*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***

[WJA96]

So guys, 2 of the new lites Vs 1 LR access points? I am only buying the new wifi6 ones because I just moved house and I'm building network from scratch so why not. Virgin router will be placed into modem mode and I will run a pfsense box probably. I have an end of terrace 4 bed town house (3 floors) with a shed/office in the garden. Internal walls have no brick/concrete apart from one bit between kitchen and lounge. Currently the virgin superhub can't reach the back of my kitchen or shed and is awful anyway as we all know.

it doesn’t work like that. The LR won’t actually give much better coverage than the Lite, but it’s 4x4 rather than 2x2 so it will give you faster transfer speeds.

Because of the 1Gbps LAN port in both cases you’ll never hit the theoretical maximum throughput of the LR. I’d probably start with one Lite or LR on the top floor ceiling, centre of the house and see what that gets you. Whether you go Lite or LR really depends on how many WiFi5 clients you have. For mainly AX/WiFi6 clients the lite will be faster. For mainly WiFi5, the 4x4 LR will be better.

Bear in mind that although the AX gives better throughout with AX clients, and it ‘levels up’ the AC traffic so 4x4, 3x3 and 2x2 clients always run at their maximum speeds even slower clients are attached to the access point, a 4x4 WiFi5 access point will still be faster than a 3x3 or 2x2 WiFi6 access point with WiFi5 clients.

 

[ChrisD.]

Anyone use dual WAN on a USG Pro?

 

[WJA96]

Anyone use dual WAN on a USG Pro?

I have done.

 

[ChrisD.]

Is it easy enough to set up? I should hopefully have VM installed in a month or so and I'll be keeping my Plusnet FTTC for a few weeks before I have ti disconnected.

 

[jaybee]

it doesn’t work like that. The LR won’t actually give much better coverage than the Lite, but it’s 4x4 rather than 2x2 so it will give you faster transfer speeds.

Because of the 1Gbps LAN port in both cases you’ll never hit the theoretical maximum throughput of the LR. I’d probably start with one Lite or LR on the top floor ceiling, centre of the house and see what that gets you. Whether you go Lite or LR really depends on how many WiFi5 clients you have. For mainly AX/WiFi6 clients the lite will be faster. For mainly WiFi5, the 4x4 LR will be better.

Bear in mind that although the AX gives better throughout with AX clients, and it ‘levels up’ the AC traffic so 4x4, 3x3 and 2x2 clients always run at their maximum speeds even slower clients are attached to the access point, a 4x4 WiFi5 access point will still be faster than a 3x3 or 2x2 WiFi6 access point with WiFi5 clients.

Cheers, was with you all the way up until "bear in mind" paragraph. Can you rewrite that as I don't understand it? Apologies.
Do you mean the new WiFi 6 ones won't be as good for ac wifi5 clients?

Also with regard to the LR...I was under the impression that the LR was better at long range as it helps devices with weaker signals pick up.

My usage scenario with clients since you asked is probably like this:

2.4ghz = 20-30
5ghz AC = 10-15
Wifi6 = 1-5

 

[Dan_P]

Can anyone advise the cheapest POE injector(s) for 2 x USW Flex Mini?

 

[WJA96]

Can anyone advise the cheapest POE injector(s) for 2 x USW Flex Mini?

I can buy them for £1.50 (including VAT) but I don't. These things are squirting voltage, and more importantly current, down your network cables to your fairly expensive equipment. I've not had one go myself but I have been forced to sell customers new access points because they used cheapo PoE injectors. So don't buy cheap. I always buy the Ubiquiti POE-50-60W which should be about £14.00 each delivered. They also do PoE-48-24W (£12.50) and PoE-48-30W (_£13.50) but the PoE-50-60W will power anything they make, so if I use those they'll always work. That's my logic anyway. You can also get 48-50V/30-60W 2,4,8 and 16-way PoE injector manifolds but unless you have a lot of PoE devices they don't make a lot of sense (and you probably ought to just buy a PoE switch at that point anyway).

