- rb2k_ 10y ago
  > One annoying thing is there's no idiot protection... You can lock yourself out of the admin interface and only way to recover is restore factory defaults. Been there, done that :)

im3w1l 10y ago

Reads like an ad.

thaumaturgy 10y ago

I'm happy to see Ubiquiti getting some exposure here and on Reddit and other places recently (and also a bit worried that this means they're about to start releasing garbage and/or get bought by Cisco, since that seems to be a phenomenon that happens). We've been installing and using their gear in deployments all over the place for over 5 years now and it always just works. I think we've had to replace two faulty units in that time, out of, I dunno, several dozens. Their software is getting better and better too, and their security camera system is IMO way ahead of most of the competition in the same price range (with the exception of a network disconnection issue that has had us and Ubiquiti tech support tearing our hair out for weeks now). I hate that their management software requires Java though, it can be fiddly and annoying to install and I think one of our techs finally set up a VM specifically for their management software.

Godel_unicode 10y ago
Icymi, there are several dockerfiles you can use to install unifi on a Linux box. From earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13158468 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13158468
- zackelan 10y ago
  Yes, but the problem with Dockerizing the Ubiquiti controllers (or at least the Unifi one - I haven't attempted with the others) is that the Java app requires MongoDB, and chooses to spin it up as a child process and treat it as an embedded database. Unless you're careful with volume mounting, restarting the Docker container will lose all your wireless connection info, forcing you to reset the AP to defaults or restore the Mongo instance from a backup.
  - pokemongoaway 10y ago
    Why can't we have docker store it on a mounted volume that it attaches at startup?
    - 10y ago

Cieplak 10y ago

Does anyone know how to tell if a wifi device uses beam-forming versus omnidirectional microwave emissions? I imagine that beam-forming devices expose people to less microwave radiation (2.4 and 5 GHz). Somewhat alarmist but an interesting perspective: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI

striking 10y ago
> Somewhat alarmist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Effects_on_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microwave#Effects_on_health Microwaves can't hurt you unless you focus the hell out of them, right at yourself. Even then, they can't make you experience the health effects that this handsome fellow was talking about (insomnia, really?). You might get buzzing in your ears if you're right next to a radar dish... and that's about it. FCC guidelines on radio emissions are pretty strict. If people were baking themselves with their Wi-Fi routers, someone would've filed a lawsuit by now. This is what's wrong with TED Talks, and with pop sci / pseudoscience in general. It's all excitement, no truth. See also, "power poses": http://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Big-Ideas-Go-Bad/238544?key=yop9k7-B1QiWD6aZpWTJrwQaFFjhgu-cumdsNS97tdI-aTlXSFvHWZIy2iA1Y0UfSDdsb1ZES1NjYnd5QTllSDNlSG9LVjAzRUl3NVNrVGZhUzRMSWJ5Q1BGdw http://www.chronicle.com/article/When-Big-Ideas-Go-Bad/23854...
- baobrien 10y ago
  The linked talk is also TEDx -- even less vetting than normal TED.
- Cieplak 10y ago
  I agree with your overall point that the talk's claims are overblown. > unless you focus the hell out of them By this you mean, increase the intensity of the radiation? Obviously, a person would die inside a microwave oven that uses the same frequency as wifi (2.4Ghz). But it seems myopic to dismiss the possibility that there are no other dangerous effects besides heating. There is still much ongoing research on the effect of pulsed/modulated microwave radiation (as opposed to continuous radiation). As another example, certain RF harmonics are particularly dangerous: At frequencies near the body's natural resonant frequency, RF energy is absorbed more efficiently, and maximum heating occurs http://www.arrl.org/rf-radiation-and-electromagnetic-field-safety http://www.arrl.org/rf-radiation-and-electromagnetic-field-s...

freen 10y ago

I'll repeat what I have said on previous threads: if you have a low RF noise environment, ubiquiti is ideal. Anything else, you need to buy a real system with three radios per node and a smart controller that adjusts channel/power on the fly.

