22 ms·

Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

634 points by andremedeiros 6y ago

burke 6y ago
I’m even more astonished by the dismissive, misspelled, and incorrect support response. * telling the customer they’re wrong... * incorrectly... * and with multiple typos. Yes, very cool.
- madjam002 6y ago
  The customer service response is deplorable, makes me think twice about purchasing any more Ubiquiti gear.
  - oaiey 6y ago
    If you want support do not go to Ubiquiti. That is not their business model (yet). And I hope it will never be.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
  I'm astonished by the childish and rude language directed at the customer support rep.
  - andremedeiros 6y ago
    Because I called out their bullshit?
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
      Calling out bullshit is fine but I'd choose better language. "This is unacceptable and this change makes me very angry. I will not be considering future products from Ubiquiti"
      - andremedeiros 6y ago
        The customer service rep isn’t in control of the change. They’re in control of what they tell me, and he was bullshitting. Not really sure what else to tell you.
        greg5green 6y ago
        > They’re in control of what they tell me Have you never interacted in a non-business sense with someone who worked customer support? They DO NOT have control of what they tell you. They will get fired real quick if they don't follow the script. Especially someone working the first line of support in a chat box. C'mon man.
        akersten 6y ago
        So this awful response was part of the official script? That's even worse.
        petersellers 6y ago
        But it doesn't justify being rude to the support person.
        dr_hooo 6y ago
        So the support person is a glorified bot, but we have to be careful not to hurt it's feelings? Honestly I feel for the support guy, but he represents the company. And companies purposely push their support onto social media platforms like twitter - where exactly are unhappy customers supposed to vent their anger?
        petersellers 6y ago
        It? This is an actual person we are talking about. And most people are perfectly capable of handling a mildly stressful situation without acting like a complete jerk to someone.
umeshunni 6y ago
Misleading tweet. This looks more like them promoting an update to their own product than them "serving ads".
- andremedeiros 6y ago
  How is it misleading? Can you explain to me what the difference between "promoting an update to their own product" and an ad? This is an ad, pure and simple. They're pushing a product they know I don't own with a clear call to action, and without a way for me to remove it or disable it.
  - dminvs 6y ago
    But at least they're pushing their own product and didn't sell the right to do so to some third party. So far.
  - owl57 6y ago
    Ad is a broad term, this confuses people. This shit is definitely worse than ads on the box, but it also definitely isn't the entire monstrosity we have come to assume when hearing about ads on web pages.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      > Ad is a broad term Yes. > this confuses people No. > but it also definitely isn't the entire monstrosity we have come to assume when hearing about ads on web pages. Slippery slope. I used to think of Ubiquiti as prosumer. Now it's definitely not.
    - andremedeiros 6y ago
      Somewhere an engineer was tasked to write software that does an inventory of my network to see what new shiny hardware of theirs I don’t yet own. Then, the software that was written to manage a product that I paid for shoves a call-to-action that takes a considerable amount of the page to suggest I buy it. And I can’t dismiss or close it. The difference with ads on the web is that I paid for the privilege of being served this garbage. In my mind, this is much worse.
exabrial 6y ago
I'm willing to pay for major updates that include new features, even on a per-device basis. I'm not willing to pay for things I already bought that don't work correctly (bug fixes). This ad-supported model isn't needed or wanted.
- andremedeiros 6y ago
  Agreed. It's not like their hardware is cheap or subsidized either, like the Cloud Key, which is a tiny device that acts as a proxy and has some cache storage for firmware updates that costs upwards of $100 here.
  - warmwaffles 6y ago
    Also runs mongodb
errantmind 6y ago
One of the reasons I have used Ubiquiti over the last few years is their product quality over other networking hardware. The inclusion of ads leads me to revisit those assumptions before my next purchase. Ads, even if self-promotion, are a bellwether for a company being desperate or greedy, neither of which bodes well for their long-term product quality, usually because it indicates sales people are making the decisions. They also often lead to a slippery slope of increasing user data collection
- andremedeiros 6y ago
  The funny thing is that I have a UDMP on the way, because one of my APs died and I figured it was time to upgrade the network a bit, but now I'm refusing delivery and sending it back for a full refund.
  - jonpurdy 6y ago
    I was considering replacing my AP AC Lite with whatever 6E equivalent comes out when 6E is approved. I considered picking up a NanoHD for the extra MIMO speeds, but in the meantime I keep seeing problems with reliability, the 6.x Unifi version, UDM needing to be rebooted, etc. Even if Ubiquiti was as good as it was pre-2019, if they pulled this advertising stunt then I'd not consider upgrading. There's now no chance I'll be sticking with Ubiquiti for my 6E upgrade.
    - anyfoo 6y ago
      My nanoHD reboots frequently with current firmware. Sometimes it needs readoption, sometimes a manual reset to be readopted. The AP AC Pro seems less affected.
      - jonpurdy 6y ago
        Thanks for that input. My AP AC Lite has been absolutely rock solid so I wouldn't want reduced reliability; it's the reason I went with Unifi in the first place. Not that it matters; no chance I'll be going with Unifi in the future.
bozzcl 6y ago
Bummer, I was considering switching to a full Ubiquiti setup in the future. Are there any other worthwhile competitors?
- warmwaffles 6y ago
  I was also looking into this pretty recently. Good info here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G2g7Txgzgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G2g7Txgzgw
  - chaostheory 6y ago
    Reading the Glassdoor reviews of Engenius makes it sound like a clone of Ubiquiti minus Ubiquiti's weird dislike of automated testing. Still, I hope that there is a decent alternative to UI
    - MindTooth 6y ago
      Seems okay. Though, the controller is Windows only?
    - thaumaturgy 6y ago
      It's been a decade or so since I paid attention to Engenius, but I don't think it's right to describe them as a Ubiquiti clone. Engenius for a little while was the vendor of choice for people trying to build out consumer mesh networks. Ubiquiti may have existed then too, but didn't become the more popular choice until a little later. Back then, Engenius had a lot of nice features and solid products, but their radios had some issues. I think we had to replace about 60% of the Engenius devices we deployed over a five year period. We never had to replace any of the Ubiquitis. I wouldn't buy Ubiquiti now though.
      - andremedeiros 6y ago
        What would you buy?
rachelbythebay 6y ago
First they track you, then they pander to you, then they sell you out completely. Guess we just got to step 2.
bombcar 6y ago
An advertisement for a company’s products on the login page is one thing - but a full on banner in the interface itself (with apparently no way to disable) is another. Sticking with Mikrotik for now.
- candiddevmike 6y ago
  Mikrotik user here, I find their software really clunky and buggy. My dream networking gear for my house is whitebox switches that I can run Debian on, but I can't find any at an economical price. Anyone know of 5-12 port ARM switches?
  - sam_lowry_ 6y ago
    Some Mikrotik hardware can run OpenWRT.
    - candiddevmike 6y ago
      I have an RB4011iGS+5HacQ2HnD, oddly enough made by the networking company Amazon acquired (Annapurna). In theory, the CPU is supported in the mainline kernel, but I can't find an OpenWRT release or figure out how to package a custom Linux payload for flashing. Mikrotik support refuses to provide me the uboot config they use or guide me through this process :(
  - outworlder 6y ago
    Are you talking about the windows-based software? It's clunky. The CLI, on the other hand, is pretty great. Everything is consistent.
    - candiddevmike 6y ago
      No the CLI too unfortunately. While it is consistent, the editing of row numbers and the display of settings is really cumbersome. Setting up VLANs in particular is really tedious. Compared to real enterprise grade networking (Juniper/Cisco/Arista) it's dangerously unintuitive. I've also tried automating it via Ansible with no success, has anyone had any luck with that?
fsociety 6y ago
Time to go research replacements for my network equipment. Ew, why would they do that?
- jachee 6y ago
  Dolla, dolla bills, y'all
chromatin 6y ago
I feel bad for the engineers there, who clearly are not in charge.
- rossipedia 6y ago
  Oh man you have no idea. I spent a year there running the Network Controller team. "Shit show" doesn't even begin to describe it.
  - millstone 6y ago
    Please tell us more.
blakesterz 6y ago
I just noticed PrivacyBadger is blocking Google Analytics on the management interface now, has it always been like that? I just did the update and I'm not seeing that ad.
- andremedeiros 6y ago
  Do you own a UDMP?
  - blakesterz 6y ago
    No, maybe that's why I'm not seeing the ad?
    - andremedeiros 6y ago
      Yeah that’s probably why. Wait until they release the successor and you’ll start getting them :-P
letitbeirie 6y ago
Joke's on you, Ubiquiti - you've bungled so many controller upgrades I haven't upgraded it in a long time.
- gregoryl 6y ago
  Jokes on me... They somehow bungled the auto updates for udm machines, and force upgraded people regardless of the setting.
  - beervirus 6y ago
    >somehow Makes it almost sound unintentional.
- maxgashkov 6y ago
  Yep, gonna stay on that sweet 5.14.23 till the end of times.
  - donmcronald 6y ago
    Holy shit! I thought I was the only one. The updates terrify me. Watching devices at 150 sites all provision simultaneously makes my asshole pucker so tight it creates a vacuum in the office. Why Ubiquiti?
    - andremedeiros 6y ago
      So you’re the one whose ass is splitting atoms.
- e40 6y ago
  Yep, using an older version in a docker container. Until they force me to upgrade for some reason or other.
- qsi 6y ago
  Same here. I switched to Ubiquiti gear a year ago, and by and large it's been very solid, running 2 AC-Pros, 2 AC-HDs and a bunch of switches and a gateway. My controller is a docker image running on a NAS, and having read about the problems with the v6 versions I have stayed on v5, and likely will for a long time. It's a relatively simple home setup so I'm not using any of the fancier configuration settings. For my purposes, it's infinitely better than the hodgepodge of equipment I had before. I still like the UniFi experience and have not had any problems. I am increasingly concerned about the direction the company is going. I figure I get can a quite a few years of service from my current setup. I don't need to update or change anything for the time being, so there is no urgency. I might still recommend a Ubiquiti setup to others but it would be heavily caveated.
kogir 6y ago
Ubiquiti has really fallen far. The 5.x series of controller with the AP AC (S)HD was great, but everything since has been hot garbage. The 6.x series of controllers is still basically a public beta and riddled with bugs. The newer MediaTek based APs have constant problems with client device compatibility, and can’t even reliably support DHCP on the newest official firmware and controller versions (or any of the last 10 releases). I strongly advise you to look anywhere else for your WiFi needs unless they really turn the ship around somehow.
