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After many (many!) years I finally got around to my childhood dreams of building a home network rack, centered around the Unifi stack. I've got the new 10 gig s
by carimura 1y ago
After many (many!) years I finally got around to my childhood dreams of building a home network rack, centered around the Unifi stack. I've got the new 10 gig switch, the dream machine SE, a bunch of cameras, and I've been very impressed with their stuff. The experience "just works" and feels like they take inspiration from Apple. The whole camera setup can be "closed" by shutting off outside access, this self-hosting option takes it all a step further for those who care deeply about privacy!
- whalesalad 1y ago> feels like they take inspiration from Apple the founders are ex-Apple
- AlexandrB 1y agoThere's one big gotcha with Unifi cameras, where you have to cloud-connect your Unifi system if you want "AI" detections[1] (anything other than simple motion detection). I'm hoping they fix it some day[2], but for now I just have motion detection on my Unifi hardware. If this is a problem for you, make sure you understand the tradeoffs here before you commit to a Unifi system. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1cifnut/unifi_protect_now_requires_cloudremote_access_for/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1cifnut/unifi_pro... [2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1dbyvan/home_assistant_users_with_unifi_protect/l7yq5qx/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1dbyvan/home_assi...
- alt227 1y agoStill dont understand why this is such a big issue, and I have been reading threads about it for a year now. Just turn on cloud access, accept the t&cs and then turn it off again. If you are really scared then you can isolate that device in a vlan or DMZ temporarily. I run many commercial and residential networks, and this is definitely a non issue for me.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoWill it still get automatic updates in case of security issues?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- oceanplexian 1y agoI stopped buying Ubiquiti when I reset my UDM Pro and took it to another house without internet access, and it refused to "activate" without an Internet Connection or a phone app connection. Seems they are more interested in selling a lifestyle rather than actual production network equipment.
- jeremywho 1y agoWhat are you using instead?
- ThePowerOfFuet 1y agoOPNsense.
- ungreased0675 1y agoI’m also curious what other prosumer network hardware companies have good products?
- red369 1y agoI like Mikrotik routers, and their other products look good too. They are often discussed on HN if you want to search for a range of opinions. I do find that their software can be confusing, but that may also be to do with the number of options.
- jackhuman 1y agoI use TP link Omada gear and its a been very good replacement to unifi. I use it both personally & manage a side gig venue’s network. I have lots of vlans & even run dante & ndi with no issues. Replaced a Unifi system it was so buggy. DHCP reserve IPs failed, spotty issues with artists phones & the mixer board to mix their in-ears etc. I’ve setup IPSec tunnel to AWS VPC even pretty easy. Using a pi4 for last 4 years on poe running their management docker container. So solid! I’d recommend the pi over buying their hardware device mamager, its way slower.
- bisby 1y agohttps://store.ui.com/us/en/products/ai-key https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/ai-key Even this only reviews "Smart Detections" and I have smart detections turned off on my Unifi cameras, because it enables cloud AI. Having the ability to have an AI key to process detections locally would be great. Also, having to buy extra hardware kinda stinks. Would love to be able to have a self hosted Unifi OS server that can do AI key abilities if the hardware supports it.
- thebruce87m 1y agoIf only the system would cope with power outages I would agree. My viewports refuse to reconnect to the cameras and need multiple forgets/adoptions to come back to life. The (wired) cameras themselves take hours before they show up again, except for the (WiFi) doorbell. During this period I can see the all online via the managed ubiquiti switches.
- Ultimatt 1y agoSurely the expected solution for that is a UPS on the POE switch?
- alt227 1y agoI agree, not sure why you are being downvoted.
- vel0city 1y agoIt's not a solution, its kicking the can down the road. What happens with the UPS battery dies and the power comes back on? The cameras are still down for an unacceptable amount of time because of poor software. The cameras should reassociate almost immediately after regaining a connection. It shouldn't take hours for them to try and connect again. I won't fault the camera for going down when the power dies, I will fault it for not coming back immediately after the power comes back though!
- subscribed 1y agoUmmm..... So the solution to cameras taking several hours to take back to life is to.... just to make sure the will never go offline? The UPS remark is such an non sequitur. Sure, it's prudent to have one but this doesn't make the bug go away.