mey 10y ago
What would you classify as a real system? Cisco?
rblatz 10y ago
I live in an apartment with probably 15 wifi networks visible at any time. Plus my xm radio has recently started cutting out in the parking lot of my apartment, it's either the microwave radio tower or noise coming from the high voltage lines/electrical substation behind my complex. I "upgraded" last Christmas to a Linksys AC router, it was awful had to reboot it daily to get wifi to work, got annoyed and picked up a router and put the Linksys in wireless only mode. Still didn't fix it. So I bought a UniFi AC Pro and it has been rock solid. I can also pick up my wifi network from an incredible distance from my apartment now. So it may not be as good as some of the enterprise stuff, but it's also reasonably priced. I'm extremely pleased with it.
- jon-wood 10y ago
  You could probably be a good neighbour and turn down the transmit power on your router, your current setup is equivalent to dealing with not being able to hear a conversation in a crowded room by shouting at the top of your voice and forcing everyone else to get louder as well.
  - rblatz 10y ago
    Good point, didn't really think about that. I'll dig in to the settings tonight and see what I have to do to lower th transmit power.

pbarnes_1 10y ago

You can get basically this for multiples of $99 if you buy a bunch of Google Asus OnHub's on eBay and backhaul them over Ethernet with the latest firmware. It has no knobs what-so-ever, but it's as good as Ubiquiti for far less $.

untog 10y ago
IIRC OnHub devices are also compatible with the new Google WiFi devices.

drewmol 10y ago

Long time HN listener, first time caller. I've used Ubiquiti products in multiple deployments over the last few years, in both business and residential environments. I have nothing but praise for their hardware quality as well as software features, stability and ease of use. This includes EdgeRouters, PoE switches and UniFi AP's (AC-LR and PRO models). Very satisfied customer, and with lots of experience and headaches involving various mgfs. configuration interfaces or hardware quirks, my only regret is not trying out Ubiquiti products sooner!

remir 10y ago

Would Open Mesh be a good alternative to his setup?

post_break 10y ago
We are playing with open mesh for our new building. So far it seems amazing.

sandGorgon 10y ago

what is a good way to connect router or access points OVER WIFI. i dont have wired backhaul in my office and it would be fairly cumbersome to build one. are there APs with two radios each - one for backhaul and one for service?

esaym 10y ago
Most netgear prosafe products have a wifi bridge mode (a few variants of it actually) Just search for "bridge" in one of their user manuals and see if that is what you need: http://tinyurl.com/j9nwuqs http://tinyurl.com/j9nwuqs
nine_k 10y ago
With packet-switched network, one radio may suffice for both purposes. Likely you're looking for a wifi repeater.
- MartijnBraam 10y ago
  The wifi repeaters are horrible because they interfere with the source AP so the total signal quality goes down if you use them.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Aren't they directional? They would make no sense at all unless they were directional. Or wired and sufficiently far from the source.
gh02t 10y ago
Lots of routers support this, even single-radio consumer stuff with DD-WRT but it dedicates half your bandwidth to uplink and half to clients. Others you can use e.g. the 5ghz radio for uplink and 2.4ghz for clients. I presume there is some enterprise gear that does it too. I know there are consumer products like Eero or Ubiquiti's AmpliFi line have mesh networked repeaters. Especially the AmpliFi might be good enough for you, depending on how demanding your usage is.

shmerl 10y ago

> I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware... No, no, a hundred times no... Silly. If the author doesn't want to follow good advice, too bad for him. I'm using WRT1900ACS with DD-WRT. It works like a charm. > if I buy a product then I expect it to work as advertised and not need to implement hacks to keep it alive. It's not a "hack". It's installing a better quality OS on the device. Again, if the author doesn't want to do that, there is no reason to complain.

mey 10y ago
The Author wants support from the MFG for their product to perform as advertised and expected. That isn't silly.
- shmerl 10y ago
  I suppose Linksys can offer him support. Slowly, and probably after a long time of figuring out what's going on. Author can be upset that it takes time, but that's how things are. Or he can save himself time and install a better OS which probably already fixed this problem and gets more frequent updates. So again, he got a good advice. But he prefers to say no and complain and go buy new hardware. I don't find that a pragmatical choice. And before he said about trying to save time...
pyre 10y ago
I think it's a fair criticism of the product that it doesn't work correctly without dd-wrt.
- shmerl 10y ago
  Oh, I agree that criticism is fair. I just don't think his approach was optimal or even the fastest way to fix those issues (and he said in the beginning, that he wants to save time). Those who recommended him DD-WRT were right, but he didn't listen. That "no, no" answer sounded more like a rant.
  - 10y ago

mitchty 10y ago

So I just got the ac pro access point last week. Its fine, about my only complaint is my laptop will continually drop from ac to n constantly and I'm not more that 15 feet from the AP. My phone stays on ac all the time. Not sure how to fix it. That and the stupid java application needed to configure were not my most favorite on boarding experiences. Seems an ok system but not super great for getting set up. Its definitely enterprise though.

