8 ms·

Unifi is the Apple of networking gear. When something new is released the HN crowd is excited even when the same functionality existed already with another comp

by kkapelon 10mo ago

Unifi is the Apple of networking gear. When something new is released the HN crowd is excited even when the same functionality existed already with another company.

amelius 10mo ago
Apple of networking? I suppose no OpenWrt then.
- wrobelda 10mo ago
  You actually can install Openwrt on bunch of their hardware
  - idatum 10mo ago
    Or OpenBSD, in my case a USG-3P. I would have otherwise tossed it but now it's a nice OpenBSD switch. OpenBSD 7.7 (GENERIC) #339: Sun Apr 13 17:52:27 MDT 2025 deraadt@octeon.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/octeon/compile/GENERIC real mem = 536870912 (512MB) avail mem = 521142272 (497MB) Only complaint I have with Unifi is so-so IPv6 support. I'd love to see a NAT64/DNS64 option configurable in their UI.
  - danudey 10mo ago
    Out of the box, my Unifi Security Gateway runs Debian, as did my previous Unifi AC access points. I just checked and my new Wifi 7 APs don't run Debian though, they... admin@BedroomAP:~# cat /etc/os-release NAME="OpenWrt" VERSION="23.05-SNAPSHOT" ID="openwrt" ID_LIKE="lede openwrt" PRETTY_NAME="OpenWrt 23.05-SNAPSHOT" VERSION_ID="23.05-snapshot" ....
johncolanduoni 10mo ago
For wireless, the prices aren’t much different from products with comparable feature sets/performance. For some niche combinations, they’re the only option that doesn’t force you way upmarket (Meraki, etc.). Most of the money they make is from small business and tiny WISPs, not HN boosters overdoing it on their home WiFi in what must be a bid to get their partner to divorce them. Their wired stuff is a total scam since Edgerouter fell off, though. The same functionality exists on a $50 netgear managed switch (or wired router, etc.), and the shitty unified configuration interface doesn’t justify the markup at all.
- amluto 10mo ago
  To be somewhat fair, the quality of their management tools for their switches and routers has increased somewhat, and some of their wired routers are actually decent on the price/performance spectrum these days. Meanwhile, the quality of their competitors’ tools for managing multiple switches without manually configuring each one, individually, over SSH or via a graphical tool is not necessarily amazing. For example, it’s been a while since I used Ruckus Unleashed (the low-end management tool from an very upmarket vendor), but I think UniFi Network (the management tool) is a good amount better than Unleashed. I really wish the people who put so much effort into software like OpenWRT would put some of that effort into managing multiple devices in a nice, unified manner. The tooling could be so much better.
  - buccal 10mo ago
    > I really wish the people who put so much effort into software like OpenWRT would put some of that effort into managing multiple devices in a nice, unified manner. The tooling could be so much better. There is OpenWISP: Leveraging Linux OpenWrt, OpenWISP is an open-source solution for efficient IT network deployment, monitoring & management.
- seemaze 10mo ago
  >HN boosters overdoing it on their home WiFi in what must be a bid to get their partner to divorce them.. Au contraire! I got tired of the refrain "are you messing with the network again?" in the evenings when the neighbors are all streaming Netflix and crowding the airwaves, so I installed several low power UI APs around the house and and popped my own DNS and devices to a separate VLAN. No more complaints :) I do wish Unifi offered more configuration in the ad-blocking department, but I'm hesitant to inflict anything but the most vanilla deployment on the remainder of the household..
  - 9x39 10mo ago
    Unless UI spins up their own dns business, I have had good luck using nextdns.io at home to close that gap.
- 10mo ago
a3w 10mo ago
Ah, this is a Ubiquity product. That explains it. Why did AVM or Netgear Orbi not get this treatment for "works", though?
- lwkl 10mo ago
  Because Unifi is more focused on the needs of businesses and enthusiasts. AVM and Netgear Orbi are products for the consumer market. So they miss a the advanced features Unifi supports. Unifi is used by the tech-savvy homeowner that needs PoE for their security cameras and wants to control and configure their network without needing a network engineer.
  - kllrnohj 10mo ago
    And also Unifi lets you just buy stuff instead of "contact a sales rep". If I go to Netgear and filter primary port speed to 2.5g, which is hardly an enterprise spec, all 3 options are "contact a rep" which... no thanks. Who on earth wants to contact a sales rep for a 10 port 2.5gb switch? There is now also TP-Link's Omada line at least which seems like the most comparable alternative.
  - hardolaf 10mo ago
    I tried out Netgear Orbi and I don't know who it's actually for. It tried deploying it at my dad's place, but had to return it because it just doesn't work. Dropped in Ubiquiti gear to replace it and I had the entire network up and running within 15 minutes of applying power. And it's had zero of the issues that I had with Netgear's system.
    - xp84 10mo ago