- justinjlynn 6y ago
  It's really sad. I used to recommend UniFi and their other hardware without a second's hesitation to all of my friends and the software and hardware quality control has just gone so far down hill. Now they're putting ads and privacy violating code in the admin user interface? What a complete disregard for user security and privacy in one of the most important places for it. Ugh. Add that to their GPL violations ( https://web.archive.org/web/20170317174847/http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170317174847/http://libertybsd... ) and it's just too much for me going forward. I won't be installing or recommending Ubiquiti gear any more.
  - vvanders 6y ago
    Yeah it's a pretty big bummer. I used to recommend their stuff a lot and I don't know if I'll be able to do that from now on. It's not like their hardware is cheap, I'd much rather pay a monthly subscription than be served ads.
    - justinjlynn 6y ago
      I'd like to receive security updates for at least the warranty life of the device, but I wouldn't mind paying for new features/major versions of the firmware. That said, owning what I've bought is non-negotiable. I paid for what I bought and I'm not going to allow myself, or my friends, to be turned into a product.
    - donmcronald 6y ago
martinskou 6y ago
Samsung does the same. https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co5aw4/unremovable_ads_on_my_2500_samsung_smart_tv/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co5aw4/unrem...
- kmlx 6y ago
  i'm getting ads in my tv's os (lg webos) :))
bradgessler 6y ago
What’s stupid is that ubiquiti could have easily advertised its hardware less intrusively in so many different ways. For example, they could show “devices that integrate with <AP or Switch or Router>” or integrate the changelog of all their releases into the management UI for all products. The list goes on for the more thoughtful ways that could have done it, but instead they did they took the absurdly lame way of advertising via banners. Jeeze.
beervirus 6y ago
What an absolute ghetto. I’m so glad I didn’t buy this garbage.
- millstone 6y ago
  What did you buy instead?
seneca 6y ago
This is disappointing. I've been waffling on buying a full Unifi setup for my home, but all the terrible reviews for the UDMP, and now this, have given me pause. Are there any decent non-Chinese pro-sumer networking suites like Unifi that folks would recommend?
- SkyPuncher 6y ago
  I was in the same boat. I've been running the older equipment that's currently doing just fine. We're looking at the prospect of getting fiber this summer. Figured I'd use the opportunity to get all in on Ubiquiti. This is the nail in the coffin for me.
philsnow 6y ago
After some unexplainable sustained 100% packet loss (for minutes at a time) I switched from a set of eero routers to ubiquiti gear a few years ago and it's been a great experience so far. A single AP-AC-lite covered my entire 2600sqft house from the basement. Somebody I know has stayed on the eero train (on my recommendation before I gave up on them) and he says the company has prioritized features he doesn't care about and deprioritized features he wished it had. I hope Ubiquiti doesn't go down this road.
dboreham 6y ago
Happy Mikrotik user here.
trylfthsk 6y ago
I think it's a common sentiment here, but I'm turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day. Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I'm reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their shilling quackery like Prevagen to an audience using the fear of aging. Perhaps I'm growing increasingly blind to any positive impacts of the discipline, but ethically I find it hard to separate the fraudsters from the engineers that enable them. I guess advertising is saving me a lot of money in the end by cultivating this hatred, and though I can't change the world this screed was therapeutic.
- BLKNSLVR 6y ago
  Having less exposure to advertising, given that I watch less advertising-interrupted television than ever and have had a pi-hole running for a good couple of years, when I am exposed to advertising I'm reminded of how incredibly bottom-feeding it is. I've said it before: Advertising is a psychological attack on human weakness. > I find it hard to separate the fraudsters from the engineers that enable them Paraphrasing because I can't find the original: "What does it say of humanity to have so many of the smartest minds in the world working on making advertising more effective" > this screed was therapeutic +1
  - eschaton 6y ago
    Most advertising literally attempts to hack an audience’s brains, which everyone should instantly recognize as being black-hat.
    - sitkack 6y ago
      At the same time, we have created super computers that run on expansion cards that are being used for that same black-hat activity. Currently measured in the 10s of teraflops of processing power.
  - bigiain 6y ago
dkhenry 6y ago
I have been watching Ubiquiti slowly go downhill over the past five years. I finally jumped ship to Mikrotik for a recent addition to my network and they seem like a good replacement for power users. Nothing they sell is quite as user friendly as the Ubiquiti gear, but I would rather have to spend a few minutes at a console then loose control over my network because a SaaS went offline
- petersellers 6y ago
  > loose control over my network because a SaaS went offline That doesn't sound correct. I've always been able to access my controller without internet access as long as I was on the same LAN and was hitting the controller IP directly.
  - hansel_der 6y ago
    certainly a hyperbole from op. but i have to agree that it is no far fetched for ubiquiti to fuck this up.
mikelward 6y ago
One auto update they broke my laptop's ability to connect. Turns out they'd auto enabled 5 GHz band steering, but my laptop's chipset only did 2.4 GHz. Even when it was enabled, the Android management app said the setting was disabled. Customer support directed me to the forums. Ubiquiti didn't respond to my post. I posted on a thread where someone else was seeing the same problem, where a number of people gaslit me and blamed me for the problem. I still have no idea if they've fixed their band steering. Or how they decided to force 5 GHz on a 2.4 GHz chipset. Or how to get support. Or how to report a problem. Definitely won't be buying their products in future. https://community.ui.com/questions/Intel-Centrino-2200-N-client-cant-connect-due-to-Optimize-for-High-Performance-Devices-setting/af79e64c-978d-49bb-a61d-9fe025a725ed https://community.ui.com/questions/Intel-Centrino-2200-N-cli... https://community.ui.com/releases/UniFi-Network-Controller-5-12-35/45726736-ee4c-4172-877a-a2303f5d3627?page=10 https://community.ui.com/releases/UniFi-Network-Controller-5... https://community.ui.com/questions/Default-AUTO-OPTIMIZE-NETWORK-off/4605b0fb-52e6-4793-8e01-514b6fb39b44 https://community.ui.com/questions/Default-AUTO-OPTIMIZE-NET...
- SkyPuncher 6y ago
  Holy crap! This must be what I'm dealing with. I have an old laptop that I was trying to fire up to run some lightweight games on. I could not get it to connect to wi-fi for the life of me. Must be the band steering.
- bmurphy1976 6y ago
  We have 5 ubiquiti switches on our office network that are running 4 year old firmware. The next version after started dropping DHCP packets! I followed the thread for months and months and they never fixed the issue. I gave up caring, stopped watching the thread and swore never to buy any of their products again. I do wonder if they ever fixed the issue. The switches lock up every couple months and need a hard reboot. We also had all sorts of problems with their APs and switched over to Cisco Meraki. As much as I hate Cisco and their ridiculous cost at least the Meraki line works. Obnoxious.
  - dkdk8283 6y ago
karmicthreat 6y ago
For people needing alternatives. I've had good luck with foritgate. Some of their APs are dogs, but the fortios in general has been decent.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Way too many SKUs IMO and I think they’re quite a bit more expensive, aren’t they?
  - karmicthreat 6y ago
    A fortigate 30E is around 400$. So it's a little more but their lower end equipment is definitely affordable by small and medium sized businesses.
- TristanBall 6y ago
  I'd been wondering about this.. Ubiquiti's wan and firwalling is super weak, especially for multi-site, when compared to some of the sd-wan products out there. What's wrong with the ap's? Have you used the switches? How much of their kit can managed via a single console?
  - karmicthreat 6y ago
    From what I understand their E and F series APs are solid, the ones before just had bad performance. The switches have been pretty solid. Everything can be managed off the fortigate, I think they also have a cloud management platform.
imwally 6y ago
I had a Dream Machine (the all-in-one, not the pro) and it fried the very next day. Even after that I was willing to give Ubiquiti another try, but now I don’t know what to do.
- mewse 6y ago
  I have two of them at two different sites. They’ve been completely fine for me, apart from the problems from the 1.8.x firmwares which probably should never have reached the ‘Release’ channel. (The recently-released v1.9.2 appears to have fixed all my issues from 1.8.x) I’m definitely not pushing either of them very hard or doing anything particularly fancy, but they’ve certainly been a big step up from the aging Apple routers I’d been using before, at least for me.
  - imwally 6y ago
    Hmm, I'm still interested in a Dream Machine but I've been holding off for the so called SE[1], with the display on the front, similarly to the Amplifi Alien. [1] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wifishop.nl%2Fimg%2Fproducts%2Flarge%2Fubiquiti-udm-se-unifi-dream-machine-se-1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
luckman212 6y ago
I see a lot of complaints here, but nobody offering any substantive alternatives. Mikrotik is mentioned several times, but always with the caveats that it has glitchy UIs or poorly implemented features. EnGenius... you've got to be kidding. I've been a UI fan for many years and was also dismayed by the 6.x releases and the switch to Mediatek, but every time I went looking around, I saw the same tire fires at other vendors. At least with UBNT it's "the devil you know". Cambium is interesting, I've been playing around with their cnPilot stuff and it's been pretty solid.
- dmqctx 6y ago
  Same. There are enough annoyances with UI gear to keep us all here griping for days. But when you try to find an alternative company for your Wireless needs you realize quick that you're perfectly willing to put up with UI's stupid annoyances. Granted a few glitches have wasted days of my life trying to correct. But I'll be sticking with them for the foreseeable future. Over the years I've had satisfactory uptime and performance.
- chrisandchris 6y ago
  I usually prefer the regular line over the UniFi series of UI and they tend to have less UI polish but that‘s what usually tells that it‘s a product for technical people. I won‘t switch to the UniFi series for now even though they would provide easier management. But I‘m a bit worried that it‘s going to be an Apple-style product line where the pros are somehow not respected as much as before.
- patrickk 6y ago
  Building your own router with pfSense is one prosumer solution I've considered, by shied away from due to lack of time[1]. Not sure how a pfSense setup would work with wireless APs though. [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/i-built-my-own-super-router-out-of-old-pc-parts-and-ive-never-felt-so-powerful/ https://www.pcgamer.com/i-built-my-own-super-router-out-of-o...
  - m_eiman 6y ago
    pfSense might have a lot of features, but the UI is terrible in all possible ways. They should stop letting their programmers "design" the UI; dumping the raw database into an HTML table is not a good user interface.
rektide 6y ago