noja 10y ago
Did you try enabling band steering?
- mitchty 10y ago
  I tried logging in but the java app is giving me the middle finger. I seem to recall turning it on, but will have to set that all back up again tonight. I couldn't logon to the AP via their web app but ssh worked. So I just reset it to factory defaults and I'll try again tonight after setting it back up.
  - noja 10y ago
    I've never had problems with the java app, so that surprises me.
    - mitchty 10y ago
      It was weird, but anyway I've data now. Band steering to 5g: same spiel. Balanced: seems to still do the same. Off no big deal. Without mapping the signal to find out if my laptop is in some dead zone while being in direct line of sight of the AP, I can't find a great pattern to it.
      - noja 10y ago
        What network card do you have on your laptop? Did you try manually clicking "check for driver update" on the network card itself in device manager?

esaym 10y ago

I've thought about Ubiquiti in the past, but they are not "stand alone" units right? Meaning I am forced into allowing the units to phone home so I can manage them through Ubiquiti's cloud service? (something I don't want or need for a small home set up) Last year I bought my wife and I our first set of "smart" phones. Yes I'm serious, I've been in IT all my life but never felt I had a need for anything other than a flip phone. But I noticed Samsung selling a Galaxy Core Prime for $90 and I bought my wife the LG Stylo for $180 since I wanted her to have a better camera. For my home network, my modem runs into a linux box with Shorewall where it is natted/firewalled and split into two subnets. I've been a fan of the netgear prosafe access points for the last 10 years, as I could always find older models on ebay for cheap. Currently I was using a WN203 (2x2 802n). For the most part it was just my laptop and a Roku box connected. never had problems. But enter in these new smart phones... Within a few weeks (of buying the phones) I noticed random times of terrible wifi lag. Looking at the AP's management webpage, I noticed during these random times of lag, my wife's phone would be connected at just 1M. I'd tell her to restart her phone and the problem would go away for a day or two. But it kept happening. I wasn't sure what the problem was but I used it as an excuse to get another access point, I was wanting one that had 5ghz anyway. I sniped a netgear WNDAP660 (3x3 802n) off of ebay, new in box for $95. They are normally $350 new. Figured that would solve my problems. To my horror after a few days of having the new WNDAP660 set up, I started getting the same terrible lag and my wife's phone would be connected at 1M again. This time though the WNDAP660, through the web interface had an option to save wifi traffic packets. During the next time of lag, I saved a few minutes of packet captures and opened them in wireshark. I was surprised to see that even though my wife's phone was connected at 1M, it was not the issue. My phone (the Core Prime) was spamming pwr_mgt request packets, 100's per second. It was basically using up all the bandwidth. In disgust, I moved everything to the 5ghz band (gave it a different id), and left only my phone on the 2.4ghz. So all was well.... But that was just a couple of months ago. I've since out grown my core prime (which doesn't take much) and bought a Galaxy S6. I turned off the 2.4ghz band on the AP, and now everything (including my new S6) are all connected to 5ghz. And then you guessed it... I was sitting at the kitchen table and noticed lag while trying to browse the net on my laptop. I looked up and noticed the Roku box playing on TV was also stuck loading. I reached over and picked up my new S6 and put it into airplane mode. Instantly all was well on the airwaves. I haven't actually done a packet dump yet, so I don't know if the S6 is spamming pwr mgt requests or not. But this is really annoying. I don't know what is at fault either. It seems smart phones don't play nice. But I've also caught my Roku box spewing RTS requests, even after rebooting it. I thought it had been hacked or something and was trying to dos me, but after restarting one of the cell phones all went back to normal. Its as if certain devices don't play well with each other. I mean, in my original lag case, the core prime was spamming packets, yet restarting my wifes phone would solve the problem just as good as restarting my phone. Makes no sense.... So I guess if you get random lag on wifi, try turning off a cell phone or two until you find the culprit. And once you find it, then.... Well actually I don't know what you do then. Any tips? lol