 

[WJA96]

Cheers, was with you all the way up until "bear in mind" paragraph. Can you rewrite that as I don't understand it? Apologies.
Do you mean the new WiFi 6 ones won't be as good for ac wifi5 clients?

Also with regard to the LR...I was under the impression that the LR was better at long range as it helps devices with weaker signals pick up.

My usage scenario with clients since you asked is probably like this:

2.4ghz = 20-30
5ghz AC = 10-15
Wifi6 = 1-5

Yeah, sorry. I wasn't in a hurry and then I was so I did a poor job of communicating what I meant in the last paragraph.

All Wireless Lan (WLAN) works on channels and they speed up the data by aggregating channels together. The actual speeds are all very theoretical but suffice to say that a device that receives and transmits on one channel (1x1) will be slower than one that receives or transmits on 2 channels (2x2), 3 channels (3x3) or 4 channels (4x4 surprisingly enough!).

The Achilles heel of WiFi5 is the inability of the access point to process different speeds of clients. So if you have 15 2x2 5GHz AC clients and a 2x2 access point they'll all run at the fastest speed - 2x2. But if you add another client that runs at 1x1 then all 16 of those devices will run at 1x1 because the fastest speed the access point can deal with is the speed of the slowest client. And that's the case for 3x3 access points like the UAP-AC-Pro and it's the reason you see so many people unhappy with the UAP-AC=Pro - it almost never runs at 3x3 speed because someone is always connecting 2x2 clients to it.

They did address this a bit with the newer 4x4 Wave2 Access Points because they can run at 4x4, 3x3 or they can handle two sets of 2x2 clients at the same time which is the other problem with WiFi5 - one radio set can only speak to one client at a time. By splitting the radios they made it speak to two clients at the same time and so it really increased throughput.

The clever thing that WiFi6 does is something called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and simplistically what that does is it lets multiple clients attach to the access point at their maximum speed (up to the maximum speed of the access point). So your 1x1 access points run at 1x1, your 2x2 clients run at 2x2, 3x3 at 3x3 and 4x4 at 4x4 assuming you have an access point capable of handling them. No slowing down to the slowest speed anymore. That's a huge benefit with LOTS of clients.

So what I was trying to say is that if you have mainly fast WiFi5 clients (2x2 or 4x4) then you'll be as well off with a 4x4 WiFi5 access point as you would be with a 2x2 WiFi6 access point because you'll have more clients running at their maximum speed more of the time. That's not the case with the 4x4 UAP6-LR which can drive all the clients are their maximum speed all the time. But it's a lot more money.

As regards the use of the use of the UAP6-LR name, who knows why UBNT called it that? It's really a replacement for the Pro and the HD (and the UAP-AC-HD has the same antennae as the UAP-AC-LR). For some reason they've called the WiFi6 version of the UAP-FlexHD tabletop device the UAP6-Mesh which is completely confusing. You won't get substantially more range out of an LR than a Lite. And I've tested them both back to back.

 

[WJA96]

Is it easy enough to set up? I should hopefully have VM installed in a month or so and I'll be keeping my Plusnet FTTC for a few weeks before I have ti disconnected.

That depends. If you want to have two completely separate networks then yes, it's very easy to set up. Likewise, failover is baked into the controller. If you want load balancing or load aggregation then it's a JSON file job and it's a bit more involved but it is doable. It doesn't work especially well though.

 

[jaybee]

Yeah, sorry. I wasn't in a hurry and then I was so I did a poor job of communicating what I meant in the last paragraph.

All Wireless Lan (WLAN) works on channels and they speed up the data by aggregating channels together. The actual speeds are all very theoretical but suffice to say that a device that receives and transmits on one channel (1x1) will be slower than one that receives or transmits on 2 channels (2x2), 3 channels (3x3) or 4 channels (4x4 surprisingly enough!).