three days ago smallnetbuilder reviewed a bunch of routers. I noted that the most recent router on the list that could run openwrt was the three year old r7800. someone mentioned building their own box for an ap and I discussed how hard it is to get wifi add-on cards[1], and oh, by the way, good luck running anything modern yourself. the state of our wifis, right now, is extremely poor. upmarket expensive gear becoming a hostile rent-seeking shark is a sign of how late-stage the market is right now. i will allow: there is a lag somewhat to be expected. wave2 and wifi6 and wifi6e have been all kind of sounding this new stuff stuff out. wifi6e feels a bit like a natural culmination, for a while, but we're only just making it across a long series of changes just now. the standards have been in flux, enhancing. still, the driver situation feels terrible. hardware is hard to get except as consumer electronics running provided shrinkware. even in terms of stations not ap's, companies like intel can both do a good job, insure reasonable support, decent enough hardware these days, but also neglect basic love & care things like support for 802.11s mesh & other sincere basics. anyhow. wifi6e looks like the culmination of a lot. the situation might stabilize some. the future is finally here & only now do we commence more evenly distributing use/usability of it. maybe. maybe not. maybe vendorization floggings will continue. i'm hoping somehow more ap class add-on systems start becoming in any way available again. hoping systems like wifi-p2p and wifi-aware and wifi mesh (802.11s) see general support. I'd love to see some pro-active movements in wifi world, some chipmakers really doing right, but wifi feels forever like the most cagey & slowest developing linux driver area. communication, not well supported. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26597238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26597238
chenxiaolong 6y ago
Are there any good alternatives to their higher end products, like the UAP-AC-HD? I currently have 2 of those, but have been thinking about replacing them because of increasingly buggy updates and especially after the AP firmware update that added the data collection code (I'm aware it can be disabled now). When I got them, I was looking for something that supported 802.11r, supported VLANs, and could sustain 500Mbps throughput from 2 clients (one on each AP). Ruckus APs also fit the bill, though they were 2-4x the price.
oxplot 6y ago
I'm super disappointed by recent update to Unify Controller on their CloudKey Generation 2. It now requires access to Internet and a Unifi cloud account in order to setup a local controller. I, like many others, have downgraded to the 1.x version. And now this BS. Ubiquiti was one company I always rooted for, and recommended to friends. Time to move on I guess (for me, I've already spent many $$$ on my equipment unfortunately.
tumblewit 6y ago
I’ve owned unifi at home for about 6 years now. Their access points are a different kind of value for money. But their software stack is really annoying. First it needs java. They have switched to Apps as option but that limits the settings (and I like to fine tune). I think the UDM Pro is a great home router for up to 10G internet but I don’t find their software stack convincing given their phoning home was also under fire a while back. I think building your opnsense box and a managed switch is little more work but if you are buying udm pro you are skilled anyway to get it done on a weekend.
ballenf 6y ago
We need an excise tax on advertising. It’s more destructive than alcohol. And a prohibition on adding it to any product after purchase.
- hinkley 6y ago
  How about we start with not providing a tax break for advertising? The problem though is that a bunch of forms of sponsorship dry up if you do.
windex 6y ago
I sometimes wonder how these decisions get made within companies. I mean you are network hw vendor, how do you get convinced to embed adware/spyware into your products without compromising on trust? I'd fire all concerned if I were on the board and understood what the brand meant.
- orev 6y ago
  I’m not saying it’s ethically right, but from a business perspective, the question is inverted: how can you NOT spy on everyone? There’s virtually no regulation on data collection, every other company is already doing it with no repercussions (especially home ISPs who you have no choice over and can see/sell everything you do!), anyone doing it is making a ton of money while destroying competitors, and virtually nobody in the public cares at all. The only people speaking against it only have a voice because they’re already rich, mostly from collecting data, so anything they say rings hollow at best.
- millstone 6y ago
  Pitch to a VP with "we will do a tiny trial of 1% of customers, if it doesn't work it's GONE, no harm done." Gets the greenlight, everyone who worked on it is invested and motivated to make the results look good, and it builds from there.
- oaiey 6y ago
  The decision maker is a product manager. The person has an agenda. With Unifi that seems to be: let us build a proper remote management interface and new fancier UI at all costs (and with some evil thinking a subscription service). Over time they become so invested that even of the become aware of the real customer need they cannot jump of from what they started. Other example: the other Ubiquiti product manager check offs feature lost: IDS check, firewall check, pppoe check. Seeing that they are half baked he ignores. I do not think that Ubiquiti problems is the engineering they outsourced. It is the product management they screwed up. They are not listening to what user wants. The indian IT guys are delivering. And honestly: it is an ad. No ad network. They know our network better than us by their cloud management ... They do not need to analyze us. When they want to be an ad network they could do much worse things (like the telcos do).
IgorPartola 6y ago
They also just deprecated a whole bunch of hardware, some of which barely a year old. I was just about to upgrade my whole setup and drop a decent chunk of change for a home office setup (outdoor APs, wireless backbone between two buildings, etc.). Between them dropping support and this… what is the best alternative to their access points? I plan on using an opensense box for my router. Edit: looks like Aruba Instant On/Aruba Networks is a frequently mentioned solution in a similar price range.
rebuilder 6y ago
Maybe they decided their userbase was too demanding. This gets rid of the more discerning, high-maintenance customers while simultaneously increasing sales among the less fussy people. Win-win.
eatbitseveryday 6y ago
Ads for their own products? Companies have the right to advertise upgrades for their own stuff. If this were ads for other companies, perhaps I would share some sympathy. How often do folks log into the management interface to actually do something everyday? I opened mine once to acquire the APs and configure the network, then shut it off and haven't opened it for months.
rootusrootus 6y ago
This is on the hosted interface, right? I can sorta understand that, especially when the ads are for their own gear. But if I start seeing ads in my locally installed copy of Unifi, this will be a problem.
- andremedeiros 6y ago
  The “hosted” interface is nothing but a proxy to my paid for cloud key. I also see this when I access it locally.
- milgrim 6y ago
  I just got this ad on the unifi Controller hosted on my own server. Not happy about this.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    Well that is disheartening. I've been pretty happy with my choice of Ubiquiti gear for home, it was a vast improvement over the consumer-grade gear I had been using before, but if I'm going to start seeing ads on my own server, I'll be looking elsewhere when it's time to upgrade.
wyuenho 6y ago
I'm going to go out on a limb here to point out the inconsistency of this entire thread. For the following reasoning, I'm going to use the word "ad" in the broad sense. 1. Everybody is excited with Github's new features that they promote on the dashboard. Sometimes popups and flashes too. Are they not ads? 2. Nobody ever complains about Github showing ads. 3. Github is a SaaS. 4. unify.ui.com is a SaaS 5. OP is complaining about ads on a SaaS. 6. Most people here don't seem to like this banner in question, but that's not how they phrase their responses. Is this a case of some random Amazonian complaining about intrusive ads or or a case of ads, even for self promotions, aren't allowed in SaaS?
- lstamour 6y ago
  Github makes it a single click to hide their intrusive notifications and such. They're rather tasteful at where and when they show you something. They have a notifications panel you can click once and then it won't bug you until the next time. This screenshot shows the ad takes up a huge chunk of real estate and can only be turned off by presumably opting out of some new experience, which means it might become permanent. If enough of the internet protests, obviously Ubiquity might re-think their recent actions... but it won't change their overall product direction which is to try to encourage you to buy newer products by any means they can. The proper equivalent would be if my Amazon Echo started showing me ads for a new Amazon Echo, or if I launched the Echo app and it said, hey, do you want to buy the new Echo at the top and I couldn't remove it. Perhaps another comparison: What if Nest suddenly changed to show an ad when you went to change your thermostat's settings such that you could learn about the new Nest that replaces your old hunk of junk? Or imagine if you opened System Preferences or About This Mac, and saw an ad for the latest and greatest MacBook from Apple? Like, do I really want to see stats about how my battery life is only 10% that of the newest Apple Silicon? SaaS or not, there's a difference between advertising some new service I don't need and advertising new HARDWARE I don't need within my existing, perfectly good, management control panel for my existing hardware. Whether its hosted on a website or not is just an implementation detail. They could have used Electron, same result.
  - wyuenho 6y ago
computator 6y ago
I'm disappointed that the Ubiquity Dream Machine can no longer be set up and managed locally. You could do so in the past, but not anymore. You must use their cloud management now.
- millstone 6y ago
  Can you say more? What happens if you try?
  - flemhans 6y ago
    We bought their four-hardrive NVR for our security cams - same thing. You have to login with a Cloud login to access the web interface. The unit still sits unused in our office rack. The previous NVR allowed local logins.
    - jstsch 6y ago
      Luckily in response to this thread [1] they recently announced that local access will return: https://community.ui.com/questions/UniFi-Protect-Mobile-App-Local-Connect/15a5e6fd-0a97-4d65-9ba1-2d5fa35a34bd https://community.ui.com/questions/UniFi-Protect-Mobile-App-... [1] https://community.ui.com/questions/A-Request-for-Local-Accounts-in-light-of-this-breach-1-11-2021/4972a1fb-ff95-4dc3-b920-63b3b292bf96 https://community.ui.com/questions/A-Request-for-Local-Accou...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ksec 6y ago
All of these just made me wish Apple hadn't discontinued their AirPort Extreme. I mean if keeping up with NetBSD codebase was expensive they could have engineered it with iOS / tvOS instead.
sneak 6y ago
Is this as bad as when they put spyware into the AP firmware that phoned home without consent? AIUI they made it opt-in in subsequent firmware revs after a backlash. Maybe they will fix this, too.
lilyball 6y ago
To be honest, the reaction here seems rather absurd. From the screenshot, the user doesn’t have a USG, so the management interface can’t show data it otherwise would. This banner suggesting a UDMP is occupying space that would have otherwise just said “no data available”. It’s a bit obnoxious and should really have a “hide this” button, but it’s really pretty minor all things considered.
- SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