      Just wanted to drop another data point that Linksys is also trash now. So for consumer-targeted gear it seems the options are: 1. Eero - great performance, no web config (only mobile app), cloud dependent, half the features paywalled for monthly subscription (eyeroll) 2. Linksys - confirmed piles of crap, a 6E mesh kit I tried last year performed worse than my 2018 Eeros so why bother. Config is even more limiting than Eero, the web UI is a slow disaster that times out constantly, and the app is terrible and the features are badly designed. 3. Netgear - sucks as parent comment explains 4. TP-Link - reputation is that it's bad but I haven't tried 5. Asus - never tried 6. Google - no doubt they'll kill and brick these at some point Any others I'm forgetting?
rafaelmn 10mo ago
I recently bought their cloud fiber gateway and two in wall wifi 7 access points because I'm setting up a network in my new apartment and hear this multiple times. Honestly they are nothing like Apple - like just look at their mobile apps - how many do they have - 10 ? To interact with the same gateway just for slightly different use-cases. Not to mention that the functionalities are hard to decipher
inopinatus 10mo ago
More like the Sonos of networking gear, in that they were once kinda cool but squandered it with questionable product decisions.
- Nux 10mo ago
  Hear hear!
- chrisweekly 10mo ago
  On the Sonos tangent: the hardware is really good! But the software is just staggeringly, aggressively, and proactively terrible. :(
  - greenavocado 10mo ago
    Can it be reflashed
    - chrisweekly 10mo ago
      there's sadly no community solution AFAICT
      - seltzered_ 10mo ago
        Why cant an android phone with ethernet tethering to a router suffice? I've done this using an android phone, usb-c hub w/ethernet nic, and and edgerouter lite before. The biggest missing piece i see is the option for an external antenna.
        greenavocado 10mo ago
        The antenna is often more important than the receiver
        chrisweekly 10mo ago
        I don't understand how that fixes the awful Sonos software.
jsheard 10mo ago
They have the form-over-function aspect too, in that they decided to keep the external design language consistent across the board no matter what. Which meant they couldn't improve the passive heat dissipation enough to keep up with newer network standards, and had to resort to putting fans in their WiFi APs to keep them from overheating.
- Normal_gaussian 10mo ago
  And they make the whole claim of 'minimalism means easy to use for power users', which really means 'we'll keep messing with how the meshing in your house works so that you're unable to pin preferred routes between nodes - because without seeing your house we know better'.
  - 9x39 10mo ago
    Uplink priority doesn't work?
- mikepurvis 10mo ago
  Which units is that? I have a pair of u7 pros in my house and they’ve never made a peep, though admittedly they don’t get pushed very hard at all; the TV and two main computers are wired, so it’s really just iot junk and phones on the wifi.
  - jsheard 10mo ago
    The U7 Pros do have a fan, but yeah if you're not pushing them very hard it may not be spinning up. https://youtu.be/IStbaTQTBio?t=117 https://youtu.be/IStbaTQTBio?t=117 Aside from noise it's also not ideal for reliability in dusty environments.
    - mikepurvis 10mo ago
      Interesting, how about that. I did definitely note that they were considerably more weighty in the hand than the AC-era APs they were replacing.
beAbU 10mo ago
To be fair, they have a nice ecosystem for networking nerds. I got a Dream Router last week for black friday and I'm super happy with it. Setup was like 20 seconds. I'm looking forward to getting more Unifi gear in the near future.
synergy20 10mo ago
the founder himself was an Apple hardware designer
SkyPuncher 10mo ago
Unifi is a bit different than Apple to me. Ubiquiti is one of the few companies doing prosumer hardware - and doing it extremely well. They give you access to advanced, raw configurations without necessarily having to go "full enterprise" deployment. They also have solutions for just about everything. That being said, I generally have moved towards other Wifi solutions as I've grown weary of tweaking Ubiquiti all of the time. I found that I could get better top-end performance out of Ubiquiti gear, but really struggled to hammer out poor performance in edge cases. Particularly, with jitter and random latency spikes. My consumer mesh wifi system gets nowhere near it's advertised performance, with little way for me to tweak it. However, I rarely need "full performance" and it doesn't suffer from the same random glitches.
- FuriouslyAdrift 10mo ago
  I've moved to buying last gen used Ruckus Unleashed APs (usually R720 as they are cheap and very reliable). Way higher quality but steep learning curve for many functions, although if someone is willing to put in some effort it's not that bad.
  - ssl-3 10mo ago
    Usually, I use Mikrotik wAP ACs for this kind of thing. They're cheap-enough to buy brand new, and they're designed to be able to work outdoors in the weather. But I might pick up an R720 just to play with -- that's a different echelon of gear. Thanks for the tip.
    - FuriouslyAdrift 10mo ago
      For outdoor, the model numbers start with "T". I think the T710 is the equivalent of the R720 for outdoor.
    - p_ing 10mo ago
      Not that everyone needs it, but it doesn't seem like Mikrotik has any 6E or 7 WAPs? If they do, I'd love to try one
bitexploder 10mo ago