uean 10y ago

I've taken over deployments of UniFi gear and do not have nice things to say about them. We typically deal in the Aerohive and Meraki world and I find the Ubiquiti zero-handoff to be terrible (I see real-world handoff times of up to 8 seconds in some cases) auto channel selection inneffective, band-steering implementation completely broken, and then just some basic lack of features of things that, to be fair, I wouldn't expect at this price point (L7 firewall, etc) but, given how aggressive some of the marketing has been that the Ubiquiti gear can compete with enterprise grade stuff makes you start to miss the enterprise features. It's too bad that my experience with them is not good as I want to like the stuff, but anything over 3 access points in a typical office environment with competing RF and need for seamless handoff, this stuff just doesn't cut it. I'm a network admin for a small managed service provider. Happy to provide more detail if needed:)

mrb 10y ago
Sounds like you have been dealing with older gear. Zero handoff is a deprecated feature which is no longer supported in current products. Nowadays Ubiquiti simply recommends roaming: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-What-is-Zero-Handoff- https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-What...
- uean 10y ago
  Yes - probably, though our most recent takeover was in August and I didn't see that link. Just knew it was broken and sounds like they're admitting their implementation of an 802.11 standard is broken to me :) The particular link is another gripe I have with Ubiquiti - most of their articles are left up with referral links to new documentation. Here's an example - up until Dec 3rd (from at least October) Ubiquiti marked their only documentation on setting up the UniFi Controller to run as a Windows service (1) as 'Outdated' (2). Dec 3rd they updated it with new instructions (1) - https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144550--Outdated-UniFi-Run-the-controller-as-a-Windows-service https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144550--Outdated-... (2) - https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Run-UniFi-as-a-Windows-service/td-p/1713105 https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Wireless/Run-UniFi-as-a-...

csmajorfive 10y ago

For those of you well versed in Ubiquiti, what's the recommended approach to connecting two switches that don't have wired backhaul between them? Right now I am using two consumer ASUS routers and one is in "wireless bridge" mode. I don't think the Ubiquiti access points support that model. So what's recommended? The distance between is fairly small but with many walls in between.

newman314 10y ago
Maybe their mesh product line would be of help?
- csmajorfive 10y ago
  I've had bad experiences with other mesh products (Eero, namely) but perhaps.
  - eplanit 10y ago
    Oh -- I'm curious. I just bought a set of Eeros. So far they've made a big improvement (old house, thick walls, etc.). What problems did you have with them?
    - csmajorfive 10y ago
      I found them to be slower than my ASUS AC87 in good coverage areas. Improving areas with spotty coverage was nice but outweighed by the speed hit.
Johnny555 10y ago
Depends how much bandwidth you need and what the distance is. A pair of Unifi Nanostations (available in 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, 900Mhz models), will give you 100Mbit, a pair of Nanobeams will give you up to 450Mbit. I use a single Nanostation 5Ghz out on the front porch to bridge back to my Unifi Wifi node
- 10y ago

colanderman 10y ago

For the rest of us with budgets of less than a month's rent, I'd recommend Mikrotik. Just as reliable as an Ubiquiti (as in, never needs a reboot), yet is still a single box you can set in the corner and forget about if you wish. Or set up a mesh of their $20 units to blanket your three-story house if you're so lucky. (Nothing against Ubiquiti which I'm sure is great, but I've been a very happy Mikrotik user for years. Recently updated my main AP to their gigabit (wired and wireless) hAP AC and loving it. I use a second Mikrotik as a fully-bridged repeater, and have an IoT wired+wirless virtual network firewalled off from the rest.)

tjohns 10y ago
The two also play very well together, since they're all single-purpose devices. I use a Mikrotik RB2011 (non-WiFi) router for Internet connectivity, and Unifi APs spread throughout the house for wireless. I've had nothing but good things to say about the setup.
fencepost 10y ago
The problem with the Mikrotik stuff (speaking as one who uses it) is a level of user friendliness that makes Cisco IOS command line interfaces seem like a good idea. It's possible to do some amazing things. It's also possible to screw up trying to do amazing things (use safe mode for automatic rollback in case your changes lock you out).
lobster_johnson 10y ago
I have a Mikrotik HAP AClite. It's a great OS, I love the techy admin and shell access; it's great as a router, and rock solid (haven't needed to reboot it since I bought it last year). But as much as I admire it, I can't recommend it as a wifi access point. It doesn't have an external antenna, and its performance compared to consumer routers is pretty mediocre. I have it running in my office, and in my living room (5m away, only a single wall between them) my AppleTV and Xbox One would continually drop out. Installed my old Asus RT-N56U as an access point connected to the Mikrotik via Ethernet, and haven't had an issue since. Admittedly, I never tried fiddling with it to see if different channels or settings might work better.