  > This banner suggesting a UDMP is occupying space that would have otherwise just said “no data available” I disagree, simply because that "space" is also known as "the top half of the screen", AKA "above the fold" and "prime real estate". The user would obviously be better served by moving the functional parts of the UI upwards.
gorgoiler 6y ago
The three stages of an engineer’s relationship with Ubiquiti: 1/ Their APs are so cool! Check out this web interface! I can manage an entire fleet of both of these, all from my home office! 2/ Aha, the APs run Linux and I can ssh to them and upload settings — even cooler! 3/ Er, you know what else runs Linux, has a pair of wired and wireless NICs, and can be managed remotely with plain text files and ssh — literally every SBC on the market for $20. I run a mixture of UAC PROs and PoE SBCs as APs now. The latter because I’m cheap and I can manage them myself. The former because I’m cheap and refuse to retire something for which I paid $100+ a piece. Ubiquiti provide some fantastic and well polished products. I thought I needed them, but all I really needed was commodity hardware and a shell script.
- fy20 6y ago
  Are there any SBCs which have built in APs that can handle transfers in the hundreds of megabits range?
  - Terretta 6y ago
    Good question. When you have gigabit FIOS backstopped by multi-hundred mbps LTE, several thousand square feet of concrete and metal construction, and actively use (and feel) hundreds of megabits in any given room, even in commercially packaged offerings there are not a lot of consumer or prosumer options. Of the two that I’ve found: (a) eero Pro (not base), and (b) UDM Pro + Nano HD APs, it comes down to something like iPhone vs. Pixel: how much twiddling do you want to do for entertainment value? For what it’s worth, I find better sustained up/down WiFi speeds (>600 mbps vs. 450 mbps) through eero Pro, but better sustained up/down wired speeds (>900 mbps vs. >800 mbps) and support for obscure legacy IoT through Ubiquiti UniFi®. In locations not needing more than one AP, I find monster all-in-one gaming WiFi routers (e.g. Netgear, TP-Link) beat both of them.
- ucosty 6y ago
  What $20 SBCs on the market have multiple real network interfaces? I'd love to pick up a few.
totetsu 6y ago
Any other makers to look at for setting up more than the b basic access point setup for a weekend warrior?
utf_8x 6y ago
Well now I'm glad I stuck with Mikrotik...
alkonaut 6y ago
What is this interface? I have ubiquiti hardware but not any UniFi hardware, is this only a UniFi thing?
- vermilingua 6y ago
  This is the UniFi Controller appliance, software that lets you deploy and configure the WAPs from a webapp.
  - alkonaut 6y ago
    If it’s an appliance why would I access it through a cloud service rather than directly accessing its network interface?
    - vermilingua 6y ago
      You can access it directly, yes.
flyinghamster 6y ago
Just updated my controller VM (for two access points) to 6.1.71. Good thing it's on a ZFS volume, and that I made sure to snapshot it before updating, because I just rolled it back and dropped a pin in /etc/apt. Ye gods. Video ads in my management interface? Are you KIDDING? This is ridiculous. Sigh. Everything is turning to ashes. Every. Fucking. Vendor. has decided that it's perfectly OK to spam you and hoover up your personal data. And no, don't say "Apple" since I don't trust them any more than Microsoft or Google. In any case, it makes me very hesitant to "update" my EdgeRouter, for that matter. :( Ubiquiti has been skating on thin ice with me for a while, after their earlier telemetry kerfluffle, where they eventually did the right thing. But this is beyond the pale. The only thing I've seen worse was years ago when Belkin started hijacking HTTP connections to serve ads for censorware. [0] At least the access points are capable of running OpenWRT, but I don't relish the prospect of reflashing them. The ERPoE-5 is the lone EdgeRouter I don't see in OpenWRT's hardware table. :( [0] https://www.cnet.com/news/web-hijack-riles-belkin-router-users/ https://www.cnet.com/news/web-hijack-riles-belkin-router-use...
- Terretta 6y ago
  > ”And no, don't say ‘Apple’ since I don't trust them any more than Microsoft or Google.” Apple. Because only one firm in your list has billboards focusing on privacy (keeping your data on your device), code enforcing that, and policy and code requiring developer full transparency in the consumer app store. It’s an interesting exercise to ask: If you don’t trust Apple any more than Google, what would it take for you to trust that a high end consumer hardware company would be less data privacy exploitation motivated than a purely ad revenue driven company?
GuB-42 6y ago
Is self-promotion considered ads? My opinion is "yes" but it is not universal. For example the EasyList policy[1] states "Self-promotion should not be specifically removed by EasyList, although equally should not be allowed if it is blocked." I asked myself the question when Wikipedia does its calls for donation. One may argue that it has a noble goal but technically, it is a huge ad banner of the annoying kind, and I would have expected indiscriminate ad blockers like uBlock Origin to block them, and they don't. And the reason is doesn't isn't because it is Wikipedia, it is because it is self-promotion and is therefore allowed. [1] https://easylist.to/pages/policy.html https://easylist.to/pages/policy.html Edit: the definition of an ad by EasyList is "the promotion of third party content in return for goods or services" https://easylist.to/2011/07/11/the-definition-of-advert-and-link-exchange-policy.html https://easylist.to/2011/07/11/the-definition-of-advert-and-...
trollied 6y ago
Looking at the screenshot, the management interface is the one that's on the Ubiquiti website, rather than a locally hosted controller. I don't really have a problem with them putting ads on their own website. Use a local controller if you don't want to see them. Install the software on a raspberry pi, it runs just fine.
- andremedeiros 6y ago
  Their hosted version is only acting as a proxy to my physical paid for cloud key. If I access it locally I also get this shit.
traceroute66 6y ago
For those people here saying "go Ruckus unleashed" ... caveat emptor my friends ! I have it on very good authority that Ruckus have started rolling out a change in their pricing model to require a Unleashed license per AP to operate, a move which obviously increases costs to the end-user. Some people might say its a deliberate move prevent cannibalisation of their main business model by nudging people away from Unleashed. I couldn't possibly comment.
teekert 6y ago
Is there anything opensource that can replace the main server? I run the docker (linuxserver.io) and every update I need to re-opt out of tracking. So annoying. I thought they were like the Apple of this space, you pay a bit more but no shenanigans. Looks like they’re the Google. Shame.
Proven 6y ago
Haha. Nice try. I'm fortunate in that I only use it when I update firmware or something like that, 1-2 times a year. If they were to sell the software as a service, wouldn't $9.99/year be enough? I know they can't make any ad money from the ads I (won't) see.
kmlx 6y ago
to be fair, the Dream Machine Pro is actually a great piece of kit :)
Lev1a 6y ago
> Ubiquiti starts ~~serving ads in~~ smearing fermented feces all over their management interface FTFY
Roark66 6y ago
I think reacting to scammy ads by banning all of them is an overreaction. There are many useful products and services I would've never found out about without ads. How about simply making all ad networks responsible for the content of the ads they serve? You lost your life's savings to a Ponzi scam advertised on Facebook? Sue Facebook for damages. There should be laws in place that allow it. This would fix the problem instantly.
- m463 6y ago
  It would be unlikely that you could prove cause and effect in court, and with the distributed nature of data gathering, matching and reselling.
drpixie 6y ago
Lots of Ubiquiti hardware can run Openwrt open source Linux-based router software. And (at least) lots of the Ubiquiti software is based on (really old versions of) Openwrt! I've been using Openwrt for a while now, and been very happy with it. It's not perfect, but neither is the crap software that comes with most routers, and at least you can see what's going on - and maybe sort it.
mijoharas 6y ago
Sorry to highjack this thread looking for a product recommendation, but I've been running the same old netgear router with dd-wrt on it for about 8 years and am thinking of an upgrade. I had been considering ubiquiti, but the stuff in this thread (not just the ads, mostly the "stuff doesn't work" posts) has made me reconsider. Every time I look for a router nowadays, everything looks like a hedgehog it seems[0]. Has anyone got a recommendation for a solid, high performance home router to put dd-wrt or similar onto? (also, would people recommend openwrt or something instead? I've not really looked at alternatives since I set this up). I tend to trust flashing something open source onto it better than whatever crap the manufacturer has decided to put onto it. Thanks in advance.
- bradfa 6y ago
  If you want to "build your own" and don't mind some hands-on fun, I strongly suggest looking at using a PC Engines APU2 board and using the Linux distribution of your choice on it (and yes, OpenWRT works fine on them). https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
- jasdine817 6y ago
  For home office/SMBs routers you can't really beat Draytek boxes. I've had ones last 9+ years and they receive regular updates for 5+ years and are extremely solid. They have devices that have wireless radios in too but I tend to buy a used Ruckus WAP and set that up in addition because the coverage on those beats most things out there.
dspillett 6y ago
If this is calling out, even to just their own servers for information about just their own products, even if only when an admin is actively using the UI and we can lock that account down, and there is no way to completely disable it, we will have to replace all the kit we have of theirs and never buy more. As well as offending our idea of security it simply won't pass the security audits we have to perform for our clients. And for a "to completely disable it", blocking at the firewall level is not sufficient. Anything trying to call out will fail us on such audits. Holding software/firmware versions back to avoid the feature won't wash either. Unless there is a security related reason to hold back an update beyond a reasonable "not jamming new code into kit the office relies on in case it breaks things" testing/resting period, then holding back on infrastructure updates is itself a security audit fail. [FYI: getting Ubiquiti kit in the first place was not our call but it has worked well enough - it might be our call to plan its replacement with something else, and if I shall name this activity Project Ubiquiti-quity]
- dspillett 6y ago
  Without explanatory comments to the contrary, I'm going to assume the downvotes are from Ubiquiti shills trying to cause silence instead of addressing the issue and lower my opinion of the company and the trustworthiness of its products accordingly.
tapper 6y ago
OpenWrt!
teekert 6y ago
Is there anything we can do? I mean we spend money on something that has nice reviews... Gradually they keep pushing "Want want statistics" in your face more and more and now this. They are (trying to make) making money of off me without any of my consent and in a sneaky way. Can't we organize or something?
diftraku 6y ago
And now the hardware controller we have (Dream Machine Pro) plasters "How likely are you to recommend" polls and usability surveys after being forced to use the new settings and dashboard following an automatic update. While not outright ads, the usability survey keeps pestering for feedback, I do not have much faith in Ubiquiti having any tact left to not pester for the recommendation feedback as well.
Synthead 6y ago
I made an ad block list for these ads. It's not great that we have come to this, but here we are. https://github.com/synthead/unifi-adfree https://github.com/synthead/unifi-adfree

