4 ms·

Related: what's the current best option for those of us who like old UniFi's ease of use, but don't like new Unifi's "use our cloud, or else..." attitude and t

Related: what's the current best option for those of us who like old UniFi's ease of use, but don't like new Unifi's "use our cloud, or else..." attitude and the constant firmware issues?

giuliomagnifico 4y ago
Some Ubiquity devices support OpenWrt: https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/start https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/start
jnsaff2 4y ago
None is probably the "best option" but this is the evolution I went through in the past few months: 1. had the UDM for about a year, then at some point found out that some firmware update had completely trashed 2.4GHz wifi. Like you can connect to it but if you transfer more than 1MB or so it just hangs, reconnect works but basically unusable, 5GHz works fine but in my house the office just did not get good enough coverage. Like, dude, you had ONE JOB! 2. Bought a Ruckus AP and an Mikrotik hEX S to do routing. Wifi is better but office still did not have good enough coverage. 3. Finally gave up and just ran some CAT 6A from the router to my office. Night and day. From my research Ruckus gear is really good and requires no controller nor cloud connectivity whatsoever but expensive. Mikrotik is nice for wired stuff, but mostly quite dated for wireless, also they still carry a lot of their previous generation gear .. a lot of it has really wimpy CPU's, so do some research. Also the configuration can be a bit involved, tho lot of internet advice on a decent setup.
VLM 4y ago
The firmware issue is probably very individual device dependent. I remember the old USG plus an old cloud key (both no longer sold for a long time) had some stability issues maybe two or three years ago if you enabled every possible monitoring feature simultaneously, that issue is long gone. UniFi is much like MS or IBM in that they sell such an incredibly wide range of products its quite possible our experiences have nothing in common. The original cloud key is quite slow but totally usable; there's a docker container and running on anything faster than a Pi its quite fast and snappy.
vetinari 4y ago
I've switched to Mikrotik, for routing and switching. With wifi, Mikrotik still doesn't have good AX offer, so I kept nanoHDs for the time being. It is more complex, you have to get used to Winbox, but after that, there's no way back to Unifi. There are no dashboards that look nice in screenshots, but on the other hand, the stats provided make sense. But wrt firmware issues, Mikrotik also has occasional one.
- PenguinCoder 4y ago
  If you want fancy dashboards, I'd suggest using a different product for that purpose. Can enable SNMP on the Mikrotik devices, and let something like Munin do the graphing for you.
  - vetinari 4y ago
    Nah, I'm fine with few windows in Winbox. Fortunately, Winbox remembers what was opened last time, so that's my dashboard.
dotBen 4y ago
UDM Pros include their own local Unifi management runtime which will administer the full local network. After the security incident a few years ago, Ubiquiti pushed an update that let's you login to it via a local credential rather than their cloud identity server. I don't see anything in UDM Pro's Unifi that is dependent on their cloud (other than checking for updates)
tristor 4y ago
> but don't like new Unifi's "use our cloud, or else..." attitude They don't have this attitude and never have. You can use local accounts, have always been able to use local accounts. The only thing out there that's better than Ubiquiti is actual enterprise gear, all of which now requires subscription licensing. Unfortunately if you want a buy once / cry once solution for prosumer usage, Ubiquiti is the best option. I hunted for alternatives several times, and nobody is competitive. Microtik is the next closest option, but it's frankly garbage and with bigger security issues.
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  They heavily push their cloud management, apparently tried doing required cloud logins for their UDMs (implied in another comment), and 100% require you to purchase their hardware or use their cloud for Unifi Protect. In the past, one could run the Protect software on their own machine. Ubiquiti is the least smelly networking solution in a room full of really smelly options. They are not consumer friendly like they used to be.
  - tristor 4y ago
    > Ubiquiti is the least smelly networking solution in a room full of really smelly options. Agreed entirely. Unfortunately this is a market that's not well served because there's a lot more money to be made just shoveling consumer garbage out or putting small businesses over the barrel with subscriptions rather than offering a proper prosumer product.
zapt02 4y ago
As far as I know you can set up a local UniFi management point using using the latest version of the Cloud Key Gen2 Plus firmware. However you won't be able to use Unifi Protect (the security camera offering) as that still requires a cloud account to set up. But once you have set up the cloud account you can revert back to local-only operation and no video data leaves your LAN. https://community.ui.com/questions/BUG-USG-PPPoE-or-Static-IP-initial-setup-CKG2-forced-internet-UI-login/519ab8dc-253e-42c5-aacc-58b6eb317fee https://community.ui.com/questions/BUG-USG-PPPoE-or-Static-I...
EricE 4y ago
No one (at least that I have found) has as mature/slick looking a controller as Unifi. And once I realized that I rarely changed settings for my core network, particularly on my AP's, I really started to broaden my search. A friend turned my onto the Grandstream APs (I thought they only did phones?!?) and I have to say so far I'm really impressed. They are a bit uglier than the Unifi UFOs and the update process for the firmware that shipped with them was an utter nightmare to figure out - but now that I'm past that I'm very pleased with them. They seem to be a lot faster and more stable than the Unifi equivalents. I've set up a lot of UBNT kit, been heavily involved in the forums and their beta products - but the quality and timeliness of firmware updates has really fallen off the last five or so years. Unsurprisingly about the same time they shipped all the firmware coding overseas. One of the biggest reasons I was a huge proponent of them was the constant and tight interaction of the developers in their community forums. That also fell off a cliff around the same time. The market is ripe for someone else to step in. Surprisingly Cisco, with their small business line, has one of the better looking contenders. No subscription - and I didn't need anything (not even an email) to download firmware updates or the controller (!!) Not your fathers Cisco! Their controller lags Unifi, but not by much. I scored a router and switch off of ebay just to dabble and it was pretty promising. I haven't looked at it for a while; I probably need to fire it back up and see if it's matured any. In the end for firewall I went back to OpnSense. Unifi switches are OK but their one year hardware warranty, frankly, sucks. If I were to by new switches I'd probably just go back to netgear. Their lifetime warranty is pretty hard to beat. I've had them replace 10 year old switches with nary a blink of the eye so it's not just lip service.