The Achilles heel of WiFi5 is the inability of the access point to process different speeds of clients. So if you have 15 2x2 5GHz AC clients and a 2x2 access point they'll all run at the fastest speed - 2x2. But if you add another client that runs at 1x1 then all 16 of those devices will run at 1x1 because the fastest speed the access point can deal with is the speed of the slowest client. And that's the case for 3x3 access points like the UAP-AC-Pro and it's the reason you see so many people unhappy with the UAP-AC=Pro - it almost never runs at 3x3 speed because someone is always connecting 2x2 clients to it.

They did address this a bit with the newer 4x4 Wave2 Access Points because they can run at 4x4, 3x3 or they can handle two sets of 2x2 clients at the same time which is the other problem with WiFi5 - one radio set can only speak to one client at a time. By splitting the radios they made it speak to two clients at the same time and so it really increased throughput.

The clever thing that WiFi6 does is something called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and simplistically what that does is it lets multiple clients attach to the access point at their maximum speed (up to the maximum speed of the access point). So your 1x1 access points run at 1x1, your 2x2 clients run at 2x2, 3x3 at 3x3 and 4x4 at 4x4 assuming you have an access point capable of handling them. No slowing down to the slowest speed anymore. That's a huge benefit with LOTS of clients.

So what I was trying to say is that if you have mainly fast WiFi5 clients (2x2 or 4x4) then you'll be as well off with a 4x4 WiFi5 access point as you would be with a 2x2 WiFi6 access point because you'll have more clients running at their maximum speed more of the time. That's not the case with the 4x4 UAP6-LR which can drive all the clients are their maximum speed all the time. But it's a lot more money.

As regards the use of the use of the UAP6-LR name, who knows why UBNT called it that? It's really a replacement for the Pro and the HD (and the UAP-AC-HD has the same antennae as the UAP-AC-LR). For some reason they've called the WiFi6 version of the UAP-FlexHD tabletop device the UAP6-Mesh which is completely confusing. You won't get substantially more range out of an LR than a Lite. And I've tested them both back to back.

Ok nice one.
So how does one know what my clients connect as? I only ever knew basically that my clients were 2.4ghz capable or 5ghz capable. I posted by approximate guess at clients above. The fact of the matter is that I have a lot of devices in my house. A lot of them are older stuff that only do basic 2.4ghz like smart plugs and stuff. The 5ghz clients are mainly things like modern smart phones, laptops etc. I think maybe a couple of our newer smart TVs may do 5ghz but not sure.

I know wifi 6E stuff is on the horizon and the new wifi6 APs I am looking at are practically going to become obsolete instantly but surely when buying right now, you buy wifi6 stuff.

 

[WJA96]

Ok nice one.
So how does one know what my clients connect as? I only ever knew basically that my clients were 2.4ghz capable or 5ghz capable. I posted by approximate guess at clients above. The fact of the matter is that I have a lot of devices in my house. A lot of them are older stuff that only do basic 2.4ghz like smart plugs and stuff. The 5ghz clients are mainly things like modern smart phones, laptops etc. I think maybe a couple of our newer smart TVs may do 5ghz but not sure.

I know wifi 6E stuff is on the horizon and the new wifi6 APs I am looking at are practically going to become obsolete instantly but surely when buying right now, you buy wifi6 stuff.

You need to look at the clients chipsets, specifications and ultimately you can probably figure it out from throughput speeds. Most 5GHz devices are 2x2 but the better phones, tablets and laptops will be 3x3 or 4x4.

As for what to buy now, the Unifi UAP6 range are crippled by their 1Gbps network uplink. You could exploit OFDMA with your mix of fast and slow clients but you'll still be stuck with a maximum throughput of 1Gbps because that's how fast your uplink will run. UBNT are fully aware of this and they are pushing out a range of 2.5GbE PoE switches to match their UAP6 line of access points but they don't have any 2.5GbE access points. So that says to me that there are more new access points coming soon that will have the 2.5GbE network connection.

WiFi6E is a whole other ball-game as it uses the 6GHz band as well as 5GHz and 2.4GHz and it's ability to penetrate walls is woeful. You may need an access point in every room depending on what your walls are like.

 

[jaybee]

OK starting to make sense. A lot more to it than I had originally put thought to.