634 points by andremedeiros 6y ago

I’m even more astonished by the dismissive, misspelled, and incorrect support response. * telling the customer they’re wrong... * incorrectly... * and with multiple typos. Yes, very cool.

madjam002 6y ago
The customer service response is deplorable, makes me think twice about purchasing any more Ubiquiti gear.
- oaiey 6y ago
  If you want support do not go to Ubiquiti. That is not their business model (yet). And I hope it will never be.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
I'm astonished by the childish and rude language directed at the customer support rep.
- andremedeiros 6y ago
  Because I called out their bullshit?
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
    Calling out bullshit is fine but I'd choose better language. "This is unacceptable and this change makes me very angry. I will not be considering future products from Ubiquiti"
    - andremedeiros 6y ago
      The customer service rep isn’t in control of the change. They’re in control of what they tell me, and he was bullshitting. Not really sure what else to tell you.
      - greg5green 6y ago
        > They’re in control of what they tell me Have you never interacted in a non-business sense with someone who worked customer support? They DO NOT have control of what they tell you. They will get fired real quick if they don't follow the script. Especially someone working the first line of support in a chat box. C'mon man.
        akersten 6y ago
        So this awful response was part of the official script? That's even worse.
        petersellers 6y ago
        But it doesn't justify being rude to the support person.
        dr_hooo 6y ago
        So the support person is a glorified bot, but we have to be careful not to hurt it's feelings? Honestly I feel for the support guy, but he represents the company. And companies purposely push their support onto social media platforms like twitter - where exactly are unhappy customers supposed to vent their anger?
        petersellers 6y ago
        It? This is an actual person we are talking about. And most people are perfectly capable of handling a mildly stressful situation without acting like a complete jerk to someone.

umeshunni 6y ago

Misleading tweet. This looks more like them promoting an update to their own product than them "serving ads".

andremedeiros 6y ago
How is it misleading? Can you explain to me what the difference between "promoting an update to their own product" and an ad? This is an ad, pure and simple. They're pushing a product they know I don't own with a clear call to action, and without a way for me to remove it or disable it.
- dminvs 6y ago
  But at least they're pushing their own product and didn't sell the right to do so to some third party. So far.
- owl57 6y ago
  Ad is a broad term, this confuses people. This shit is definitely worse than ads on the box, but it also definitely isn't the entire monstrosity we have come to assume when hearing about ads on web pages.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > Ad is a broad term Yes. > this confuses people No. > but it also definitely isn't the entire monstrosity we have come to assume when hearing about ads on web pages. Slippery slope. I used to think of Ubiquiti as prosumer. Now it's definitely not.
  - andremedeiros 6y ago
    Somewhere an engineer was tasked to write software that does an inventory of my network to see what new shiny hardware of theirs I don’t yet own. Then, the software that was written to manage a product that I paid for shoves a call-to-action that takes a considerable amount of the page to suggest I buy it. And I can’t dismiss or close it. The difference with ads on the web is that I paid for the privilege of being served this garbage. In my mind, this is much worse.

exabrial 6y ago

I'm willing to pay for major updates that include new features, even on a per-device basis. I'm not willing to pay for things I already bought that don't work correctly (bug fixes). This ad-supported model isn't needed or wanted.

andremedeiros 6y ago
Agreed. It's not like their hardware is cheap or subsidized either, like the Cloud Key, which is a tiny device that acts as a proxy and has some cache storage for firmware updates that costs upwards of $100 here.
- warmwaffles 6y ago
  Also runs mongodb

errantmind 6y ago

One of the reasons I have used Ubiquiti over the last few years is their product quality over other networking hardware. The inclusion of ads leads me to revisit those assumptions before my next purchase. Ads, even if self-promotion, are a bellwether for a company being desperate or greedy, neither of which bodes well for their long-term product quality, usually because it indicates sales people are making the decisions. They also often lead to a slippery slope of increasing user data collection

andremedeiros 6y ago
The funny thing is that I have a UDMP on the way, because one of my APs died and I figured it was time to upgrade the network a bit, but now I'm refusing delivery and sending it back for a full refund.
- jonpurdy 6y ago
  I was considering replacing my AP AC Lite with whatever 6E equivalent comes out when 6E is approved. I considered picking up a NanoHD for the extra MIMO speeds, but in the meantime I keep seeing problems with reliability, the 6.x Unifi version, UDM needing to be rebooted, etc. Even if Ubiquiti was as good as it was pre-2019, if they pulled this advertising stunt then I'd not consider upgrading. There's now no chance I'll be sticking with Ubiquiti for my 6E upgrade.
  - anyfoo 6y ago
    My nanoHD reboots frequently with current firmware. Sometimes it needs readoption, sometimes a manual reset to be readopted. The AP AC Pro seems less affected.
    - jonpurdy 6y ago
      Thanks for that input. My AP AC Lite has been absolutely rock solid so I wouldn't want reduced reliability; it's the reason I went with Unifi in the first place. Not that it matters; no chance I'll be going with Unifi in the future.

bozzcl 6y ago

Bummer, I was considering switching to a full Ubiquiti setup in the future. Are there any other worthwhile competitors?

warmwaffles 6y ago
I was also looking into this pretty recently. Good info here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G2g7Txgzgw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G2g7Txgzgw
- chaostheory 6y ago
  Reading the Glassdoor reviews of Engenius makes it sound like a clone of Ubiquiti minus Ubiquiti's weird dislike of automated testing. Still, I hope that there is a decent alternative to UI
  - MindTooth 6y ago
    Seems okay. Though, the controller is Windows only?
  - thaumaturgy 6y ago
    It's been a decade or so since I paid attention to Engenius, but I don't think it's right to describe them as a Ubiquiti clone. Engenius for a little while was the vendor of choice for people trying to build out consumer mesh networks. Ubiquiti may have existed then too, but didn't become the more popular choice until a little later. Back then, Engenius had a lot of nice features and solid products, but their radios had some issues. I think we had to replace about 60% of the Engenius devices we deployed over a five year period. We never had to replace any of the Ubiquitis. I wouldn't buy Ubiquiti now though.
    - andremedeiros 6y ago
      What would you buy?

rachelbythebay 6y ago

First they track you, then they pander to you, then they sell you out completely. Guess we just got to step 2.

bombcar 6y ago

An advertisement for a company’s products on the login page is one thing - but a full on banner in the interface itself (with apparently no way to disable) is another. Sticking with Mikrotik for now.

candiddevmike 6y ago
Mikrotik user here, I find their software really clunky and buggy. My dream networking gear for my house is whitebox switches that I can run Debian on, but I can't find any at an economical price. Anyone know of 5-12 port ARM switches?
- sam_lowry_ 6y ago
  Some Mikrotik hardware can run OpenWRT.
  - candiddevmike 6y ago
    I have an RB4011iGS+5HacQ2HnD, oddly enough made by the networking company Amazon acquired (Annapurna). In theory, the CPU is supported in the mainline kernel, but I can't find an OpenWRT release or figure out how to package a custom Linux payload for flashing. Mikrotik support refuses to provide me the uboot config they use or guide me through this process :(
- outworlder 6y ago
  Are you talking about the windows-based software? It's clunky. The CLI, on the other hand, is pretty great. Everything is consistent.
  - candiddevmike 6y ago
    No the CLI too unfortunately. While it is consistent, the editing of row numbers and the display of settings is really cumbersome. Setting up VLANs in particular is really tedious. Compared to real enterprise grade networking (Juniper/Cisco/Arista) it's dangerously unintuitive. I've also tried automating it via Ansible with no success, has anyone had any luck with that?

fsociety 6y ago

Time to go research replacements for my network equipment. Ew, why would they do that?

jachee 6y ago
Dolla, dolla bills, y'all

chromatin 6y ago

I feel bad for the engineers there, who clearly are not in charge.

rossipedia 6y ago
Oh man you have no idea. I spent a year there running the Network Controller team. "Shit show" doesn't even begin to describe it.
- millstone 6y ago
  Please tell us more.

blakesterz 6y ago

I just noticed PrivacyBadger is blocking Google Analytics on the management interface now, has it always been like that? I just did the update and I'm not seeing that ad.

andremedeiros 6y ago
Do you own a UDMP?
- blakesterz 6y ago
  No, maybe that's why I'm not seeing the ad?
  - andremedeiros 6y ago
    Yeah that’s probably why. Wait until they release the successor and you’ll start getting them :-P

letitbeirie 6y ago

Joke's on you, Ubiquiti - you've bungled so many controller upgrades I haven't upgraded it in a long time.

gregoryl 6y ago
Jokes on me... They somehow bungled the auto updates for udm machines, and force upgraded people regardless of the setting.
- beervirus 6y ago
  >somehow Makes it almost sound unintentional.
maxgashkov 6y ago
Yep, gonna stay on that sweet 5.14.23 till the end of times.
- donmcronald 6y ago
  Holy shit! I thought I was the only one. The updates terrify me. Watching devices at 150 sites all provision simultaneously makes my asshole pucker so tight it creates a vacuum in the office. Why Ubiquiti?
  - andremedeiros 6y ago
    So you’re the one whose ass is splitting atoms.
e40 6y ago
Yep, using an older version in a docker container. Until they force me to upgrade for some reason or other.
qsi 6y ago
Same here. I switched to Ubiquiti gear a year ago, and by and large it's been very solid, running 2 AC-Pros, 2 AC-HDs and a bunch of switches and a gateway. My controller is a docker image running on a NAS, and having read about the problems with the v6 versions I have stayed on v5, and likely will for a long time. It's a relatively simple home setup so I'm not using any of the fancier configuration settings. For my purposes, it's infinitely better than the hodgepodge of equipment I had before. I still like the UniFi experience and have not had any problems. I am increasingly concerned about the direction the company is going. I figure I get can a quite a few years of service from my current setup. I don't need to update or change anything for the time being, so there is no urgency. I might still recommend a Ubiquiti setup to others but it would be heavily caveated.

kogir 6y ago

Ubiquiti has really fallen far. The 5.x series of controller with the AP AC (S)HD was great, but everything since has been hot garbage. The 6.x series of controllers is still basically a public beta and riddled with bugs. The newer MediaTek based APs have constant problems with client device compatibility, and can’t even reliably support DHCP on the newest official firmware and controller versions (or any of the last 10 releases). I strongly advise you to look anywhere else for your WiFi needs unless they really turn the ship around somehow.

