*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***

[z10m]

Oh that really is bad. I get 90 Mbps all day on FTTP but I have it limited to that. But I'm aware not all are lucky enough to be able to have FTTP.

The sad thing is that FTTP from openreach is available on my road but only for buildings connected to telephone poles.

 

[Glanza]

The sad thing is that FTTP from openreach is available on my road but only for buildings connected to telephone poles.

Get a new line installed and they'll run it from the pole.

 

[z10m]

Get a new line installed and they'll run it from the pole.

I doubt it as I live in a block of flats and that’s using underground ducting. Actually a whole new estate that’s using ducting was neglected by openreach.

 

[ChrisD.]

I doubt it as I live in a block of flats and that’s using underground ducting. Actually a whole new estate that’s using ducting was neglected by openreach.

It's bizarre what they do (or don't do) sometimes. My old house is 100 yards away, there is a duct between my new house (which has FTTP) and my old house. They didn't install FTTP to my old house and when I asked for an On Demand price I was told £8k. A mate of mine works for OR as a Chief and he checked the plans, the same duct goes back to the cab and the AG node so he has no idea why they missed it or wanted to charge so much. They're coming back to the area next year I think to finish it all off.

 

[Caged]

I doubt it as I live in a block of flats and that’s using underground ducting. Actually a whole new estate that’s using ducting was neglected by openreach.

That's not really the same thing as the claim that they only connect premises connected to telegraph poles. Apartment blocks have always been left out as the hassle of arranging wayleaves and doing the internal cabling quickly ties up so much resource that could probably FTTP enable hundreds of houses.

If you know who owns the freehold of your building then fill this form in

https://openreach.co.uk/fibreformybuilding

 

[z10m]

That's not really the same thing as the claim that they only connect premises connected to telegraph poles. Apartment blocks have always been left out as the hassle of arranging wayleaves and doing the internal cabling quickly ties up so much resource that could probably FTTP enable hundreds of houses.

If you know who owns the freehold of your building then fill this form in

https://openreach.co.uk/fibreformybuilding

You are probably right although it’s not only the blocks that were left out but also houses.
Will fill out that form and try to convince my neighbours to do the same.
Thanks.

 

[dl8860]

That’s NOT what you wanted. You wanted one as your main router and the others as meshed access points. And this is the first time you mentioned Sky. Which is infamously tricky to replace the main router because of Option 61.

Do you mind if we come back to this post? How is one of the AX3's supposed to be my main router if I can't put the adsl cable in the back of it? Is this suggesting I get a separate dedicated modem?

 

[WJA96]

Do you mind if we come back to this post? How is one of the AX3's supposed to be my main router if I can't put the adsl cable in the back of it? Is this suggesting I get a separate dedicated modem?

Not necessarily, but the primary AX3 has to be the DHCP server. At the moment you probably have multiple DHCP servers in your system.

 

[dl8860]

So I do need something to go between where my internet comes in the wall and the primary AX3, what should that be? Am I now looking at buying another 3rd party modem router that can do 'bridge' mode (which I read the sky broadband hub can't)?

I am really staggered and annoyed at how difficult it still is to get whole home wifi in 2021 still.

 

[ChrisD.]

I am really staggered and annoyed at how difficult it still is to get whole home wifi in 2021 still.

It’s fairly straightforward.

 

[WJA96]

So I do need something to go between where my internet comes in the wall and the primary AX3, what should that be? Am I now looking at buying another 3rd party modem router that can do 'bridge' mode (which I read the sky broadband hub can't)?

I am really staggered and annoyed at how difficult it still is to get whole home wifi in 2021 still.

Is your Sky hub plugged into the WAN port on the primary AX3?

 

[sandys]

Thanks for replying, was a bit short of patience last night.

When I plugged in the first ax3 I realised the signal strength was actually stronger on my sky broadband hub. And it's not actually convenient in terms of plugs to have a 'main' ax3 next to my sky router. And wired access points are in theory better than a WiFi mesh anyway? So I thought to just set each up as a wired AP instead. Is that not supposed to be doable? They have an AP mode that I could turn on, but like I said before it was very unstable.

When you mean replace the router, you mean keep my sky router but turn off the wireless access on it, so it's only providing wan to the main ax3? I tried that and then tried following the instructions in the video we talked about above to mesh another unit but it just simply didn't work. It said the light on the second unit would start flashing green after a minute of being sat next to the main unit, but it just stayed red.

I ran these with Sky and did exactly this and got great coverage, you will have double NAT but this caused me no issues with any gaming or VPNs etc, only my self hosted stuff where I had to work on the firewall in two places, I still run them now on VM and have no wifi holes anywhere in the house.

The AX3 does have a pretty sharp drop off on 5Ghz but still works far better than the Sky gear when properly meshed.

To set them up as a mesh, you need to first set up the main router, just feeding a connection from Sky router to WAN port of 1st AX3, for the second AX3 you probably first need to reset it in proximity of the main router (put a pin in the hole on the rear until light goes out) and then leave it on next to the main router, after about 30-60s the light on the main router, not the second one, will flash and you press the button on the router. They will then both turn green, that is it, done, you can then unplug the satellite and take it anywhere, to wire the backhaul take an ethernet route from the main AX3 router into the WAN on of the AX3 satellite and then you will have seamless mesh with good Wifi performance.