Related: what's the current best option for those of us who like old UniFi's ease of use, but don't like new Unifi's "use our cloud, or else..." attitude and the constant firmware issues?

giuliomagnifico 4y ago

Some Ubiquity devices support OpenWrt: https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/start https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/start

jnsaff2 4y ago

None is probably the "best option" but this is the evolution I went through in the past few months: 1. had the UDM for about a year, then at some point found out that some firmware update had completely trashed 2.4GHz wifi. Like you can connect to it but if you transfer more than 1MB or so it just hangs, reconnect works but basically unusable, 5GHz works fine but in my house the office just did not get good enough coverage. Like, dude, you had ONE JOB! 2. Bought a Ruckus AP and an Mikrotik hEX S to do routing. Wifi is better but office still did not have good enough coverage. 3. Finally gave up and just ran some CAT 6A from the router to my office. Night and day. From my research Ruckus gear is really good and requires no controller nor cloud connectivity whatsoever but expensive. Mikrotik is nice for wired stuff, but mostly quite dated for wireless, also they still carry a lot of their previous generation gear .. a lot of it has really wimpy CPU's, so do some research. Also the configuration can be a bit involved, tho lot of internet advice on a decent setup.

VLM 4y ago

The firmware issue is probably very individual device dependent. I remember the old USG plus an old cloud key (both no longer sold for a long time) had some stability issues maybe two or three years ago if you enabled every possible monitoring feature simultaneously, that issue is long gone. UniFi is much like MS or IBM in that they sell such an incredibly wide range of products its quite possible our experiences have nothing in common. The original cloud key is quite slow but totally usable; there's a docker container and running on anything faster than a Pi its quite fast and snappy.

vetinari 4y ago

I've switched to Mikrotik, for routing and switching. With wifi, Mikrotik still doesn't have good AX offer, so I kept nanoHDs for the time being. It is more complex, you have to get used to Winbox, but after that, there's no way back to Unifi. There are no dashboards that look nice in screenshots, but on the other hand, the stats provided make sense. But wrt firmware issues, Mikrotik also has occasional one.