justinjlynn 6y ago
It's really sad. I used to recommend UniFi and their other hardware without a second's hesitation to all of my friends and the software and hardware quality control has just gone so far down hill. Now they're putting ads and privacy violating code in the admin user interface? What a complete disregard for user security and privacy in one of the most important places for it. Ugh. Add that to their GPL violations ( https://web.archive.org/web/20170317174847/http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170317174847/http://libertybsd... ) and it's just too much for me going forward. I won't be installing or recommending Ubiquiti gear any more.
- vvanders 6y ago
  Yeah it's a pretty big bummer. I used to recommend their stuff a lot and I don't know if I'll be able to do that from now on. It's not like their hardware is cheap, I'd much rather pay a monthly subscription than be served ads.
  - justinjlynn 6y ago
    I'd like to receive security updates for at least the warranty life of the device, but I wouldn't mind paying for new features/major versions of the firmware. That said, owning what I've bought is non-negotiable. I paid for what I bought and I'm not going to allow myself, or my friends, to be turned into a product.
  - donmcronald 6y ago

martinskou 6y ago

Samsung does the same. https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co5aw4/unremovable_ads_on_my_2500_samsung_smart_tv/ https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co5aw4/unrem...

kmlx 6y ago
i'm getting ads in my tv's os (lg webos) :))

bradgessler 6y ago

What’s stupid is that ubiquiti could have easily advertised its hardware less intrusively in so many different ways. For example, they could show “devices that integrate with <AP or Switch or Router>” or integrate the changelog of all their releases into the management UI for all products. The list goes on for the more thoughtful ways that could have done it, but instead they did they took the absurdly lame way of advertising via banners. Jeeze.

beervirus 6y ago

What an absolute ghetto. I’m so glad I didn’t buy this garbage.

millstone 6y ago
What did you buy instead?

seneca 6y ago

This is disappointing. I've been waffling on buying a full Unifi setup for my home, but all the terrible reviews for the UDMP, and now this, have given me pause. Are there any decent non-Chinese pro-sumer networking suites like Unifi that folks would recommend?

SkyPuncher 6y ago
I was in the same boat. I've been running the older equipment that's currently doing just fine. We're looking at the prospect of getting fiber this summer. Figured I'd use the opportunity to get all in on Ubiquiti. This is the nail in the coffin for me.

philsnow 6y ago

After some unexplainable sustained 100% packet loss (for minutes at a time) I switched from a set of eero routers to ubiquiti gear a few years ago and it's been a great experience so far. A single AP-AC-lite covered my entire 2600sqft house from the basement. Somebody I know has stayed on the eero train (on my recommendation before I gave up on them) and he says the company has prioritized features he doesn't care about and deprioritized features he wished it had. I hope Ubiquiti doesn't go down this road.

dboreham 6y ago

Happy Mikrotik user here.

trylfthsk 6y ago

I think it's a common sentiment here, but I'm turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day. Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I'm reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their shilling quackery like Prevagen to an audience using the fear of aging. Perhaps I'm growing increasingly blind to any positive impacts of the discipline, but ethically I find it hard to separate the fraudsters from the engineers that enable them. I guess advertising is saving me a lot of money in the end by cultivating this hatred, and though I can't change the world this screed was therapeutic.

BLKNSLVR 6y ago
Having less exposure to advertising, given that I watch less advertising-interrupted television than ever and have had a pi-hole running for a good couple of years, when I am exposed to advertising I'm reminded of how incredibly bottom-feeding it is. I've said it before: Advertising is a psychological attack on human weakness. > I find it hard to separate the fraudsters from the engineers that enable them Paraphrasing because I can't find the original: "What does it say of humanity to have so many of the smartest minds in the world working on making advertising more effective" > this screed was therapeutic +1
- eschaton 6y ago
  Most advertising literally attempts to hack an audience’s brains, which everyone should instantly recognize as being black-hat.
  - sitkack 6y ago
    At the same time, we have created super computers that run on expansion cards that are being used for that same black-hat activity. Currently measured in the 10s of teraflops of processing power.
- bigiain 6y ago

dkhenry 6y ago

I have been watching Ubiquiti slowly go downhill over the past five years. I finally jumped ship to Mikrotik for a recent addition to my network and they seem like a good replacement for power users. Nothing they sell is quite as user friendly as the Ubiquiti gear, but I would rather have to spend a few minutes at a console then loose control over my network because a SaaS went offline

petersellers 6y ago
> loose control over my network because a SaaS went offline That doesn't sound correct. I've always been able to access my controller without internet access as long as I was on the same LAN and was hitting the controller IP directly.
- hansel_der 6y ago
  certainly a hyperbole from op. but i have to agree that it is no far fetched for ubiquiti to fuck this up.

mikelward 6y ago

One auto update they broke my laptop's ability to connect. Turns out they'd auto enabled 5 GHz band steering, but my laptop's chipset only did 2.4 GHz. Even when it was enabled, the Android management app said the setting was disabled. Customer support directed me to the forums. Ubiquiti didn't respond to my post. I posted on a thread where someone else was seeing the same problem, where a number of people gaslit me and blamed me for the problem. I still have no idea if they've fixed their band steering. Or how they decided to force 5 GHz on a 2.4 GHz chipset. Or how to get support. Or how to report a problem. Definitely won't be buying their products in future. https://community.ui.com/questions/Intel-Centrino-2200-N-client-cant-connect-due-to-Optimize-for-High-Performance-Devices-setting/af79e64c-978d-49bb-a61d-9fe025a725ed https://community.ui.com/questions/Intel-Centrino-2200-N-cli... https://community.ui.com/releases/UniFi-Network-Controller-5-12-35/45726736-ee4c-4172-877a-a2303f5d3627?page=10 https://community.ui.com/releases/UniFi-Network-Controller-5... https://community.ui.com/questions/Default-AUTO-OPTIMIZE-NETWORK-off/4605b0fb-52e6-4793-8e01-514b6fb39b44 https://community.ui.com/questions/Default-AUTO-OPTIMIZE-NET...

SkyPuncher 6y ago
Holy crap! This must be what I'm dealing with. I have an old laptop that I was trying to fire up to run some lightweight games on. I could not get it to connect to wi-fi for the life of me. Must be the band steering.
bmurphy1976 6y ago
We have 5 ubiquiti switches on our office network that are running 4 year old firmware. The next version after started dropping DHCP packets! I followed the thread for months and months and they never fixed the issue. I gave up caring, stopped watching the thread and swore never to buy any of their products again. I do wonder if they ever fixed the issue. The switches lock up every couple months and need a hard reboot. We also had all sorts of problems with their APs and switched over to Cisco Meraki. As much as I hate Cisco and their ridiculous cost at least the Meraki line works. Obnoxious.
- dkdk8283 6y ago

karmicthreat 6y ago

For people needing alternatives. I've had good luck with foritgate. Some of their APs are dogs, but the fortios in general has been decent.

donmcronald 6y ago
Way too many SKUs IMO and I think they’re quite a bit more expensive, aren’t they?
- karmicthreat 6y ago
  A fortigate 30E is around 400$. So it's a little more but their lower end equipment is definitely affordable by small and medium sized businesses.
TristanBall 6y ago
I'd been wondering about this.. Ubiquiti's wan and firwalling is super weak, especially for multi-site, when compared to some of the sd-wan products out there. What's wrong with the ap's? Have you used the switches? How much of their kit can managed via a single console?
- karmicthreat 6y ago
  From what I understand their E and F series APs are solid, the ones before just had bad performance. The switches have been pretty solid. Everything can be managed off the fortigate, I think they also have a cloud management platform.

imwally 6y ago

I had a Dream Machine (the all-in-one, not the pro) and it fried the very next day. Even after that I was willing to give Ubiquiti another try, but now I don’t know what to do.

mewse 6y ago
I have two of them at two different sites. They’ve been completely fine for me, apart from the problems from the 1.8.x firmwares which probably should never have reached the ‘Release’ channel. (The recently-released v1.9.2 appears to have fixed all my issues from 1.8.x) I’m definitely not pushing either of them very hard or doing anything particularly fancy, but they’ve certainly been a big step up from the aging Apple routers I’d been using before, at least for me.
- imwally 6y ago
  Hmm, I'm still interested in a Dream Machine but I've been holding off for the so called SE[1], with the display on the front, similarly to the Amplifi Alien. [1] https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wifishop.nl%2Fimg%2Fproducts%2Flarge%2Fubiquiti-udm-se-unifi-dream-machine-se-1.jpg&f=1&nofb=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...

luckman212 6y ago

I see a lot of complaints here, but nobody offering any substantive alternatives. Mikrotik is mentioned several times, but always with the caveats that it has glitchy UIs or poorly implemented features. EnGenius... you've got to be kidding. I've been a UI fan for many years and was also dismayed by the 6.x releases and the switch to Mediatek, but every time I went looking around, I saw the same tire fires at other vendors. At least with UBNT it's "the devil you know". Cambium is interesting, I've been playing around with their cnPilot stuff and it's been pretty solid.

dmqctx 6y ago
Same. There are enough annoyances with UI gear to keep us all here griping for days. But when you try to find an alternative company for your Wireless needs you realize quick that you're perfectly willing to put up with UI's stupid annoyances. Granted a few glitches have wasted days of my life trying to correct. But I'll be sticking with them for the foreseeable future. Over the years I've had satisfactory uptime and performance.
chrisandchris 6y ago
I usually prefer the regular line over the UniFi series of UI and they tend to have less UI polish but that‘s what usually tells that it‘s a product for technical people. I won‘t switch to the UniFi series for now even though they would provide easier management. But I‘m a bit worried that it‘s going to be an Apple-style product line where the pros are somehow not respected as much as before.
patrickk 6y ago
Building your own router with pfSense is one prosumer solution I've considered, by shied away from due to lack of time[1]. Not sure how a pfSense setup would work with wireless APs though. [1] https://www.pcgamer.com/i-built-my-own-super-router-out-of-old-pc-parts-and-ive-never-felt-so-powerful/ https://www.pcgamer.com/i-built-my-own-super-router-out-of-o...
- m_eiman 6y ago
  pfSense might have a lot of features, but the UI is terrible in all possible ways. They should stop letting their programmers "design" the UI; dumping the raw database into an HTML table is not a good user interface.