I still like them. I have almost no real complaints about their products. They just work for me. Here is an example: I had a Netgate with pfsense for my home gateway. My primary home internet provider can be a little flaky, so I have a beefy 5G gateway backup. It was way too hard to configure one of the ports to support automatic WAN failover. The, less expensive, unifi product just worked. It was just a simple setting in the gateway's management UI. The information provided in the dashboard is rich and it implements things like constant QoS monitoring that has a nice plot. It adopts and manages my home wifi and makes it super easy to configure channels, analyze congestion, and do all the deeper technical configuration I could ask for. Another example, I had Frigate set up on a home rolled NAS. Again, it worked alright, but it always stole time from me. It always needed a little maintenance or tweaking or thinking. I bought a UNVR and modern Unifi cameras. Adopted, zero thinking or management from me. I still retain control of my data and it respects my privacy. It isn't perfect, but at the price point it solved meaningful problems I cared about in both cases. Yes they are commercial products and not open source, but they are priced reasonably to my eyes (the UCG ultra was actually cheaper than the netgate). That makes me a happy customer. I have run their wifi APs for over a decade with no problems. It's not perfect, I know there are still privacy concerns. No company is really perfect, but they are good to me.
- hardolaf 10mo ago
  The corollary to them just working is that if they don't, they don't just ignore you like Apple. I reported a bug between two pieces of their hardware when talking to a specific 5Gbe NIC via their support without a support contract. They took a week to get back to me with a member of their QA department talking directly with me and having me validate beta firmware with them. After about a week of back-and-forth, they had a fixed version that has been deployed globally to everyone. Meanwhile, Apple still hasn't fixed bugs that I reported to them between 2012 and 2014 while working for one of the largest universities in North America as a level 2 tech.
baby_souffle 10mo ago
> Unifi is the Apple of networking gear They were founded by some people that left Apple.
ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago
I've got some old Unifi gear and there's a couple of things that make them unlike Apple. Firstly, I can run the network controller easily in Linux (in Docker as it happens, but the image is third party - jacobalberty/unifi). It's happily running on Raspberry Pi. Secondly, I've got one really old access point that is now unsupported for updates, but apart from that, there's no problem with controlling it along with the supported ones. Also, I don't need a cloud connection though they do encourage using one.
xp84 10mo ago
This seems like a stretch. If your position is that the REAL experts are using Cisco gear instead, I guess fine. But the "HN Crowd" loves using Ubiquiti at home because it is light years better than any consumer brand, (1) in terms of giving people who know what they're doing sufficient control to do so, (2) in terms of performance, and (3) in terms of not being a buggy piece of crap. Contrast with: (1) eero has no web UI (ONLY mobile phone!) and almost zero network configurability. You can't set a hostname for instance for DHCP. You can have exactly one main and one guest network. You don't get to configure anything about it though. Etc. (3) I bought a Linksys replacement for my Eeros to get 6E -- I returned it to the store due to how horrifyingly bad the Web UI was and how bad the "app" was too. AND it also had flaws like inability to have reservation IPs outside the DHCP pool range. Apple is actually the opposite of Ubiquiti -- they don't want you to be able to configure anything or have any visibility into anything. It either 'just works' or just silently fails or fails with "An error occurred."
- staplers 10mo ago
  Ubiquiti at home because it is light years better than any consumer brand As someone who simply wanted to isolate different devices on my home network, I was looking at nearly thousands of dollars of hardware, installing abstract OpenWRT software, and arduous VLAN rules to do this. It was shocking how immature this space is. I finally caved to the ubiquiti setup and am glad I did.
- whatshisface 10mo ago
  The eero also has a privacy policy that allows them to record your DNS traffic (they are owned by Amazon). https://www.historytools.org/docs/reasons-to-avoid-amazon-eero https://www.historytools.org/docs/reasons-to-avoid-amazon-ee...
- zbuttram 10mo ago
  > Apple is actually the opposite of Ubiquiti -- they don't want you to be able to configure anything or have any visibility into anything. True, however before I was running a UniFi household I did quite enjoy Apple's Airport equipment. Back in the day it felt like they were the first time I had consumer networking equipment that I wasn't forced to reboot regularly to resolve issues.
j45 10mo ago
Not quite, DIY vs technologies like Unifi make it accessible to the masses where the former is for the few to feel good about themselves, and the latter makes a difference in moving things forward for the many without as much investment in time, because people shouldn't have to be free employees of technology to derive a benefit.. "Just works" means you can enjoy other parts of technology, like what you do with it, instead of just getting and keeping it working.