- thebruce87m 1y agoA UPS is not a solution for all power outages, just ones short enough to last the UPS uptime. The brains of the system is supposed to be the Cloud Key anyway which has its own built in “UPS” and seems to shut down gracefully if you kill power. The cameras and viewports should not be writing data at all after an initial configuration if designed properly and killing power should present no problems to any system with a read-only filesystem. As someone who designs systems like these it absolutely baffles me.
- amluto 1y agoMy general impression is that it “Just Works” if you don’t do anything remotely interesting with it. Want to create a VLAN with no Internet connectivity? Better test that it actually has no Internet connectivity because the setting doesn’t actually work. Want to use the firewall? Better test all the rules — it’s amazingly buggy. Want to change a WiFi setting without WiFi going down for a minute or two? Good luck — UniFi doesn’t seem to care about making it work. Want to find information (MAC, switch port, DHCP reservation, etc) about a device that uses the same MAC address on multiple VLANs? Good luck — it looks like UniFi utterly flubbed either their database schema or whatever interface their front end uses to talk to their backend about it, and it’s very, very broken. Want to find basically any setting based on online docs? Too bad — they keep moving the settings and not updating the docs.
- stirlo 1y agoThis. They make excellent access points and their lite beam/air fibre products are great. But UniFi has serious limitations when it comes to anything beyond the basics. An off the self Asus all in one home router actually has more features and capabilities.
- alt227 1y ago> An off the self Asus all in one home router actually has more features and capabilities. This is just not true at all. I agree unifi can be buggy at times, and their super clean interface means they need to hide stuff all over the place, but I havent found any network configuration I couldnt do on Unifi yet. Care to elaborate on exactly which functions standard asus routers have over Ubiquiti gear?
- petepete 1y agoI did this in 2023 and my experience has been the same. Had 0 problems other than Sonos being, well, Sonos. Recently set up CCTV at my parents’ with a Cloud Gateway Max, set up a site to site VPN in 3 clicks and now I can support remotely and their Sony smart TV can see my Jellyfin server.
- donmcronald 1y agoIIRC some Sonos issues are related to STP. AFAIK it's, like you said, Sonos being Sonos. Lol.
- bc569a80a344f9c 1y agoHow could a Sonos device possibly interact with spanning tree? Are there Sonos devices that act as bridges?
- Polizeiposaune 1y agoMost of their devices act as bridges; some of the newer ones don't. Some have multiple ethernet ports, and anything that has both an ethernet port and is part of their "sonosnet" mutant-wifi will bridge between sonosnet and their ethernet port(s) with spanning tree using classic (pre-RSTP) link costs. If you're not careful you can end up with the "best" path between two switches going over the sonos-to-sonos wifi.
- justusthane 1y agoThat’s nutty!
- petepete 1y agoYeah, that was exactly it. Unifi have a special page in their docs for dealing with Sonos. https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/18930473041047-Best-Practices-for-Sonos-Devices https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/18930473041047-Best-Pr... I ended up connecting everything with a wired connection and disabling WiFi. Thankfully I have cat6 to every room so it wasn't an inconvenience. It's worked perfectly since.
- anotherhue 1y agoI am more interested in your childhood than your network at this point.
- kwanbix 1y agoI really love my Dream Machine. Super reliable. What I don't like that much is their UI. It is super weirdly done. It is not natural to use, at least if like me, you use it once every 6 months or more.
- donmcronald 1y agoI like the way they do VLANs. It's easy enough that it can be managed by people that don't understand all the low level terminology.
- esseph 1y agoThat's because Robert Pera, CEO/founder used to work for Apple for a few years when he was very young.
- shermantanktop 1y agoHas he said that? I did a lot of jobs when I was very young. I wouldn't want someone to draw conclusions about me today based on my failed stint at Burger King, for example.
- esseph 1y agoGoogle it. But yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pera#Apple https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pera#Apple
- 1a527dd5 1y ago> I finally got around to my childhood dreams of building a home network rack My childhood dream was to build crazy buildings, before that it was a space explorer. Not sure a home network rack ever made the list!
- carimura 1y agook well technically my original network dream was rows and rows of 14.4k baud modems, so we've come a ways since then.