6 ms·

It's funny, Ubiquiti keeps getting talked up on HN, but every time I try to shop for their equipment out of curiosity, it's basically panned everywhere else. Do

by ip26 6y ago

It's funny, Ubiquiti keeps getting talked up on HN, but every time I try to shop for their equipment out of curiosity, it's basically panned everywhere else. Don't know what to make of it.

293984j29384 6y ago
I treat it as prosumer grade equipment. I use it at home but not at the office. My general rule of thumb is if I need it to make money, it's not going to be Ubiquiti.
lotsofpulp 6y ago
I don’t think there’s any good options outside of commercial brands. If my Airport Time Machine and Extreme die, I’ll probably switch to premium Netgear equipment. Meraki would be nice except Cisco owns it now and they are experts at milking you with annual fees.
- josteink 6y ago
  > If my Airport Time Machine and Extreme die, I’ll probably switch to premium Netgear equipment. Why just replace them with second hand units? Apple may no longer sell them, but they are still widely available.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    I assumed I wouldn't easily find them, but I will get them if I can!
na85 6y ago
I have ubiquiti gear for my home network. It's pretty good for what it is, which is basically "consumer networking gear for power users" but I'm not sure I'd use ubiquiti to do serious networking for an enterprise environment. Maybe a small business/doctor's office type of environment.
samgranieri 6y ago
I have UBNT gear at home, and have had it for four years to replace my apple AirPort Extreme. I got rid of the AirPort Extreme because I thought apple would abandon it. I’ve been very happy with the UBNT platform since. I do wish there would be a decent upgrade to the USG 3 coming soon
unethical_ban 6y ago
I work in IT, and I and several others use UBNT. I have not had any reliability issues, but you do not want to be hasty with version upgrades unless you need it to fix a bug. Read release notes. I have an Edgemax ER-Lite router and a UAC-AP-Pro access point, and a security camera for testing. If you can, it's best to stick with one lineup of products. Unifi is one line, edgemax is another, amplifi is another, and so on - having one management plane is optimal. I have thought about getting a Unifi router so everything is done through one control center, but I don't need to. tl;dr - I think they are great for the money. You can do advanced stuff with the routers as well, like VPN gateways and BGP if needed, but not always easily in the GUI.
- kazen44 6y ago
  the bgp implementation on all ubiquiti's products is a tangled mess. it hogs CPU, is unstable and does not support most "nice bgp features".
tda 6y ago
Yep, that's because it is a mixed bag. Certainly a step up from normal consumer grade stuff, and not as expensive as 'real' enterprise hardware. Had a lot of promise, and lots of hn folks like myself converted. But I said had, because in 2020 the company seems to have transformed into a money-grabbing shitshow. Cloud for everything, deprecating fine hardware and fine software in favor of unneeded cloud stuff. Crappy firmwares with no easy way to rollback. CEO is supposedly running the company in the ground with outsourcing, constant crunch etc. There are some disgruntled ex ubiquity employees here and on reddit, if even half is true of what they say the company really needs to turn around soon, it is probably already to late.
- dingaling 6y ago
  > Certainly a step up from normal consumer grade stuff Same mass-market Qualcomm SOCs as the other mass-market vendors, just better packaged and marketed. Smallnetbuilder consistently found them middling in performance.
jandrese 6y ago
If you're doing serious business with your WiFi then the UBNT stuff is probably not quite good enough. I have one of the flying saucer shaped APs, but it's super old and only does B/G. It was under a hundred bucks and unlike my old APs it doesn't get angry at certain devices and deauth them randomly from the network. Or other APs I've used that start disconnecting users once you have more than 15 devices connected at once. The configuration software is a bloated Java daemon that I have to manually start then connect to with a client. It's not all that user friendly, but I've been around networks enough to get it working. So it's basically the cheapest AP that isn't regularly malfunctioning consumer garbage.
atombender 6y ago
Me neither. I switched out my trusty old Microtik AC router for a combination of a Unifi AP AC Pro and UniFi Security Gateway in order to get a bit more distance, and performance and reliability has been shoddy. I eventually got a TP-Link WiFi 6 AX3000, and it's been super solid, significantly faster, and required almost zero manual setup. The Unifi itself required a PoE adapter and a router, and of course needs the controller application to do anything. (The controller app with its easily-corrupted and hard-to-upgrade MongoDB database is perhaps the worst part of it. My two devices occasionally required re-"adopting" for no discernible reason. I was unable to upgrade the controller at one point because apparently (?) they stopped bundling MongoDB, and the controller refused to use the version I installed manually. Of course, this breakage happened after the software updated, so the only way to fix it was by restoring the old version and database files from backups.) Maybe Ubiquiti products make more sense when you need dozens of access points across a big building, but definitely not in a small city apartment.
- Tijdreiziger 6y ago
  I don't think that's an environment in which Ubiquiti gear makes sense. It's much more useful for the people who have a 3-story house and have to have a separate downstairs and upstairs Wi-Fi network to get decent coverage.
  - atombender 6y ago
    Agree, but I would at least expect performance and reliability to be better than a consumer router.
  - vetinari 6y ago
    It is useful even in apartments: you can have your router near entrance, where the ISP terminates, and then AP elsewhere in the apartment, where you can get better reception for your devices.
- LgWoodenBadger 6y ago
  What do you mean when you say “the Unifi itself required...a router?” The Unifi Security Gateway is a router.
Decade 6y ago
I feel it’s really pervasively good marketing, and maybe the performance was better back when the WiFi link was not usually the bottleneck. (Ref: Bufferbloat, hard to verify because Ubiquiti flouts open-source licenses.)
Mister_Snuggles 6y ago
/r/homelab, which is where I heard about it, seems to like it. I've had UniFi equipment for a while now and am generally happy with it, though I'm not doing anything terribly crazy. Well, maybe crazy for a home user, but not nearly as crazy as some of the /r/homelab folks get. I've got multiple VLANs, firewall rules controlling traffic, multiple WiFi networks. I'm using 2 switches (8 port 150W PoE, 24 port non-PoE), a USG, and an AP AC Pro. It all works fine. My only complaint is that the new version of the controller software rearranged all of the settings and I haven't figured out where everything lives.
- vetinari 6y ago
  You can (still) switch back to old settings in the new controller. The latest one switched the client view to a newer one too, but fortunately the old one is also available.
  - Mister_Snuggles 6y ago
    I've been trying to avoid using that escape hatch since, presumably, the new settings will eventually be the only settings. There's also a search in there which has proved helpful.
icelancer 6y ago
I use a pfsense box (check comments for link) but Ubiquiti gear for WiFi APs/controller/PoE/switches. Been very happy with the setup despite the latest concerns with them posted here. Their security gateways are universally hated on, and for good reason - one major one is that enabling DPI causes a ridiculous drop in throughput rate, even on the newer machines (which also have faulty firmware). Stay away from them.