Unifi is the Apple of networking gear. When something new is released the HN crowd is excited even when the same functionality existed already with another company.

amelius 10mo ago

Apple of networking? I suppose no OpenWrt then.

wrobelda 10mo ago
You actually can install Openwrt on bunch of their hardware
- idatum 10mo ago
  Or OpenBSD, in my case a USG-3P. I would have otherwise tossed it but now it's a nice OpenBSD switch. OpenBSD 7.7 (GENERIC) #339: Sun Apr 13 17:52:27 MDT 2025 deraadt@octeon.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/octeon/compile/GENERIC real mem = 536870912 (512MB) avail mem = 521142272 (497MB) Only complaint I have with Unifi is so-so IPv6 support. I'd love to see a NAT64/DNS64 option configurable in their UI.
- danudey 10mo ago
  Out of the box, my Unifi Security Gateway runs Debian, as did my previous Unifi AC access points. I just checked and my new Wifi 7 APs don't run Debian though, they... admin@BedroomAP:~# cat /etc/os-release NAME="OpenWrt" VERSION="23.05-SNAPSHOT" ID="openwrt" ID_LIKE="lede openwrt" PRETTY_NAME="OpenWrt 23.05-SNAPSHOT" VERSION_ID="23.05-snapshot" ....

johncolanduoni 10mo ago

For wireless, the prices aren’t much different from products with comparable feature sets/performance. For some niche combinations, they’re the only option that doesn’t force you way upmarket (Meraki, etc.). Most of the money they make is from small business and tiny WISPs, not HN boosters overdoing it on their home WiFi in what must be a bid to get their partner to divorce them. Their wired stuff is a total scam since Edgerouter fell off, though. The same functionality exists on a $50 netgear managed switch (or wired router, etc.), and the shitty unified configuration interface doesn’t justify the markup at all.