With re. to the "crippled" 1gbps backbone. The specs for the new UAP6 ranges are:

Lite:
Throughput Speeds
2.4GHz
5GHz
300 Mbps
1201 Mbps

LR:
Throughput Speeds
2.4 GHz
5 GHz
600 Mbps
2400 Mbps

I'm not an expert on this but I thought that the wireless throughput speeds were stated not accounting for the half duplex they run at. So where the lite has a total of 1501mbps when adding the two bands together, that should then be halved to 750mbps, which would not be crippled?

As for the LR the same maths would give 1500mbps, so could theoretically be held back if all connected clients were connecting at the highest speeds. Still....I suspect it's not going to be that noticable in real world usage.

Or am I missing something there?

 

[Dan_P]

I can buy them for £1.50 (including VAT) but I don't. These things are squirting voltage, and more importantly current, down your network cables to your fairly expensive equipment. I've not had one go myself but I have been forced to sell customers new access points because they used cheapo PoE injectors. So don't buy cheap. I always buy the Ubiquiti POE-50-60W which should be about £14.00 each delivered. They also do PoE-48-24W (£12.50) and PoE-48-30W (_£13.50) but the PoE-50-60W will power anything they make, so if I use those they'll always work. That's my logic anyway. You can also get 48-50V/30-60W 2,4,8 and 16-way PoE injector manifolds but unless you have a lot of PoE devices they don't make a lot of sense (and you probably ought to just buy a PoE switch at that point anyway).

Thank you, ordered 2 x PoE-48-24W

 

[WJA96]

OK starting to make sense. A lot more to it than I had originally put thought to.

With re. to the "crippled" 1gbps backbone. The specs for the new UAP6 ranges are:

Lite:
Throughput Speeds
2.4GHz
5GHz
300 Mbps
1201 Mbps

LR:
Throughput Speeds
2.4 GHz
5 GHz
600 Mbps
2400 Mbps

I'm not an expert on this but I thought that the wireless throughput speeds were stated not accounting for the half duplex they run at. So where the lite has a total of 1501mbps when adding the two bands together, that should then be halved to 750mbps, which would not be crippled?

As for the LR the same maths would give 1500mbps, so could theoretically be held back if all connected clients were connecting at the highest speeds. Still....I suspect it's not going to be that noticable in real world usage.

Or am I missing something there?

The only thing you’re missing is that you have more than one client. If you have 4 clients running at 250Mbps each that will saturate your link. The access point is time-slicing connections, passing data back and forth. There will be WiFi6 clients that will saturate a 1 GBPs link all by themselves. Imagine 2 or more of those. You reckon you’ve got 5 or 6?

Definitely a “1st world plus” problem though. I think you’ve got yourself trapped in analysis paralysis. I’d go with the UAP6-Lite to start with and see how you get on. You’ll be able to sell it for 70-80% of what you buy it for new if you feel like going faster. Resale on UniFi is excellent.

 

[jaybee]

The only thing you’re missing is that you have more than one client. If you have 4 clients running at 250Mbps each that will saturate your link. The access point is time-slicing connections, passing data back and forth. There will be WiFi6 clients that will saturate a 1 GBPs link all by themselves. Imagine 2 or more of those. You reckon you’ve got 5 or 6?

Definitely a “1st world plus” problem though. I think you’ve got yourself trapped in analysis paralysis. I’d go with the UAP6-Lite to start with and see how you get on. You’ll be able to sell it for 70-80% of what you buy it for new if you feel like going faster. Resale on UniFi is excellent.

No it's all good discussion to understand it and welcome. I like to be aware of the technical limitations and way it works. Realistically as you say, these are solid pieces of equipment and right now the wifi6 ones are a good buy since they aren't much more (in the case of the lite at least) aside from any early adoption bugs that occur. I think the problem with wireless is that as it advances and advances, you are always going to have to support legacy slower devices. I still have a load of things that will only do 2.4ghz. To get a device that maximises throughput for all possible devices would be larger then consumers would accept and consume much more power. For me it's more about reliability, range and number of connected devices over out an out performance. Devices requiring solid high performance links are hard wired over gigabit anyway.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

The points @WJA96 are valid but the issues with the 1gbps port also need to be considered in the round.

