5 ms·

What’s your setup? I have an EdgeRouter Lite but I’m looking for one or more WiFi access points to add to my network.

by plg 8y ago

zrail 8y ago
Cloud Key, USG, Switch 8 POE, and two AP-Lites. The UniFi console makes management easy compared to the edge router UI. I also have one of those but it’s just sitting right now.
- nvarsj 8y ago
  I'd be wary of any Ubiquiti network kit. I only trust their APs. The ERL for example is an awful router - it has had a firmware issue for years now where it causes persistent packet loss due to reordering incoming packets. I discovered these problems in my own testing, and there is a giant thread on the forums about it which I helped kick off. The ER-X is the only thing that seems to work properly. Their switches are bad too (small buffers). UI is nice and they are cheap, but not worth the poor performance. I sold most of my Ubiquiti gear and bought a Netgate 2440 a couple years ago, put Debian on it with Shorewall and auto updates, and haven't looked back.
  - walterbell 8y ago
    Why didn’t you use PFsense from Netgate?
    - nvarsj 8y ago
      I don't like pFsense because it's difficult to automate and lacks bufferbloat AQM. I use ansible checked into source code - it's easy to rebuild and tweak, and works great. And with Linux you get access to fq_codel and cake. These are easy to setup and work extremely well, with 1-5ms bufferbloat even under throughput saturation. I couldn't manage to get anything similar in pfsense's QoS.
  - namibj 8y ago
    How large do you want the switch to be? Where I am, if I download something form google drive, I get _major_ bufferbloat on the downstream, I suspect because everthing except the last PHY link to my laptop (on a LAN port) handles at least 1Gbit, but the switch is still a little old-ish and won't do more than fast Ethernet. Please, for god's sake, either drop packets or use fq-codel or something similar, but don't use a large-ish, blind fifo that only listens to his expelicit QOS settings. I wan't my mosh session to be responsive even if there is a large _inbound_ filetransfer. (note that this is textbook bufferbloat, just in the reverse direction from the usual residential situation)
    - nvarsj 8y ago
      To support a certain bandwidth on a switch you need big enough buffers. Bandwidth delay product is what you want - latency * bandwidth, you need a buffer of at least that size to support throughput in the system. Multiply that by the number of ports to support concurrent bandwidth. The toughswitches were engineered with very small buffers, such that they couldn't even support reasonable bandwidth on a LAN with low latency.

What’s your setup? I have an EdgeRouter Lite but I’m looking for one or more WiFi access points to add to my network.

by plg 8y ago

What’s your setup? I have an EdgeRouter Lite but I’m looking for one or more WiFi access points to add to my network.

Cloud Key, USG, Switch 8 POE, and two AP-Lites. The UniFi console makes management easy compared to the edge router UI. I also have one of those but it’s just sitting right now.

nvarsj 8y ago
I'd be wary of any Ubiquiti network kit. I only trust their APs. The ERL for example is an awful router - it has had a firmware issue for years now where it causes persistent packet loss due to reordering incoming packets. I discovered these problems in my own testing, and there is a giant thread on the forums about it which I helped kick off. The ER-X is the only thing that seems to work properly. Their switches are bad too (small buffers). UI is nice and they are cheap, but not worth the poor performance. I sold most of my Ubiquiti gear and bought a Netgate 2440 a couple years ago, put Debian on it with Shorewall and auto updates, and haven't looked back.
- walterbell 8y ago
  Why didn’t you use PFsense from Netgate?
  - nvarsj 8y ago
    I don't like pFsense because it's difficult to automate and lacks bufferbloat AQM. I use ansible checked into source code - it's easy to rebuild and tweak, and works great. And with Linux you get access to fq_codel and cake. These are easy to setup and work extremely well, with 1-5ms bufferbloat even under throughput saturation. I couldn't manage to get anything similar in pfsense's QoS.
- namibj 8y ago
  How large do you want the switch to be? Where I am, if I download something form google drive, I get _major_ bufferbloat on the downstream, I suspect because everthing except the last PHY link to my laptop (on a LAN port) handles at least 1Gbit, but the switch is still a little old-ish and won't do more than fast Ethernet. Please, for god's sake, either drop packets or use fq-codel or something similar, but don't use a large-ish, blind fifo that only listens to his expelicit QOS settings. I wan't my mosh session to be responsive even if there is a large _inbound_ filetransfer. (note that this is textbook bufferbloat, just in the reverse direction from the usual residential situation)
  - nvarsj 8y ago
    To support a certain bandwidth on a switch you need big enough buffers. Bandwidth delay product is what you want - latency * bandwidth, you need a buffer of at least that size to support throughput in the system. Multiply that by the number of ports to support concurrent bandwidth. The toughswitches were engineered with very small buffers, such that they couldn't even support reasonable bandwidth on a LAN with low latency.