by ip26 6y ago

It's funny, Ubiquiti keeps getting talked up on HN, but every time I try to shop for their equipment out of curiosity, it's basically panned everywhere else. Don't know what to make of it.

293984j29384 6y ago

I treat it as prosumer grade equipment. I use it at home but not at the office. My general rule of thumb is if I need it to make money, it's not going to be Ubiquiti.

lotsofpulp 6y ago

I don’t think there’s any good options outside of commercial brands. If my Airport Time Machine and Extreme die, I’ll probably switch to premium Netgear equipment. Meraki would be nice except Cisco owns it now and they are experts at milking you with annual fees.

josteink 6y ago
> If my Airport Time Machine and Extreme die, I’ll probably switch to premium Netgear equipment. Why just replace them with second hand units? Apple may no longer sell them, but they are still widely available.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I assumed I wouldn't easily find them, but I will get them if I can!

na85 6y ago

I have ubiquiti gear for my home network. It's pretty good for what it is, which is basically "consumer networking gear for power users" but I'm not sure I'd use ubiquiti to do serious networking for an enterprise environment. Maybe a small business/doctor's office type of environment.

samgranieri 6y ago

I have UBNT gear at home, and have had it for four years to replace my apple AirPort Extreme. I got rid of the AirPort Extreme because I thought apple would abandon it. I’ve been very happy with the UBNT platform since. I do wish there would be a decent upgrade to the USG 3 coming soon

unethical_ban 6y ago

I work in IT, and I and several others use UBNT. I have not had any reliability issues, but you do not want to be hasty with version upgrades unless you need it to fix a bug. Read release notes. I have an Edgemax ER-Lite router and a UAC-AP-Pro access point, and a security camera for testing. If you can, it's best to stick with one lineup of products. Unifi is one line, edgemax is another, amplifi is another, and so on - having one management plane is optimal. I have thought about getting a Unifi router so everything is done through one control center, but I don't need to. tl;dr - I think they are great for the money. You can do advanced stuff with the routers as well, like VPN gateways and BGP if needed, but not always easily in the GUI.

kazen44 6y ago
the bgp implementation on all ubiquiti's products is a tangled mess. it hogs CPU, is unstable and does not support most "nice bgp features".