rektide 6y ago

three days ago smallnetbuilder reviewed a bunch of routers. I noted that the most recent router on the list that could run openwrt was the three year old r7800. someone mentioned building their own box for an ap and I discussed how hard it is to get wifi add-on cards[1], and oh, by the way, good luck running anything modern yourself. the state of our wifis, right now, is extremely poor. upmarket expensive gear becoming a hostile rent-seeking shark is a sign of how late-stage the market is right now. i will allow: there is a lag somewhat to be expected. wave2 and wifi6 and wifi6e have been all kind of sounding this new stuff stuff out. wifi6e feels a bit like a natural culmination, for a while, but we're only just making it across a long series of changes just now. the standards have been in flux, enhancing. still, the driver situation feels terrible. hardware is hard to get except as consumer electronics running provided shrinkware. even in terms of stations not ap's, companies like intel can both do a good job, insure reasonable support, decent enough hardware these days, but also neglect basic love & care things like support for 802.11s mesh & other sincere basics. anyhow. wifi6e looks like the culmination of a lot. the situation might stabilize some. the future is finally here & only now do we commence more evenly distributing use/usability of it. maybe. maybe not. maybe vendorization floggings will continue. i'm hoping somehow more ap class add-on systems start becoming in any way available again. hoping systems like wifi-p2p and wifi-aware and wifi mesh (802.11s) see general support. I'd love to see some pro-active movements in wifi world, some chipmakers really doing right, but wifi feels forever like the most cagey & slowest developing linux driver area. communication, not well supported. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26597238 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26597238

chenxiaolong 6y ago

Are there any good alternatives to their higher end products, like the UAP-AC-HD? I currently have 2 of those, but have been thinking about replacing them because of increasingly buggy updates and especially after the AP firmware update that added the data collection code (I'm aware it can be disabled now). When I got them, I was looking for something that supported 802.11r, supported VLANs, and could sustain 500Mbps throughput from 2 clients (one on each AP). Ruckus APs also fit the bill, though they were 2-4x the price.

oxplot 6y ago

I'm super disappointed by recent update to Unify Controller on their CloudKey Generation 2. It now requires access to Internet and a Unifi cloud account in order to setup a local controller. I, like many others, have downgraded to the 1.x version. And now this BS. Ubiquiti was one company I always rooted for, and recommended to friends. Time to move on I guess (for me, I've already spent many $$$ on my equipment unfortunately.

tumblewit 6y ago

I’ve owned unifi at home for about 6 years now. Their access points are a different kind of value for money. But their software stack is really annoying. First it needs java. They have switched to Apps as option but that limits the settings (and I like to fine tune). I think the UDM Pro is a great home router for up to 10G internet but I don’t find their software stack convincing given their phoning home was also under fire a while back. I think building your opnsense box and a managed switch is little more work but if you are buying udm pro you are skilled anyway to get it done on a weekend.

ballenf 6y ago

We need an excise tax on advertising. It’s more destructive than alcohol. And a prohibition on adding it to any product after purchase.

hinkley 6y ago
How about we start with not providing a tax break for advertising? The problem though is that a bunch of forms of sponsorship dry up if you do.

windex 6y ago

I sometimes wonder how these decisions get made within companies. I mean you are network hw vendor, how do you get convinced to embed adware/spyware into your products without compromising on trust? I'd fire all concerned if I were on the board and understood what the brand meant.

orev 6y ago
I’m not saying it’s ethically right, but from a business perspective, the question is inverted: how can you NOT spy on everyone? There’s virtually no regulation on data collection, every other company is already doing it with no repercussions (especially home ISPs who you have no choice over and can see/sell everything you do!), anyone doing it is making a ton of money while destroying competitors, and virtually nobody in the public cares at all. The only people speaking against it only have a voice because they’re already rich, mostly from collecting data, so anything they say rings hollow at best.
millstone 6y ago
Pitch to a VP with "we will do a tiny trial of 1% of customers, if it doesn't work it's GONE, no harm done." Gets the greenlight, everyone who worked on it is invested and motivated to make the results look good, and it builds from there.
oaiey 6y ago
The decision maker is a product manager. The person has an agenda. With Unifi that seems to be: let us build a proper remote management interface and new fancier UI at all costs (and with some evil thinking a subscription service). Over time they become so invested that even of the become aware of the real customer need they cannot jump of from what they started. Other example: the other Ubiquiti product manager check offs feature lost: IDS check, firewall check, pppoe check. Seeing that they are half baked he ignores. I do not think that Ubiquiti problems is the engineering they outsourced. It is the product management they screwed up. They are not listening to what user wants. The indian IT guys are delivering. And honestly: it is an ad. No ad network. They know our network better than us by their cloud management ... They do not need to analyze us. When they want to be an ad network they could do much worse things (like the telcos do).

IgorPartola 6y ago

They also just deprecated a whole bunch of hardware, some of which barely a year old. I was just about to upgrade my whole setup and drop a decent chunk of change for a home office setup (outdoor APs, wireless backbone between two buildings, etc.). Between them dropping support and this… what is the best alternative to their access points? I plan on using an opensense box for my router. Edit: looks like Aruba Instant On/Aruba Networks is a frequently mentioned solution in a similar price range.

rebuilder 6y ago

Maybe they decided their userbase was too demanding. This gets rid of the more discerning, high-maintenance customers while simultaneously increasing sales among the less fussy people. Win-win.

eatbitseveryday 6y ago

Ads for their own products? Companies have the right to advertise upgrades for their own stuff. If this were ads for other companies, perhaps I would share some sympathy. How often do folks log into the management interface to actually do something everyday? I opened mine once to acquire the APs and configure the network, then shut it off and haven't opened it for months.

rootusrootus 6y ago

This is on the hosted interface, right? I can sorta understand that, especially when the ads are for their own gear. But if I start seeing ads in my locally installed copy of Unifi, this will be a problem.

andremedeiros 6y ago
The “hosted” interface is nothing but a proxy to my paid for cloud key. I also see this when I access it locally.
milgrim 6y ago
I just got this ad on the unifi Controller hosted on my own server. Not happy about this.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Well that is disheartening. I've been pretty happy with my choice of Ubiquiti gear for home, it was a vast improvement over the consumer-grade gear I had been using before, but if I'm going to start seeing ads on my own server, I'll be looking elsewhere when it's time to upgrade.

wyuenho 6y ago

I'm going to go out on a limb here to point out the inconsistency of this entire thread. For the following reasoning, I'm going to use the word "ad" in the broad sense. 1. Everybody is excited with Github's new features that they promote on the dashboard. Sometimes popups and flashes too. Are they not ads? 2. Nobody ever complains about Github showing ads. 3. Github is a SaaS. 4. unify.ui.com is a SaaS 5. OP is complaining about ads on a SaaS. 6. Most people here don't seem to like this banner in question, but that's not how they phrase their responses. Is this a case of some random Amazonian complaining about intrusive ads or or a case of ads, even for self promotions, aren't allowed in SaaS?

lstamour 6y ago
Github makes it a single click to hide their intrusive notifications and such. They're rather tasteful at where and when they show you something. They have a notifications panel you can click once and then it won't bug you until the next time. This screenshot shows the ad takes up a huge chunk of real estate and can only be turned off by presumably opting out of some new experience, which means it might become permanent. If enough of the internet protests, obviously Ubiquity might re-think their recent actions... but it won't change their overall product direction which is to try to encourage you to buy newer products by any means they can. The proper equivalent would be if my Amazon Echo started showing me ads for a new Amazon Echo, or if I launched the Echo app and it said, hey, do you want to buy the new Echo at the top and I couldn't remove it. Perhaps another comparison: What if Nest suddenly changed to show an ad when you went to change your thermostat's settings such that you could learn about the new Nest that replaces your old hunk of junk? Or imagine if you opened System Preferences or About This Mac, and saw an ad for the latest and greatest MacBook from Apple? Like, do I really want to see stats about how my battery life is only 10% that of the newest Apple Silicon? SaaS or not, there's a difference between advertising some new service I don't need and advertising new HARDWARE I don't need within my existing, perfectly good, management control panel for my existing hardware. Whether its hosted on a website or not is just an implementation detail. They could have used Electron, same result.
- wyuenho 6y ago

computator 6y ago

I'm disappointed that the Ubiquity Dream Machine can no longer be set up and managed locally. You could do so in the past, but not anymore. You must use their cloud management now.

millstone 6y ago
Can you say more? What happens if you try?
- flemhans 6y ago
  We bought their four-hardrive NVR for our security cams - same thing. You have to login with a Cloud login to access the web interface. The unit still sits unused in our office rack. The previous NVR allowed local logins.
  - jstsch 6y ago
    Luckily in response to this thread [1] they recently announced that local access will return: https://community.ui.com/questions/UniFi-Protect-Mobile-App-Local-Connect/15a5e6fd-0a97-4d65-9ba1-2d5fa35a34bd https://community.ui.com/questions/UniFi-Protect-Mobile-App-... [1] https://community.ui.com/questions/A-Request-for-Local-Accounts-in-light-of-this-breach-1-11-2021/4972a1fb-ff95-4dc3-b920-63b3b292bf96 https://community.ui.com/questions/A-Request-for-Local-Accou...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ksec 6y ago

All of these just made me wish Apple hadn't discontinued their AirPort Extreme. I mean if keeping up with NetBSD codebase was expensive they could have engineered it with iOS / tvOS instead.

sneak 6y ago

Is this as bad as when they put spyware into the AP firmware that phoned home without consent? AIUI they made it opt-in in subsequent firmware revs after a backlash. Maybe they will fix this, too.

lilyball 6y ago

To be honest, the reaction here seems rather absurd. From the screenshot, the user doesn’t have a USG, so the management interface can’t show data it otherwise would. This banner suggesting a UDMP is occupying space that would have otherwise just said “no data available”. It’s a bit obnoxious and should really have a “hide this” button, but it’s really pretty minor all things considered.

