5 ms·
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 t
by 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
- baobrien 10y agoThe UniFi stuff isn't stand alone, but it doesn't need to 'phone home' to Ubiquiti. There's a little management server with a web config interface you need to set up to run everything. It runs on your local network and doesn't call Ubiquiti or open up anything without you setting that up. They do have what they call the 'cloud key' that runs an instance of the Unifi management server. That thing does phone home, IIRC.
- kondro 10y agoAnd it's only really needed for configuration or logging. The network still operates without connectivity to the server software.
- esaym 10y agoI see. And is this "management server" the "java" thing everyone keeps referring to? (and complaining about)
- Johnny555 10y agoIt is a Java thing, but I have no complaints, I have one running on an AWS instance that 8 Wifi nodes across 2 offices connect to, and it's been running fine for a couple years with only a few code updates (every 6 months or so). I have no complaints about it. It was easy to configure, and adding a new node is as simple as plugging it in, ssh'ing to it and pointing it to my management server, then adopting it on the management server. Done. The management server will upgrade firmware (if needed) and automatically apply my wifi config to it.
- mrbill 10y agoIf you've only got one AP, or a small number of them, you don't even need the Java-based management controller. Ubiquiti now has an iOS/Android app that can be used to do basic setup of the APs, and once they're configured, they "just work".