alfredxing 10y ago

I have a Ubiquiti setup for WiFi at home (though not as complex as in the blog post - just an EdgeRouter X and UniFi AC Lite). It has never gone down once, and performance is the same as on day 1: ubnt@ubnt:~$ uptime 06:16:26 up 140 days, 13:15, 1 user, load average: 1.08, 1.03, 1.05

ioquatix 10y ago

For something just as awesome but a fraction of the price take a look at MikroTik/RouterBoard Hex GR3 and wAP AC.

mlvljr 10y ago
And then know, there is NO documentation for their RouterOS, but rather a wiki (the users are meant to fill ...somehow). Interestingly, wasn't the case with earlier versions of the s/w.
ianal_uanal 10y ago
And then good luck configuring them.. UniFi is plug and play. Mikrotik, while relatively easy, requires much more work.

ioquatix 10y ago

For something just as awesome but a fraction of the price take a look at MikroTik/RouterBoard Hex GR3 and wAP AC.

xupybd 10y ago

Ubiquiti is getting some golden press on HN lately.

mahyarm 10y ago

I don't understand why he needed the expensive PoE switches although. He could of used cat 6, consumer non-PoE switches & standard $15 PoE injectors close to the switches themselves. He wouldn't get the fancy interface for the switches, but he would of had similar wireless and wifi performance. Or does Ubiquity require you to use their switches for anything to work properly?

robotmay 10y ago
Their UniFi stuff runs on 24v PoE, rather than the standard 48v, so it requires either one of their switches or a compatible injector. Their cameras, oddly, do support standard PoE, however.
pythonaut_16 10y ago
I have a Unifi AC Lite and I just use the power injector that came with it. I think for the non-pros they use a non-standard POE, but I'm pretty sure the Pro's can use either Ubiquiti or standard PoE equipment

myrandomcomment 10y ago

So I have posted this before as there has been a ton of Ubiquiti threads. 3 story house, 1 AP AC Pro per floor 1 AP AC Pro in the detached office 1 Switch 16 POE in the house 1 Switch 16 POE in the office - 2 x Cat6a between switches in a LAG 1 Security Gateway 3P 1 Cloud Key I upgraded all the firmware on the complete system as I was typing this message using their app for the iPad. Run a FreeNAS Mini in the office 2 x 1g in a LAG. Run Insteon home automation for lights, plugs, HVAC, Camaras, leak & door sensors. 3 TVs with Intel Compute Stick with Kodi plugged into the TV HDMI. Added USB to 1g on the stick and wired to switch. Logitech Harmony remotes (same in every room) for control. Lots of laptops, phones, pads all wifi. TVs are Wifi for their apps (used Ethernet for Compute Sticks). Every product here is rock solid and just works (okay Kodi is buggy as is the Windows 10 it runs on). I love the Ubiquiti gear. We use the APs in the office at work as well. 2 older APs (2 year old models - plan to upgrade soon) with 35+ devices on it at any time (most are developer laptops with lots of traffic to the DC). We use TrueNAS to boot all the servers, etc (FreeNAS commercial version). So for wifi Ubiquiti is pretty dang good and love FreeNAS (and the IXsystems hardware) if you need a NAS. For less technical I have recommended Eero to a few people and they all say it is quite good so far.

jagermo 10y ago
any specific reason you went for the Pro and not the LR?
- myrandomcomment 10y ago
  Proper coverage is lots of APs at low power. Remember the device on the other end of the connection could be a phone. Just because is can see the LR does not mean it can talk to it.
- kiallmacinnes 10y ago
  Don't buy the LRs (Long Range versions for those not familiar with the Ubnt naming) unless plan on a low density+large+wide open space (e.g. an auditorium where only staff have wifi access). The trick to GREAT wifi coverage is to turn the power down on each access point as low as you can, and have as many APs as you can. Wifi is a two way street, e.g. even if your AP can blast a signal through 5x 10ft thick walls, it won't matter in the slightest, since your phone or laptop etc won't be able to do the same. In fact - that's a lie :) It will matter, it will hurt the end user experience. The phone etc will see a "strong" signal, select it, but outbound packet loss will be terrible.