For example:
What does the rest of your network look like? Is this AP connected in a mesh?
What are those clients accessing?
What is your internet connection?
Do wireless clients access network storage and can that storage deliver greater than 1gbps?

If your wireless clients don’t access local storage and are only really deal with internet traffic then you’ll not be hindered by the 1gbps port. Likewise they’ll not really be able to take advantage of the faster wireless speed either unless you have a maxed out FTTP connection.

 

[WJA96]

No it's all good discussion to understand it and welcome. I like to be aware of the technical limitations and way it works. Realistically as you say, these are solid pieces of equipment and right now the wifi6 ones are a good buy since they aren't much more (in the case of the lite at least) aside from any early adoption bugs that occur. I think the problem with wireless is that as it advances and advances, you are always going to have to support legacy slower devices. I still have a load of things that will only do 2.4ghz. To get a device that maximises throughput for all possible devices would be larger then consumers would accept and consume much more power. For me it's more about reliability, range and number of connected devices over out an out performance. Devices requiring solid high performance links are hard wired over gigabit anyway.

You’ll only establish range with a site survey. You can guess, but until you do a temporary install and wander around with your calibrated handheld you won’t know what the coverage will be and then you’re looking at the specification of the job so the customer might have specified very strong signal everywhere in which case I’m looking for 45-40dbi signal reception and if they’ve only specified usable I might be looking for 85-80dbi. It is a precise science but because customers (and most users) are (sorry to say this) clueless, they have to be guided, with an open wallet, into the light.

 

[jaybee]

You’ll only establish range with a site survey. You can guess, but until you do a temporary install and wander around with your calibrated handheld you won’t know what the coverage will be and then you’re looking at the specification of the job so the customer might have specified very strong signal everywhere in which case I’m looking for 45-40dbi signal reception and if they’ve only specified usable I might be looking for 85-80dbi. It is a precise science but because customers (and most users) are (sorry to say this) clueless, they have to be guided, with an open wallet, into the light.

In this case the customer is myself, provided by myself. The worst kind to satisfy

 

[WJA96]

The points @WJA96 are valid but the issues with the 1gbps port also need to be considered in the round.

For example:
What does the rest of your network look like? Is this AP connected in a mesh?
What are those clients accessing?
What is your internet connection?
Do wireless clients access network storage and can that storage deliver greater than 1gbps?

If your wireless clients don’t access local storage and are only really deal with internet traffic then you’ll not be hindered by the 1gbps port. Likewise they’ll not really be able to take advantage of the faster wireless speed either unless you have a maxed out FTTP connection.

I agree, up to the point where you wheel out multiple WiFi6 clients. The crunch issue with the U6-LR is, if you have a WiFi6 4x4 client it is theoretically capable of 1200Mbps full-duplex (2400Mbps half-duplex) and it could therefore underperform and still saturate the single 1Gbps link. When you add in the 512Mb onboard buffer it won’t take very long to saturate the connection even if it’s only time-slicing 25 x 54Mbps IOT 2.4GHz connections. Remember the AX OFDMA chipset can hold 8 streams worth of conversations on a 4x4 access point so 4 x 250Mbps connections plus anything else will also saturate the LAN interface. It is an issue with even low numbers of multi-stream clients. Imagine the LR with 4 x 2x2 WiFi6 clients. It’s going to saturate the interface almost immediately. Most folks will not notice other than all their devices running slower than they could because let’s be honest, if the system is even remotely optimised with decent coverage no-one notices that their WiFi is running a 250Mbps. It’s fast enough.

 

[WJA96]

In this case the customer is myself, provided by myself. The worst kind to satisfy

I doubt that. You have some sort of concept of reality so you’re not going to be asking for tree-top tall signals from a BT HomeHub 5 in a massive mansion. And yes, I have met that customer.