amluto 10mo ago
To be somewhat fair, the quality of their management tools for their switches and routers has increased somewhat, and some of their wired routers are actually decent on the price/performance spectrum these days. Meanwhile, the quality of their competitors’ tools for managing multiple switches without manually configuring each one, individually, over SSH or via a graphical tool is not necessarily amazing. For example, it’s been a while since I used Ruckus Unleashed (the low-end management tool from an very upmarket vendor), but I think UniFi Network (the management tool) is a good amount better than Unleashed. I really wish the people who put so much effort into software like OpenWRT would put some of that effort into managing multiple devices in a nice, unified manner. The tooling could be so much better.
- buccal 10mo ago
  > I really wish the people who put so much effort into software like OpenWRT would put some of that effort into managing multiple devices in a nice, unified manner. The tooling could be so much better. There is OpenWISP: Leveraging Linux OpenWrt, OpenWISP is an open-source solution for efficient IT network deployment, monitoring & management.
seemaze 10mo ago
>HN boosters overdoing it on their home WiFi in what must be a bid to get their partner to divorce them.. Au contraire! I got tired of the refrain "are you messing with the network again?" in the evenings when the neighbors are all streaming Netflix and crowding the airwaves, so I installed several low power UI APs around the house and and popped my own DNS and devices to a separate VLAN. No more complaints :) I do wish Unifi offered more configuration in the ad-blocking department, but I'm hesitant to inflict anything but the most vanilla deployment on the remainder of the household..
- 9x39 10mo ago
  Unless UI spins up their own dns business, I have had good luck using nextdns.io at home to close that gap.
10mo ago

a3w 10mo ago

Ah, this is a Ubiquity product. That explains it. Why did AVM or Netgear Orbi not get this treatment for "works", though?

lwkl 10mo ago
Because Unifi is more focused on the needs of businesses and enthusiasts. AVM and Netgear Orbi are products for the consumer market. So they miss a the advanced features Unifi supports. Unifi is used by the tech-savvy homeowner that needs PoE for their security cameras and wants to control and configure their network without needing a network engineer.
- kllrnohj 10mo ago
  And also Unifi lets you just buy stuff instead of "contact a sales rep". If I go to Netgear and filter primary port speed to 2.5g, which is hardly an enterprise spec, all 3 options are "contact a rep" which... no thanks. Who on earth wants to contact a sales rep for a 10 port 2.5gb switch? There is now also TP-Link's Omada line at least which seems like the most comparable alternative.
- hardolaf 10mo ago
  I tried out Netgear Orbi and I don't know who it's actually for. It tried deploying it at my dad's place, but had to return it because it just doesn't work. Dropped in Ubiquiti gear to replace it and I had the entire network up and running within 15 minutes of applying power. And it's had zero of the issues that I had with Netgear's system.
  - xp84 10mo ago
    Just wanted to drop another data point that Linksys is also trash now. So for consumer-targeted gear it seems the options are: 1. Eero - great performance, no web config (only mobile app), cloud dependent, half the features paywalled for monthly subscription (eyeroll) 2. Linksys - confirmed piles of crap, a 6E mesh kit I tried last year performed worse than my 2018 Eeros so why bother. Config is even more limiting than Eero, the web UI is a slow disaster that times out constantly, and the app is terrible and the features are badly designed. 3. Netgear - sucks as parent comment explains 4. TP-Link - reputation is that it's bad but I haven't tried 5. Asus - never tried 6. Google - no doubt they'll kill and brick these at some point Any others I'm forgetting?

rafaelmn 10mo ago

I recently bought their cloud fiber gateway and two in wall wifi 7 access points because I'm setting up a network in my new apartment and hear this multiple times. Honestly they are nothing like Apple - like just look at their mobile apps - how many do they have - 10 ? To interact with the same gateway just for slightly different use-cases. Not to mention that the functionalities are hard to decipher

inopinatus 10mo ago

More like the Sonos of networking gear, in that they were once kinda cool but squandered it with questionable product decisions.