sprite 10y ago

I have Eero but not 100% happy with it. For some reason it sometimes drops the connection to my Macbook Pro. Disconnecting and reconnecting wifi bring the connection back up. I've been thinking of making the switch to Ubiquiti and think that is probably the way I should have gone in the first place.

ksec 10y ago

Ubiquiti is nice. But, it is not a consumer brand, most consumer dont need all the options and setup. Its consumer version AmpliFi, doesn't rhyme with me. Hence why i am very sad when I heard the rumors of Airport Extreme being shoved. Most consumer Router as of today, still requires a reset from time to time. Please name me one which doesn't, Linksys, Belkin, Buffalo, Netgear, Dlink, ASUS. Some of these brand may have some router that doesn't require reset, but it is likely 90% of their Range do. And if you think the top end router may be better, think again, sometimes it may overheat just because it was trying to push the top speed, or too new with buggy firmware. Router should only be a one time setup cost. Most Enterprise Router brand, Ubnt, Ruckus ( God they are good ), Aruba are all good. And Apple is the only one i can recommend in a consumer brand, and you only get 2 models to choose from ( Excluding Time Machine ). Cant go wrong, and it is using NetBSD being a bonus.

amiga-workbench 10y ago
Sadly those Apple AP's are now discontinued.

tehwalrus 10y ago

Deep packet inspection accessible by a cloud portal?! Sounds like a bug, not a feature...

ErrantX 10y ago

Beware; ubiquiti stuff is pretty good. But the unifi line is amongst the worst they do; the wireless AP's are actually great. But the unifi switches have a tendency to blow up and trip the power circuits. We went through about 3 in 6 months.

b3lvedere 10y ago

Great story. Unfortunately i do not have the luxury to spend $2200 on the network infrastructure in my humble home. I do however have a lot of 2nd hand hardware and am able to invest some time into optimizing them for my family's internet needs. It may not be perfect, but it works 90% of the time and i learn a lot about connecting lots of different devices and (virtual) machines.

ianal_uanal 10y ago
You don't have to. You can do it much cheaper with Ubiquiti's products. EdgeRouter X + AP AC (Pro)
jon-wood 10y ago
Unless you've got a huge house you don't actually need to drop two thousand dollars on networking gear. I'm covering a three bedroom house using one of Ubiquiti's cheapest AC capable access points and the EdgeRouter-X, the whole lot cost me about £120 which is in the ballpark of a consumer router with wireless, yet massively more capable and reliable. Since installing it I've been able to just stop thinking about my home network. It just takes whatever we throw at it, and the wifi is plenty fast enough to stream HD video to the TV.
jagermo 10y ago
1 Unifi LR, 1 Unifi Lite covers all my 150 sqm and cost less than a "high end consumer Wifi Router", about 130 Euros. You don't need so many aps, Troy went a little overboard, imho. And you can start with one LR and just expand the network if you need more.
pnutjam 10y ago
Check out RouteOS stuff from MikroTik. It's a little less user friendly, but solid. https://routerboard.com/products/group/20 https://routerboard.com/products/group/20

gaspoweredcat 10y ago

its great gear for an amazing price, its amazing how many inferior setups cost more

legulere 10y ago

As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Wifi won't be the only problems that are caused by such a waste of resources. How are those problems making your life better? Here DSL router/modems by AVM (Fritz!box) are really common and they do their job extraordinarily well for being consumer grade hardware. They also regularly get regular updates and offer most things you need as a consumer in one device. (No you don't need a special DHCP server device). There are also other decent consumer grade wifi routers like the now discontinued ones by Apple