tda 6y ago

Yep, that's because it is a mixed bag. Certainly a step up from normal consumer grade stuff, and not as expensive as 'real' enterprise hardware. Had a lot of promise, and lots of hn folks like myself converted. But I said had, because in 2020 the company seems to have transformed into a money-grabbing shitshow. Cloud for everything, deprecating fine hardware and fine software in favor of unneeded cloud stuff. Crappy firmwares with no easy way to rollback. CEO is supposedly running the company in the ground with outsourcing, constant crunch etc. There are some disgruntled ex ubiquity employees here and on reddit, if even half is true of what they say the company really needs to turn around soon, it is probably already to late.

dingaling 6y ago
> Certainly a step up from normal consumer grade stuff Same mass-market Qualcomm SOCs as the other mass-market vendors, just better packaged and marketed. Smallnetbuilder consistently found them middling in performance.

jandrese 6y ago

If you're doing serious business with your WiFi then the UBNT stuff is probably not quite good enough. I have one of the flying saucer shaped APs, but it's super old and only does B/G. It was under a hundred bucks and unlike my old APs it doesn't get angry at certain devices and deauth them randomly from the network. Or other APs I've used that start disconnecting users once you have more than 15 devices connected at once. The configuration software is a bloated Java daemon that I have to manually start then connect to with a client. It's not all that user friendly, but I've been around networks enough to get it working. So it's basically the cheapest AP that isn't regularly malfunctioning consumer garbage.

atombender 6y ago

Me neither. I switched out my trusty old Microtik AC router for a combination of a Unifi AP AC Pro and UniFi Security Gateway in order to get a bit more distance, and performance and reliability has been shoddy. I eventually got a TP-Link WiFi 6 AX3000, and it's been super solid, significantly faster, and required almost zero manual setup. The Unifi itself required a PoE adapter and a router, and of course needs the controller application to do anything. (The controller app with its easily-corrupted and hard-to-upgrade MongoDB database is perhaps the worst part of it. My two devices occasionally required re-"adopting" for no discernible reason. I was unable to upgrade the controller at one point because apparently (?) they stopped bundling MongoDB, and the controller refused to use the version I installed manually. Of course, this breakage happened after the software updated, so the only way to fix it was by restoring the old version and database files from backups.) Maybe Ubiquiti products make more sense when you need dozens of access points across a big building, but definitely not in a small city apartment.

Tijdreiziger 6y ago
I don't think that's an environment in which Ubiquiti gear makes sense. It's much more useful for the people who have a 3-story house and have to have a separate downstairs and upstairs Wi-Fi network to get decent coverage.
- atombender 6y ago
  Agree, but I would at least expect performance and reliability to be better than a consumer router.
- vetinari 6y ago
  It is useful even in apartments: you can have your router near entrance, where the ISP terminates, and then AP elsewhere in the apartment, where you can get better reception for your devices.
LgWoodenBadger 6y ago
What do you mean when you say “the Unifi itself required...a router?” The Unifi Security Gateway is a router.

Decade 6y ago

I feel it’s really pervasively good marketing, and maybe the performance was better back when the WiFi link was not usually the bottleneck. (Ref: Bufferbloat, hard to verify because Ubiquiti flouts open-source licenses.)

Mister_Snuggles 6y ago

/r/homelab, which is where I heard about it, seems to like it. I've had UniFi equipment for a while now and am generally happy with it, though I'm not doing anything terribly crazy. Well, maybe crazy for a home user, but not nearly as crazy as some of the /r/homelab folks get. I've got multiple VLANs, firewall rules controlling traffic, multiple WiFi networks. I'm using 2 switches (8 port 150W PoE, 24 port non-PoE), a USG, and an AP AC Pro. It all works fine. My only complaint is that the new version of the controller software rearranged all of the settings and I haven't figured out where everything lives.

vetinari 6y ago
You can (still) switch back to old settings in the new controller. The latest one switched the client view to a newer one too, but fortunately the old one is also available.
- Mister_Snuggles 6y ago
  I've been trying to avoid using that escape hatch since, presumably, the new settings will eventually be the only settings. There's also a search in there which has proved helpful.

icelancer 6y ago

I use a pfsense box (check comments for link) but Ubiquiti gear for WiFi APs/controller/PoE/switches. Been very happy with the setup despite the latest concerns with them posted here. Their security gateways are universally hated on, and for good reason - one major one is that enabling DPI causes a ridiculous drop in throughput rate, even on the newer machines (which also have faulty firmware). Stay away from them.