Nux 10mo ago
Hear hear!
chrisweekly 10mo ago
On the Sonos tangent: the hardware is really good! But the software is just staggeringly, aggressively, and proactively terrible. :(
- greenavocado 10mo ago
  Can it be reflashed
  - chrisweekly 10mo ago
    there's sadly no community solution AFAICT
    - seltzered_ 10mo ago
      Why cant an android phone with ethernet tethering to a router suffice? I've done this using an android phone, usb-c hub w/ethernet nic, and and edgerouter lite before. The biggest missing piece i see is the option for an external antenna.
      - greenavocado 10mo ago
        The antenna is often more important than the receiver
      - chrisweekly 10mo ago
        I don't understand how that fixes the awful Sonos software.

jsheard 10mo ago

They have the form-over-function aspect too, in that they decided to keep the external design language consistent across the board no matter what. Which meant they couldn't improve the passive heat dissipation enough to keep up with newer network standards, and had to resort to putting fans in their WiFi APs to keep them from overheating.

Normal_gaussian 10mo ago
And they make the whole claim of 'minimalism means easy to use for power users', which really means 'we'll keep messing with how the meshing in your house works so that you're unable to pin preferred routes between nodes - because without seeing your house we know better'.
- 9x39 10mo ago
  Uplink priority doesn't work?
mikepurvis 10mo ago
Which units is that? I have a pair of u7 pros in my house and they’ve never made a peep, though admittedly they don’t get pushed very hard at all; the TV and two main computers are wired, so it’s really just iot junk and phones on the wifi.
- jsheard 10mo ago
  The U7 Pros do have a fan, but yeah if you're not pushing them very hard it may not be spinning up. https://youtu.be/IStbaTQTBio?t=117 https://youtu.be/IStbaTQTBio?t=117 Aside from noise it's also not ideal for reliability in dusty environments.
  - mikepurvis 10mo ago
    Interesting, how about that. I did definitely note that they were considerably more weighty in the hand than the AC-era APs they were replacing.

beAbU 10mo ago

To be fair, they have a nice ecosystem for networking nerds. I got a Dream Router last week for black friday and I'm super happy with it. Setup was like 20 seconds. I'm looking forward to getting more Unifi gear in the near future.

synergy20 10mo ago

the founder himself was an Apple hardware designer

SkyPuncher 10mo ago

Unifi is a bit different than Apple to me. Ubiquiti is one of the few companies doing prosumer hardware - and doing it extremely well. They give you access to advanced, raw configurations without necessarily having to go "full enterprise" deployment. They also have solutions for just about everything. That being said, I generally have moved towards other Wifi solutions as I've grown weary of tweaking Ubiquiti all of the time. I found that I could get better top-end performance out of Ubiquiti gear, but really struggled to hammer out poor performance in edge cases. Particularly, with jitter and random latency spikes. My consumer mesh wifi system gets nowhere near it's advertised performance, with little way for me to tweak it. However, I rarely need "full performance" and it doesn't suffer from the same random glitches.

FuriouslyAdrift 10mo ago
I've moved to buying last gen used Ruckus Unleashed APs (usually R720 as they are cheap and very reliable). Way higher quality but steep learning curve for many functions, although if someone is willing to put in some effort it's not that bad.
- ssl-3 10mo ago
  Usually, I use Mikrotik wAP ACs for this kind of thing. They're cheap-enough to buy brand new, and they're designed to be able to work outdoors in the weather. But I might pick up an R720 just to play with -- that's a different echelon of gear. Thanks for the tip.
  - FuriouslyAdrift 10mo ago
    For outdoor, the model numbers start with "T". I think the T710 is the equivalent of the R720 for outdoor.
  - p_ing 10mo ago
    Not that everyone needs it, but it doesn't seem like Mikrotik has any 6E or 7 WAPs? If they do, I'd love to try one

