*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***

Soldato
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Thank you both for the advice, that's helpful. Perhaps I'll try one UAP-AC-LITE or UAP-LR and then make a decision on whether it's worth moving to two. Guess I'll have to plan the placement as carefully as I can around the ethernet wall ports I have. Most of my devices are probably 5GHz capable, but I assume that the signal is less likely to penetrate as far and so I may as well stick with 2.4GHz for reliability, given none of the wireless devices are high performance things (web browsing or casual streaming). My PCs and main 4K smart TV are all wired into the gigabit network; I'm not an animal!

EDIT: Price differences weren't a lot - ordered a UAP-AC-LR and we'll see how it does.

Solid choice, what do you plan to run the controller software on?
 
Soldato
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Unless you're really lucky, the 2.4GHz band is generally very congested and you generally only have 11 or 13 options open to you which actually means 3 or 4 channels you can use. The 5GHz band allows you to select from a much wider range of options and tends to be much less cluttered. You are, of course, correct that the 5GHz signal barely penetrates walls so if you want strong 5GHz performance you almost need a low power access point in every room.

It's very worthwhile doing a site survey with the WiFiMan app that UBNT now do. And if you have the HD type 4x4 access points they have automatic band selection so they actually choose the best band based on current conditions.
I have an Asus router placed poorly in my house (under a desk in the master bedroom) and the 5GHz signal covers the entire house, which has brick walls internally and externally, and the signal actually reaches across the road outside too.
 
Soldato
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I have an Asus router placed poorly in my house (under a desk in the master bedroom) and the 5GHz signal covers the entire house, which has brick walls internally and externally, and the signal actually reaches across the road outside too.

Good to know. My default choice for most folks is usually the BT Home Hub. It’s the fastest WLAN I’ve tested that’s not 10GbE enabled. It’s also one of the most criticised pieces of kit ever. People assume because it’s the freebie BT one, it must be crap. But in general it’s actually very good. ASUS have a very good reputation and I’m sure your device is very good.
 
Associate
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I’m ripping out all my UCKs at the moment and replacing them with UCK Plus’s so I’ll have some on Member’s Market soon.

I am awaiting UK stock of the non plus gen 2 UCK to replace my gen 1, but is there any advantage of the plus UCK gen 2 when there is no CCTV use?

I have a dedicated server for my CCTV and the UCK would never be powerful enough for my CCTV needs so unless the internal drive in the UCK gen 2 assists with something else it appears to be just one more thing to fail and a needlessly larger case.

I have another server I could run the controller software on (or use the CCTV server) but the cloud keys are a great fit and forget device.
 
Soldato
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The original Cloud Key absolutely hated power cuts, we removed all of ours after a power cut (don't you love it when a UPS goes pop?) knackered one of the Cloud Keys and needed to be setup again. The Gen 2 Cloud Keys have a battery backup in them and they're more powerful units so Unifi SDN is less sluggish than it is on the original Cloud Key.

I believe the gen 2's can also take 2 power feeds, so if you have them PoE powered and USB C powered then they'll keep running if one of the supplies disappears. From what I can remember it's a bit of a faff as you have to connect the sources in a certain order but I believe it does work.
 
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I am reasonably sold on getting a gen 2 UCK, I just need to decide whether to wait for the non plus variant to land in the UK.

However my gen 1 UCK has been totally reliable but its on a good size sine wave UPS with a couple of hours backup so it's never lost power. So £200 for a faster UCK is a lot given I have servers I could use for the controller software, but if the £220 plus variant provides something else (more device history logging due to the HDD etc) then it could be worth it.
 
Soldato
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In your situation I think I'd stick with the gen 1 UCK. In theory you could put a larger micro SD card in your current UCK and turn up the logging level all the way. In my installation the db directory is about 9Gb with everything up full.
 
Soldato
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There are 2 differences between the Gen 2 and the Gen 2 Plus. The Gen 2 Plus has a hard drive and will run Unifi Protect and the Gen 2 Plus has a much larger casing to dissipate heat.

For the very small increase in cost between the Gen 2 and the Gen 2 Plus I honestly can’t see any reason to buy the Gen 2. Yes, you save a little money but if you ever decide to add cameras then that option is there with the Gen 2 Plus and why would you mess about with SD cards when you can have a proper hard drive?
 
