4 ms·

Ditto and they have also lost my recommendations. If I hear any friends thinking of Ubiquiti, I will be pointing them towards articles like the one we are discu

Ditto and they have also lost my recommendations. If I hear any friends thinking of Ubiquiti, I will be pointing them towards articles like the one we are discussing. I had been a bit wary of then since their push for cloud SSO etc, but these recent events have put the final nail in the coffin for me. Personally I am migrating my family's network to MicroTik gear.

lucb1e 6y ago
A friend of my boss recommended Ubiquity semi-recently. We're a small IT company, plenty of theoretical expertise but no dedicated network admins, so it made sense to go on a recommendation. The fact that doing anything, for example assigning a VLAN to a switch port, requires you to first setup a mongodb server on your machine before you can install the controller software tipped me off to the quality of what we had bought. The device also gets like 80°C while idle. This controller software is now on isolated hardware, we trust the thing about as much as an old Android phone, and that was just from our impression as security people without knowing of any breach. I see it as a good thing that other friends of $friend will be spared that recommendation after this news.
- gerdesj 6y ago
  It's not a massive ask to install MongoDB. Unifi stuff is quite cheap for what you get for a simple reason: Each one does not need to run a webserver and all that stuff. This means that the pretty stuff has to run elsewhere. For a single site you can use a phone app and for multi site setups and MSPs you have the controllers. The controller can be run on a Windows PC with a next next install or a Linux box with pretty minimal setup requirements. It sounds like you might want to go the app route otherwise if you are an IT company (I own a 20 person one - so also small) then find the one screen doc with around 10 copy and paste instructions once you have say a small Debian or Ubuntu minimal installed. You could also run up a Win10 VM and install the Windows distro quite easily.
  - amluto 6y ago
    Whatever one may thing of the quality of MongoDB, they are asking you to install a defunct version.
    - kiwijamo 6y ago
      And it only works with MongoDB shipped with older versions of Debian. The current Debian doesn't even have the most current version of MongoDB (due to Debian policy of backporting security fixes only) but even that is too new! In the future it would not surprise me the least to find that the only way to use the Unifi controller will be by using a non-supported distro.
- imwillofficial 6y ago
  Meraki has captured my fancy lately. Expensive but a pretty great value prop.
  - posguy 6y ago
    I support two Meraki MX64 routers, they are definitely expensive and have repeatedly caused issues for my clients when their ISPs force an upgrade of the associated modem. Not sure what shenanigans Cisco has done with Meraki, but I have wasted hours with them on the phone trying to get these MX64's to DHCP from a new cable modem. Ended up swapping in an Archer C7 on OpenWRT with a LTE modem to ensure business continuity for the client while working with Meraki's abysmal support to get their router to work correctly.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    Frankly, all we needed was a switch where you can add VLAN tags and send them to a trunk port. And I suppose a password on the "I would like this VLAN on this port, please" interface is also necessary, but I think that already concludes the grand list of requirements. Everything else we control on the router. It doesn't have to be network equipment in the traditional sense: any old linux server will do, it's just that it needs to have a couple dozen network ports. Traffic can be limited to a gigabit per second between all the ports combined (no need for multi-gigabit backplanes or switch fabrics or what the correct term for that is). I'd almost buy a big USB hub and connect USB–Ethernet adapters, but that feels more hacky than core infrastructure is supposed to be.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  > The device also gets like 80°C while idle. This sounds like a 8 port poe switch. They get hot. However they also don’t seem to mind it.
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    I'm not worried for the switch, I'm wondering about the useless power draw of the gazillion switches they sold. An idle switch should be barely above environmental temperature, not produce gaming PC levels of heat. It's not PoE and more than 8 ports.

lucb1e 6y ago

A friend of my boss recommended Ubiquity semi-recently. We're a small IT company, plenty of theoretical expertise but no dedicated network admins, so it made sense to go on a recommendation. The fact that doing anything, for example assigning a VLAN to a switch port, requires you to first setup a mongodb server on your machine before you can install the controller software tipped me off to the quality of what we had bought. The device also gets like 80°C while idle. This controller software is now on isolated hardware, we trust the thing about as much as an old Android phone, and that was just from our impression as security people without knowing of any breach. I see it as a good thing that other friends of $friend will be spared that recommendation after this news.

gerdesj 6y ago
It's not a massive ask to install MongoDB. Unifi stuff is quite cheap for what you get for a simple reason: Each one does not need to run a webserver and all that stuff. This means that the pretty stuff has to run elsewhere. For a single site you can use a phone app and for multi site setups and MSPs you have the controllers. The controller can be run on a Windows PC with a next next install or a Linux box with pretty minimal setup requirements. It sounds like you might want to go the app route otherwise if you are an IT company (I own a 20 person one - so also small) then find the one screen doc with around 10 copy and paste instructions once you have say a small Debian or Ubuntu minimal installed. You could also run up a Win10 VM and install the Windows distro quite easily.
- amluto 6y ago
  Whatever one may thing of the quality of MongoDB, they are asking you to install a defunct version.
  - kiwijamo 6y ago
    And it only works with MongoDB shipped with older versions of Debian. The current Debian doesn't even have the most current version of MongoDB (due to Debian policy of backporting security fixes only) but even that is too new! In the future it would not surprise me the least to find that the only way to use the Unifi controller will be by using a non-supported distro.
imwillofficial 6y ago
Meraki has captured my fancy lately. Expensive but a pretty great value prop.
- posguy 6y ago
  I support two Meraki MX64 routers, they are definitely expensive and have repeatedly caused issues for my clients when their ISPs force an upgrade of the associated modem. Not sure what shenanigans Cisco has done with Meraki, but I have wasted hours with them on the phone trying to get these MX64's to DHCP from a new cable modem. Ended up swapping in an Archer C7 on OpenWRT with a LTE modem to ensure business continuity for the client while working with Meraki's abysmal support to get their router to work correctly.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  Frankly, all we needed was a switch where you can add VLAN tags and send them to a trunk port. And I suppose a password on the "I would like this VLAN on this port, please" interface is also necessary, but I think that already concludes the grand list of requirements. Everything else we control on the router. It doesn't have to be network equipment in the traditional sense: any old linux server will do, it's just that it needs to have a couple dozen network ports. Traffic can be limited to a gigabit per second between all the ports combined (no need for multi-gigabit backplanes or switch fabrics or what the correct term for that is). I'd almost buy a big USB hub and connect USB–Ethernet adapters, but that feels more hacky than core infrastructure is supposed to be.
lostlogin 6y ago
> The device also gets like 80°C while idle. This sounds like a 8 port poe switch. They get hot. However they also don’t seem to mind it.
- lucb1e 6y ago
  I'm not worried for the switch, I'm wondering about the useless power draw of the gazillion switches they sold. An idle switch should be barely above environmental temperature, not produce gaming PC levels of heat. It's not PoE and more than 8 ports.