madeofpalk 10y ago
> As a european I find this totally ridiculous. 500 square meter house? That's enough for an apartment building with 10 units. Surely some Europeans live in large houses, right? He's living in a freestanding house in a more regional part of Australia. Travel into the city in Australia and you'll find smaller dwellings, like my 56sqm apartment :)
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  Still, Australian houses (on average) are 2 times the size of German houses: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-home-size-by-country/article27181802/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/average-ho...
  - madeofpalk 10y ago
    You're right, now that I think about it 500sq is quite large. He does mention it's a three-story house (which is still quite large). That's a great source though I never knew that Australia has the largest average home size. It's interesting considering Australia very large and very sparsely populated (on average), yet most people live in cities.
    - Klathmon 10y ago
      It seems like it's no big deal depending on where you live. I could move a few hours away and get a 3-story 500sq meter house for about as much as it would cost me to own my condo where I do live. It's all about location, and in places like australia or america where there is space galore in some places, it's not unsurprising that people build bigger (especially when it doesn't really cost all that much more comparatively)

IshKebab 10y ago

I wish he/they would use '2.4 GHz' and '5 GHz' instead of '2G' and '5G' which are already things. That's definitely going to cause confusion.

technofiend 10y ago

Based on Reddit threads and an immediate need due to hardware failure I tried the edge router. I have to say I like UI and it was painless to set up. There a plenty of sample configs to choose from and the community seems active and helpful. Unfortunately, the internet being the hostile place it is, my edgerouter struggles to stay up for more than a couple of days before I have to power cycle the device. There may be a fix based on packet filtering beyond a simple NAT ruleset I'm using but it wasn't really worth my time to fix a $60 device when another refurbished PC from Microcenter is twice that and will stay up for months. Move two NICs, a hard drive and done. Still at some point I plan to set a bridge mode packet capture device between the edge router and cable modem to see what's knocking it over. But at least for a painless setup that my wife doesn't have to reboot the edge router didn't work out, which is too bad. I would otherwise recommend them on price alone.

loop0 10y ago

Ubiquiti Unifi APs saved our network here at the company. Because everyone here uses macbook pros our network is about 95% wireless and lately we where suffering with connection drops and poor bandwith. We changed all our APs to ubiquiti unifi ap pro, now the coverage is awesome and we don't experience any kind of problems. I like the fact that you can control everything from a unified web app. We have an average of 100 connected devices distributed in 4 aps.

lostboys67 10y ago
why not just move your mac users to wired which is what we did brought Ethernet adaptors for all the macs which spend most of there time on a desk and don't "need" wifi

lightedman 10y ago

One could just as easily get a few cheap laptops from a rummage sale and install Linux on them and turn them into powerful APs within a few minutes with a live environment.

kiallmacinnes 10y ago
While I agree that you can, and I have done so before (at home). There's frankly no way I would ever even consider something like this in a business environment. Depending on your work situation, i.e. full or most time work from home, this would include my home.
- lightedman 10y ago
  I would especially do this in a work situation. At least with a Linux install I don't have to worry about all these typical routers and switches with their built-in hardcoded vulnerabilities threatening my work network security.

dorfsmay 10y ago

I like Ubiquiti and use them at home (switch and APs), they are the best at their price point in my opinion. They can't compare with expensive professional gear, and I'm OK with that, but what bothers me about them are weird bugs that makes you wonder about how much testing they do outside a few default cases. They fixed the most problematic one, but I gave up and work around the other one.

problems 10y ago

I was considering going the Ubiquiti way, but I'm using the dirt cheap ASUS stuff with customized firmware and getting over 500mbit on WiFi. The Ubiquiti stuff is pricy and given their nasty history with GPL violations I've abandoned it. I have to reboot my fibre terminal more than my wireless router anyways, and even that's only about twice a year.

maratd 10y ago
Yes, Ubiquiti is pricy. Yes, they have GPL issues ... but so does everyone in the industry. You can mod off-the-shelf hardware and get decent performance. I've done it. The issue with going that route is stability. I've modded Linksys, Asus, etc. over the years and while they might perform well for a day or two, I always end up with stability issues and weird behavior. Ubiquiti is rock solid and performs well. They provide advanced features out of the box, no need for custom firmware or purchase of licenses. There's a reason people like them.