bitexploder 10mo ago

I still like them. I have almost no real complaints about their products. They just work for me. Here is an example: I had a Netgate with pfsense for my home gateway. My primary home internet provider can be a little flaky, so I have a beefy 5G gateway backup. It was way too hard to configure one of the ports to support automatic WAN failover. The, less expensive, unifi product just worked. It was just a simple setting in the gateway's management UI. The information provided in the dashboard is rich and it implements things like constant QoS monitoring that has a nice plot. It adopts and manages my home wifi and makes it super easy to configure channels, analyze congestion, and do all the deeper technical configuration I could ask for. Another example, I had Frigate set up on a home rolled NAS. Again, it worked alright, but it always stole time from me. It always needed a little maintenance or tweaking or thinking. I bought a UNVR and modern Unifi cameras. Adopted, zero thinking or management from me. I still retain control of my data and it respects my privacy. It isn't perfect, but at the price point it solved meaningful problems I cared about in both cases. Yes they are commercial products and not open source, but they are priced reasonably to my eyes (the UCG ultra was actually cheaper than the netgate). That makes me a happy customer. I have run their wifi APs for over a decade with no problems. It's not perfect, I know there are still privacy concerns. No company is really perfect, but they are good to me.

hardolaf 10mo ago
The corollary to them just working is that if they don't, they don't just ignore you like Apple. I reported a bug between two pieces of their hardware when talking to a specific 5Gbe NIC via their support without a support contract. They took a week to get back to me with a member of their QA department talking directly with me and having me validate beta firmware with them. After about a week of back-and-forth, they had a fixed version that has been deployed globally to everyone. Meanwhile, Apple still hasn't fixed bugs that I reported to them between 2012 and 2014 while working for one of the largest universities in North America as a level 2 tech.

baby_souffle 10mo ago

> Unifi is the Apple of networking gear They were founded by some people that left Apple.

ndsipa_pomu 10mo ago

I've got some old Unifi gear and there's a couple of things that make them unlike Apple. Firstly, I can run the network controller easily in Linux (in Docker as it happens, but the image is third party - jacobalberty/unifi). It's happily running on Raspberry Pi. Secondly, I've got one really old access point that is now unsupported for updates, but apart from that, there's no problem with controlling it along with the supported ones. Also, I don't need a cloud connection though they do encourage using one.

xp84 10mo ago

This seems like a stretch. If your position is that the REAL experts are using Cisco gear instead, I guess fine. But the "HN Crowd" loves using Ubiquiti at home because it is light years better than any consumer brand, (1) in terms of giving people who know what they're doing sufficient control to do so, (2) in terms of performance, and (3) in terms of not being a buggy piece of crap. Contrast with: (1) eero has no web UI (ONLY mobile phone!) and almost zero network configurability. You can't set a hostname for instance for DHCP. You can have exactly one main and one guest network. You don't get to configure anything about it though. Etc. (3) I bought a Linksys replacement for my Eeros to get 6E -- I returned it to the store due to how horrifyingly bad the Web UI was and how bad the "app" was too. AND it also had flaws like inability to have reservation IPs outside the DHCP pool range. Apple is actually the opposite of Ubiquiti -- they don't want you to be able to configure anything or have any visibility into anything. It either 'just works' or just silently fails or fails with "An error occurred."

staplers 10mo ago
Ubiquiti at home because it is light years better than any consumer brand As someone who simply wanted to isolate different devices on my home network, I was looking at nearly thousands of dollars of hardware, installing abstract OpenWRT software, and arduous VLAN rules to do this. It was shocking how immature this space is. I finally caved to the ubiquiti setup and am glad I did.
whatshisface 10mo ago
The eero also has a privacy policy that allows them to record your DNS traffic (they are owned by Amazon). https://www.historytools.org/docs/reasons-to-avoid-amazon-eero https://www.historytools.org/docs/reasons-to-avoid-amazon-ee...
zbuttram 10mo ago
> Apple is actually the opposite of Ubiquiti -- they don't want you to be able to configure anything or have any visibility into anything. True, however before I was running a UniFi household I did quite enjoy Apple's Airport equipment. Back in the day it felt like they were the first time I had consumer networking equipment that I wasn't forced to reboot regularly to resolve issues.

j45 10mo ago

Not quite, DIY vs technologies like Unifi make it accessible to the masses where the former is for the few to feel good about themselves, and the latter makes a difference in moving things forward for the many without as much investment in time, because people shouldn't have to be free employees of technology to derive a benefit.. "Just works" means you can enjoy other parts of technology, like what you do with it, instead of just getting and keeping it working.