There is a slight pitfall if you have a Sky Q box connected as you are trying to set this up as the Sky box will serve an address to the AX3 as it boots and you won't be able to make the mesh or internet in general work, just unplug Sky Q box until main router is up and running then proceed with the rest of the setup.

Main downside of these AX3 after the basic firmware is that they only have 1Gb ports so despite great wifi cinnection to AP it'll never be faster than that even if its connected to AP at ~2Gb but of course once you have wired backhaul you are ready for faster APs as they appear.

 

[dl8860]

I ran these with Sky and did exactly this and got great coverage, you will have double NAT but this caused me no issues with any gaming or VPNs etc, only my self hosted stuff where I had to work on the firewall in two places, I still run them now on VM and have no wifi holes anywhere in the house.

The AX3 does have a pretty sharp drop off on 5Ghz but still works far better than the Sky gear when properly meshed.

To set them up as a mesh, you need to first set up the main router, just feeding a connection from Sky router to WAN port of 1st AX3, for the second AX3 you probably first need to reset it in proximity of the main router (put a pin in the hole on the rear until light goes out) and then leave it on next to the main router, after about 30-60s the light on the main router, not the second one, will flash and you press the button on the router. They will then both turn green, that is it, done, you can then unplug the satellite and take it anywhere, to wire the backhaul take a route from the main router into the WAN on of the satellite and then you will have seamless mesh with good Wifi performance.

There is a slight pitfall if you have a Sky Q box connected as you are trying to set this up as the Sky box will serve an address to the AX3 as it boots and you won't be able to make the mesh or internet in general work, just unplug Sky Q box until main router is up and running then proceed with the rest of the setup.

Main downside of these AX3 after the basic firmware is that they only have 1Gb ports so despite great wifi cinnection to AP it'll never be faster than that even if its connected to AP at ~2Gb but of course once you have wired backhaul you are ready for faster APs as they appear.

Thanks for the detailed post. Sounds like you said you have a router between the sky hub and the 'main' ax3 router, or have I misunderstood? My impression now is that in general the sky broadband hub can't be put into 'modem only' mode, and therefore if its involved it will be handling dhcp and therefore stopping my using the ax3s as a proper mesh.

Whereas if the sky broadband hub isn't used at all, I'd need to get a modem which can handle option 61 and then a main router ax3 off that and then mesh from ther3.

But it sounds like you've worked around that and the specifics on that are what I would love to know!

Cheers

 

[dl8860]

Is your Sky hub plugged into the WAN port on the primary AX3?

Open reach plug > adsl into sky broadband hub > ethernet cable from LAN on sky hub to WAN on main ax3.

But like I said above I thought this wasn't workable due to sky hub not being configurable to modem only.

I recall at some point getting an ip address conflict issue which I thought was down to this.

 

[sandys]

No router between sky hub and ax3, just a direct ethernet cable connection.

 

[sandys]

Open reach plug > adsl into sky broadband hub > ethernet cable from LAN on sky hub to WAN on main ax3.

But like I said above I thought this wasn't workable due to sky hub not being configurable to modem only.

I recall at some point getting an ip address conflict issue which I thought was down to this.

That is how it works, you don't need modem mode, it just means you will have two dhcp servers, one in the sky hub that only serves the AX3, but you must only use the sky hub for that device, disable wifi on sky hub and don'y plug any other devices to it unless you want two separate networks.

This method worked fine for me.

 

[chris.tarry85]

Can someone please help me to understand when / what causes the hosts file to be recreated?

There's no reference to it in the config.json, so I didn't think it was at reboot, but overnight I lost a series of custom routes despite no reboot / obvious changes etc?

I guess the next question is how to make these entries survive such a change?

 

[the-evaluator]

I'm trying to work out how the hosts table aqnd specific routes relate to each other. Are you using PBR? What kit have you got, I'm guessing a USG?

You can put static entries into config.gateway.json. I previously did this with config.gateway.json when my USG would end up disconnected in the controller because it would somehow end up resolving unifi.mydomain.com to 127.0.0.1.

{
  "system": {
    "static-host-mapping": {
      "host-name": {
        "unifi.mydomain.com": {
          "alias": [
            "unifi"
          ],
          "inet": [
            "11.22.33.44"
          ]
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

My preferred way to do this is with local DNS, rather than a json file but this should work.

Manually added changes to a USG don't stay long, they get lost when the USG provisions as it pulls in config from the controller which overwrites the currently running config.

 

[chris.tarry85]

I'm trying to work out how the hosts table aqnd specific routes relate to each other. Are you using PBR? What kit have you got, I'm guessing a USG?

You can put static entries into config.gateway.json. I previously did this with config.gateway.json when my USG would end up disconnected in the controller because it would somehow end up resolving unifi.mydomain.com to 127.0.0.1.

My preferred way to do this is with local DNS, rather than a json file but this should work.

Manually added changes to a USG don't stay long, they get lost when the USG provisions as it pulls in config from the controller which overwrites the currently running config.

Brilliant, thankyou - yes this is a USG.

I guess my confusion came from the fact that when you make the changes via putty and dump the config the entries don't appear here.

 

[the-evaluator]

Try to avoid making changes directly in the CLI of the USG. As you've seen, they're not persistent.