ehosca 10y ago

+1 for Ubiquiti UAP-AC, uptime 248 days and counting

luckydude 10y ago

I had 3 of the same Linksys boxes, had exactly the same problems, moved to UniFi stuff and couldn't be happier. I've got two APs in the main house, one in the barn (man cave, exercise room), and still have one Linksys in the guest house. Which gets power cycled when I need it. I really don't get how Linksys screwed the pooch, but they did. $300 AP that doesn't work. Edit: one config that made them work better for me was to change some setting from maximum speed to maximum distance, without that the connection was pretty short range. The lower speed is still faster than my internet connection so I'm fine with it.

flyinghamster 10y ago
I've had cold feet about Linksys ever since Belkin acquired them.* I'm still running a couple of refurbished D-Link DIR825-C1 units (dual-band N300) with DD-WRT on both, and they work beautifully. I don't see any great need at this time to switch to 802.11ac. Since I bought them specifically to run DD-WRT, reflashing them wasn't a big deal for me, though it wasn't quite as easy to do as reflashing a classic WRT54G. * Belkin has been on my "don't buy anything of theirs except cables, and even then look for an alternative" list ever since their 2003 router spam fiasco. Sure, they backed off, but the fact that they even considered doing such a thing in the first place is asinine. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/help_my_belkin_router/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/11/07/help_my_belkin_route... (sorry for the Reg link, they weren't that bad in that era)

Icedcool 10y ago

> I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware... No, no, a hundred times no... Author didn't want to try a new OS on his device, and instead opted to spend an additional 2.1k on enterprise level devices. While this did 'fix' it, he wasn't really innovative or creative. Just was willing to spend more money. A similar example might be, "How I fixed my car" - Bought a new one.

cc438 10y ago
I fully agree with your take on this being an exercise in throwing money at a problem until it goes away. He probably didn't even need to go as far as diving headfirst into the world of fussy custom firmware to solve this issue either, Asus hardware comparable to his Linksys equipment is recommended so often that I can't imagine he researched the topic before making his buying decision.

vels 10y ago

Just a note for anyone who wants to try this, without spending $2k, you can just purchase the UAP AC PRO access points c. $100-150 each and connect them to your existing switch / router (dosnt have to be Ubiquity kit, have even done basic installs using an ISP provided router.

caycep 10y ago

For a ~$1500 square feet house, how are their AmplifiHD consumer WiFi Mesh network products? The reviews seem to say they are more consistent than Eero/Google equivalents. Also, my one paranoid worry about routers are the frequency of security updates...my TP-link hasn't had a patch for 2 years, and I'm hoping Ubiquiti has a better track record to avoid things like a Mirai infestation...

zwily 10y ago
Ubiquiti Unifi updates are pretty consistent, and I've never had any problems installing them.

ichilton 10y ago

I really like the Unifi - i've run it for a while and not had a single problem. I do have a big gripe though - it has a hard wired limit of 4x SSIDs for each access point. I run a number of VLANs, each with their own SSID - and it means I can only have the Unifi provide my main ones and have to run an old Netgear router on different wifi channels to provide the rest :( I've never quite understood why my cheap routers running OpenWRT can seemingly have unlimited (or at least a lot of) SSIDs, where an expensive Unifi will only provide 4.

no_wizard 10y ago

I know I'm a little late to the party, but the Linksys routers he did buy originally are completely openWRT compatible (and here i'm gonna plug it, www.openwrt.org), so i have to ask, why not put openwrt on these guys? I have the exact same routers, and they were terrible with the linksys stock firmware, but once I install openwrt it was actually quite nice. Had to upgrade the antennas on one though, beyond that, it was pretty good. Not that I'm knocking ubiquiti, cause they're amazing, btw.

soylentcola 10y ago
At least according to the article, he didn't like the option. > After venting on Twitter, I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware or that I should buy a power adaptor that can automatically cycle the power every night. No, no, a hundred times no to both - if I buy a product then I expect it to work as advertised and not need to implement hacks to keep it alive. It's his prerogative of course but I'd definitely have tried a quick software fix like this before going out and buying $2k worth of all new gear. Maybe it would've solved the issues and maybe it wouldn't but in terms of time and money sunk into it, I think trying out the improved firmware would've been the logical step before moving on to new hardware. But then again everyone has a different level of aversion to different things so maybe his aversion to messing with open firmware was as strong as my aversion to buying more stuff. In the end, the blog post was about his solution and it's still good info to have.
- no_wizard 10y ago
  This is a completely good point and exposes that I did not read the post close enough so sorry about that. These are excellent points