SideburnsOfDoom 6y ago
> This banner suggesting a UDMP is occupying space that would have otherwise just said “no data available” I disagree, simply because that "space" is also known as "the top half of the screen", AKA "above the fold" and "prime real estate". The user would obviously be better served by moving the functional parts of the UI upwards.

gorgoiler 6y ago

The three stages of an engineer’s relationship with Ubiquiti: 1/ Their APs are so cool! Check out this web interface! I can manage an entire fleet of both of these, all from my home office! 2/ Aha, the APs run Linux and I can ssh to them and upload settings — even cooler! 3/ Er, you know what else runs Linux, has a pair of wired and wireless NICs, and can be managed remotely with plain text files and ssh — literally every SBC on the market for $20. I run a mixture of UAC PROs and PoE SBCs as APs now. The latter because I’m cheap and I can manage them myself. The former because I’m cheap and refuse to retire something for which I paid $100+ a piece. Ubiquiti provide some fantastic and well polished products. I thought I needed them, but all I really needed was commodity hardware and a shell script.

fy20 6y ago
Are there any SBCs which have built in APs that can handle transfers in the hundreds of megabits range?
- Terretta 6y ago
  Good question. When you have gigabit FIOS backstopped by multi-hundred mbps LTE, several thousand square feet of concrete and metal construction, and actively use (and feel) hundreds of megabits in any given room, even in commercially packaged offerings there are not a lot of consumer or prosumer options. Of the two that I’ve found: (a) eero Pro (not base), and (b) UDM Pro + Nano HD APs, it comes down to something like iPhone vs. Pixel: how much twiddling do you want to do for entertainment value? For what it’s worth, I find better sustained up/down WiFi speeds (>600 mbps vs. 450 mbps) through eero Pro, but better sustained up/down wired speeds (>900 mbps vs. >800 mbps) and support for obscure legacy IoT through Ubiquiti UniFi®. In locations not needing more than one AP, I find monster all-in-one gaming WiFi routers (e.g. Netgear, TP-Link) beat both of them.
ucosty 6y ago
What $20 SBCs on the market have multiple real network interfaces? I'd love to pick up a few.

totetsu 6y ago

Any other makers to look at for setting up more than the b basic access point setup for a weekend warrior?

utf_8x 6y ago

Well now I'm glad I stuck with Mikrotik...

alkonaut 6y ago

What is this interface? I have ubiquiti hardware but not any UniFi hardware, is this only a UniFi thing?

vermilingua 6y ago
This is the UniFi Controller appliance, software that lets you deploy and configure the WAPs from a webapp.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  If it’s an appliance why would I access it through a cloud service rather than directly accessing its network interface?
  - vermilingua 6y ago
    You can access it directly, yes.

flyinghamster 6y ago

Just updated my controller VM (for two access points) to 6.1.71. Good thing it's on a ZFS volume, and that I made sure to snapshot it before updating, because I just rolled it back and dropped a pin in /etc/apt. Ye gods. Video ads in my management interface? Are you KIDDING? This is ridiculous. Sigh. Everything is turning to ashes. Every. Fucking. Vendor. has decided that it's perfectly OK to spam you and hoover up your personal data. And no, don't say "Apple" since I don't trust them any more than Microsoft or Google. In any case, it makes me very hesitant to "update" my EdgeRouter, for that matter. :( Ubiquiti has been skating on thin ice with me for a while, after their earlier telemetry kerfluffle, where they eventually did the right thing. But this is beyond the pale. The only thing I've seen worse was years ago when Belkin started hijacking HTTP connections to serve ads for censorware. [0] At least the access points are capable of running OpenWRT, but I don't relish the prospect of reflashing them. The ERPoE-5 is the lone EdgeRouter I don't see in OpenWRT's hardware table. :( [0] https://www.cnet.com/news/web-hijack-riles-belkin-router-users/ https://www.cnet.com/news/web-hijack-riles-belkin-router-use...

Terretta 6y ago
> ”And no, don't say ‘Apple’ since I don't trust them any more than Microsoft or Google.” Apple. Because only one firm in your list has billboards focusing on privacy (keeping your data on your device), code enforcing that, and policy and code requiring developer full transparency in the consumer app store. It’s an interesting exercise to ask: If you don’t trust Apple any more than Google, what would it take for you to trust that a high end consumer hardware company would be less data privacy exploitation motivated than a purely ad revenue driven company?

GuB-42 6y ago

Is self-promotion considered ads? My opinion is "yes" but it is not universal. For example the EasyList policy[1] states "Self-promotion should not be specifically removed by EasyList, although equally should not be allowed if it is blocked." I asked myself the question when Wikipedia does its calls for donation. One may argue that it has a noble goal but technically, it is a huge ad banner of the annoying kind, and I would have expected indiscriminate ad blockers like uBlock Origin to block them, and they don't. And the reason is doesn't isn't because it is Wikipedia, it is because it is self-promotion and is therefore allowed. [1] https://easylist.to/pages/policy.html https://easylist.to/pages/policy.html Edit: the definition of an ad by EasyList is "the promotion of third party content in return for goods or services" https://easylist.to/2011/07/11/the-definition-of-advert-and-link-exchange-policy.html https://easylist.to/2011/07/11/the-definition-of-advert-and-...

trollied 6y ago

Looking at the screenshot, the management interface is the one that's on the Ubiquiti website, rather than a locally hosted controller. I don't really have a problem with them putting ads on their own website. Use a local controller if you don't want to see them. Install the software on a raspberry pi, it runs just fine.

andremedeiros 6y ago
Their hosted version is only acting as a proxy to my physical paid for cloud key. If I access it locally I also get this shit.

traceroute66 6y ago

For those people here saying "go Ruckus unleashed" ... caveat emptor my friends ! I have it on very good authority that Ruckus have started rolling out a change in their pricing model to require a Unleashed license per AP to operate, a move which obviously increases costs to the end-user. Some people might say its a deliberate move prevent cannibalisation of their main business model by nudging people away from Unleashed. I couldn't possibly comment.

teekert 6y ago

Is there anything opensource that can replace the main server? I run the docker (linuxserver.io) and every update I need to re-opt out of tracking. So annoying. I thought they were like the Apple of this space, you pay a bit more but no shenanigans. Looks like they’re the Google. Shame.

Proven 6y ago

Haha. Nice try. I'm fortunate in that I only use it when I update firmware or something like that, 1-2 times a year. If they were to sell the software as a service, wouldn't $9.99/year be enough? I know they can't make any ad money from the ads I (won't) see.

kmlx 6y ago

to be fair, the Dream Machine Pro is actually a great piece of kit :)

Lev1a 6y ago

> Ubiquiti starts ~~serving ads in~~ smearing fermented feces all over their management interface FTFY

Roark66 6y ago

I think reacting to scammy ads by banning all of them is an overreaction. There are many useful products and services I would've never found out about without ads. How about simply making all ad networks responsible for the content of the ads they serve? You lost your life's savings to a Ponzi scam advertised on Facebook? Sue Facebook for damages. There should be laws in place that allow it. This would fix the problem instantly.

m463 6y ago
It would be unlikely that you could prove cause and effect in court, and with the distributed nature of data gathering, matching and reselling.

drpixie 6y ago

Lots of Ubiquiti hardware can run Openwrt open source Linux-based router software. And (at least) lots of the Ubiquiti software is based on (really old versions of) Openwrt! I've been using Openwrt for a while now, and been very happy with it. It's not perfect, but neither is the crap software that comes with most routers, and at least you can see what's going on - and maybe sort it.

mijoharas 6y ago

Sorry to highjack this thread looking for a product recommendation, but I've been running the same old netgear router with dd-wrt on it for about 8 years and am thinking of an upgrade. I had been considering ubiquiti, but the stuff in this thread (not just the ads, mostly the "stuff doesn't work" posts) has made me reconsider. Every time I look for a router nowadays, everything looks like a hedgehog it seems[0]. Has anyone got a recommendation for a solid, high performance home router to put dd-wrt or similar onto? (also, would people recommend openwrt or something instead? I've not really looked at alternatives since I set this up). I tend to trust flashing something open source onto it better than whatever crap the manufacturer has decided to put onto it. Thanks in advance.

bradfa 6y ago
If you want to "build your own" and don't mind some hands-on fun, I strongly suggest looking at using a PC Engines APU2 board and using the Linux distribution of your choice on it (and yes, OpenWRT works fine on them). https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm https://www.pcengines.ch/apu2.htm
jasdine817 6y ago
For home office/SMBs routers you can't really beat Draytek boxes. I've had ones last 9+ years and they receive regular updates for 5+ years and are extremely solid. They have devices that have wireless radios in too but I tend to buy a used Ruckus WAP and set that up in addition because the coverage on those beats most things out there.

dspillett 6y ago

If this is calling out, even to just their own servers for information about just their own products, even if only when an admin is actively using the UI and we can lock that account down, and there is no way to completely disable it, we will have to replace all the kit we have of theirs and never buy more. As well as offending our idea of security it simply won't pass the security audits we have to perform for our clients. And for a "to completely disable it", blocking at the firewall level is not sufficient. Anything trying to call out will fail us on such audits. Holding software/firmware versions back to avoid the feature won't wash either. Unless there is a security related reason to hold back an update beyond a reasonable "not jamming new code into kit the office relies on in case it breaks things" testing/resting period, then holding back on infrastructure updates is itself a security audit fail. [FYI: getting Ubiquiti kit in the first place was not our call but it has worked well enough - it might be our call to plan its replacement with something else, and if I shall name this activity Project Ubiquiti-quity]

dspillett 6y ago
Without explanatory comments to the contrary, I'm going to assume the downvotes are from Ubiquiti shills trying to cause silence instead of addressing the issue and lower my opinion of the company and the trustworthiness of its products accordingly.

tapper 6y ago

OpenWrt!

teekert 6y ago

Is there anything we can do? I mean we spend money on something that has nice reviews... Gradually they keep pushing "Want want statistics" in your face more and more and now this. They are (trying to make) making money of off me without any of my consent and in a sneaky way. Can't we organize or something?

diftraku 6y ago

And now the hardware controller we have (Dream Machine Pro) plasters "How likely are you to recommend" polls and usability surveys after being forced to use the new settings and dashboard following an automatic update. While not outright ads, the usability survey keeps pestering for feedback, I do not have much faith in Ubiquiti having any tact left to not pester for the recommendation feedback as well.

Synthead 6y ago

I made an ad block list for these ads. It's not great that we have come to this, but here we are. https://github.com/synthead/unifi-adfree https://github.com/synthead/unifi-adfree