Soldato
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I believe the gen 2's can also take 2 power feeds, so if you have them PoE powered and USB C powered then they'll keep running if one of the supplies disappears. From what I can remember it's a bit of a faff as you have to connect the sources in a certain order but I believe it does work.

The Gen 1 also will accept 2 power sources. The trick is finding a USB power stick that will charge and supply power at the same time.
 
Associate
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UniFi Dream Machine looks interesting:

ne2iado7nyl21.jpg
 
Associate
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There are 2 differences between the Gen 2 and the Gen 2 Plus. The Gen 2 Plus has a hard drive and will run Unifi Protect and the Gen 2 Plus has a much larger casing to dissipate heat.

For the very small increase in cost between the Gen 2 and the Gen 2 Plus I honestly can’t see any reason to buy the Gen 2. Yes, you save a little money but if you ever decide to add cameras then that option is there with the Gen 2 Plus and why would you mess about with SD cards when you can have a proper hard drive?

Thanks, but the more I think about this I think a move to putting the controller on one of my home servers is best rather than an upgrade to Gen 2 from Gen 1.

I will never use a UCK Gen 2 for CCTV as my current 16 core, 32TB disk dedicated CCTV server is running 40% CPU 24x7 due to number of cameras, resolution and encoding for combined displays even with GPU & quicksync hardware acceleration.
 
Soldato
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UniFi Dream Machine looks interesting:

Maybe. You actually seem to get a lot in the one package. I’m waiting for the link to go live for the documentation to see if it’s a USG-3P or an ER-4P performance router in there with the 4-port switch, AP-AC-Lite Access Point and Cloud Key.

The fact that it’s the full-blown Unifi SDN in there means you can just mesh an AP-AC-Mesh or Mesh Pro onto it and it will blow away any other mesh system on the market. This is what Amplifi should have been from the outset.
 
Associate
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Maybe. You actually seem to get a lot in the one package. I’m waiting for the link to go live for the documentation to see if it’s a USG-3P or an ER-4P performance router in there with the 4-port switch, AP-AC-Lite Access Point and Cloud Key.

On discord it was stated by Ubnt that IDS/IPS is rated for 700Mbps real-world performance, burstable to over 1Gbps and it has 2GB of RAM.
 
Soldato
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Some info on the dream machine copied from Reddit.

  1. IDS/IPS rated for 700Mbps real-world performance, burstable to over 1Gbps
  2. Cannot be adopted to another controller; must use internal built-in controller.
  3. Built-in controller can adopt other UniFi devices
  4. 2GB of RAM, but same IPS classifications w/ USG3
 
Soldato
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Dream machine looks perfect for me, would handle the downstairs WiFi and cable network and routing, and my current AC-Pro can handle the upstairs WiFi.
 
Soldato
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Some info on the dream machine copied from Reddit.

  1. IDS/IPS rated for 700Mbps real-world performance, burstable to over 1Gbps
  2. Cannot be adopted to another controller; must use internal built-in controller.
  3. Built-in controller can adopt other UniFi devices
  4. 2GB of RAM, but same IPS classifications w/ USG3

That’s crazy. It basically makes the USG-4P irrelevant. You can get a router that is at least twice as fast (officially) as the USG-4P for the same price as a USG but it also includes what is effectively a cloud key, a small switch and an AC access point. For full redundancy you’d just buy 3 and set them all up the same. Then just swap them in if the primary goes offline for any reason.
 
Soldato
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Good to know. My default choice for most folks is usually the BT Home Hub. It’s the fastest WLAN I’ve tested that’s not 10GbE enabled. It’s also one of the most criticised pieces of kit ever. People assume because it’s the freebie BT one, it must be crap. But in general it’s actually very good. ASUS have a very good reputation and I’m sure your device is very good.

The Wifi on the BT Home Hub was one of the reasons I switched to Ubiquiti kit. The range was fine but having about 20-25 devices (e.g. smart bulbs) connecting to it automatically when it booted would just knock it out completely leaving it unresponsive.
 
Soldato
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That’s crazy. It basically makes the USG-4P irrelevant. You can get a router that is at least twice as fast (officially) as the USG-4P for the same price as a USG but it also includes what is effectively a cloud key, a small switch and an AC access point. For full redundancy you’d just buy 3 and set them all up the same. Then just swap them in if the primary goes offline for any reason.

I personally don't really get the whole Edgerouter and Unifi split. Why can't they have everything adoptable under one thing? A unified environment instead of consistently separating their equipment that has different features available unless using JSON files or CLI.
 
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