PenguinCoder 4y ago
If you want fancy dashboards, I'd suggest using a different product for that purpose. Can enable SNMP on the Mikrotik devices, and let something like Munin do the graphing for you.
- vetinari 4y ago
  Nah, I'm fine with few windows in Winbox. Fortunately, Winbox remembers what was opened last time, so that's my dashboard.

dotBen 4y ago

UDM Pros include their own local Unifi management runtime which will administer the full local network. After the security incident a few years ago, Ubiquiti pushed an update that let's you login to it via a local credential rather than their cloud identity server. I don't see anything in UDM Pro's Unifi that is dependent on their cloud (other than checking for updates)

tristor 4y ago

> but don't like new Unifi's "use our cloud, or else..." attitude They don't have this attitude and never have. You can use local accounts, have always been able to use local accounts. The only thing out there that's better than Ubiquiti is actual enterprise gear, all of which now requires subscription licensing. Unfortunately if you want a buy once / cry once solution for prosumer usage, Ubiquiti is the best option. I hunted for alternatives several times, and nobody is competitive. Microtik is the next closest option, but it's frankly garbage and with bigger security issues.

unethical_ban 4y ago
They heavily push their cloud management, apparently tried doing required cloud logins for their UDMs (implied in another comment), and 100% require you to purchase their hardware or use their cloud for Unifi Protect. In the past, one could run the Protect software on their own machine. Ubiquiti is the least smelly networking solution in a room full of really smelly options. They are not consumer friendly like they used to be.
- tristor 4y ago
  > Ubiquiti is the least smelly networking solution in a room full of really smelly options. Agreed entirely. Unfortunately this is a market that's not well served because there's a lot more money to be made just shoveling consumer garbage out or putting small businesses over the barrel with subscriptions rather than offering a proper prosumer product.

zapt02 4y ago

As far as I know you can set up a local UniFi management point using using the latest version of the Cloud Key Gen2 Plus firmware. However you won't be able to use Unifi Protect (the security camera offering) as that still requires a cloud account to set up. But once you have set up the cloud account you can revert back to local-only operation and no video data leaves your LAN. https://community.ui.com/questions/BUG-USG-PPPoE-or-Static-IP-initial-setup-CKG2-forced-internet-UI-login/519ab8dc-253e-42c5-aacc-58b6eb317fee https://community.ui.com/questions/BUG-USG-PPPoE-or-Static-I...

EricE 4y ago

No one (at least that I have found) has as mature/slick looking a controller as Unifi. And once I realized that I rarely changed settings for my core network, particularly on my AP's, I really started to broaden my search. A friend turned my onto the Grandstream APs (I thought they only did phones?!?) and I have to say so far I'm really impressed. They are a bit uglier than the Unifi UFOs and the update process for the firmware that shipped with them was an utter nightmare to figure out - but now that I'm past that I'm very pleased with them. They seem to be a lot faster and more stable than the Unifi equivalents. I've set up a lot of UBNT kit, been heavily involved in the forums and their beta products - but the quality and timeliness of firmware updates has really fallen off the last five or so years. Unsurprisingly about the same time they shipped all the firmware coding overseas. One of the biggest reasons I was a huge proponent of them was the constant and tight interaction of the developers in their community forums. That also fell off a cliff around the same time. The market is ripe for someone else to step in. Surprisingly Cisco, with their small business line, has one of the better looking contenders. No subscription - and I didn't need anything (not even an email) to download firmware updates or the controller (!!) Not your fathers Cisco! Their controller lags Unifi, but not by much. I scored a router and switch off of ebay just to dabble and it was pretty promising. I haven't looked at it for a while; I probably need to fire it back up and see if it's matured any. In the end for firewall I went back to OpnSense. Unifi switches are OK but their one year hardware warranty, frankly, sucks. If I were to by new switches I'd probably just go back to netgear. Their lifetime warranty is pretty hard to beat. I've had them replace 10 year old switches with nary a blink of the eye so it's not just lip service.