*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***

[stoofa]

Yer - fair enough, my question was a bit of an open one
It's a 3 bedroom detached, built in around 1990 - so no old fashioned heavy brick walls. So I'm hoping a single LR might do the job.
Cheers.

 

[meandu229]

Yer - fair enough, my question was a bit of an open one
It's a 3 bedroom detached, built in around 1990 - so no old fashioned heavy brick walls. So I'm hoping a single LR might do the job.
Cheers.

I have a lite in a 1920s 4 bed house on ceiling upstairs and it maxes out the 100mbps homeplug its attached to from most places in the house at 5ghz. The garden drops off a bit but I can still get 25+mbps at the end so I would think you should be ok.

 

[Vertigo]

AC Lite, AC LR, or AC Pro, these 3 are the recommended models everyone is using and loving.

Just reading the documentation and it states:

"Note: The UAP-AC, UAP-AC-Outdoor, UAP‑AC‑LITE, UAP‑AC‑LR, UAP‑AC‑PRO, and UAP‑AC‑EDU do not support Zero Handoff Roaming."

Don't understand

Don't disagree with you. However, everything I've read about Zero Handoff is that you should avoid it like the plague. It introduces more problems than it solves. The reality is that all well-behaved devices and apps support the small lost of connectivity that happens when you switch from one AP to another, and as a result Zero Handoff is just not needed (I'm sure there are very specific cases where it is needed).

How do things work without roaming though? Doesn't that mean each AP has to have a unique SSID and appear as a separate Wifi network to devices?

 

[Deleted member 138126]

All APs should have the same SSID, so a device will seamlessly roam from AP to AP, choosing the one with the strongest signal. The problem with Zero Handoff is that each AP has to be exquisitely tuned so that there is no signal overlap, and of course that varies with the architecture of the site, distance, device, etc. Very difficult to get right.

 

[stoofa]

Just getting ready to hit the "buy" button on a UAP-AC-LR.
What's this "Ubiquity Unifi 3-year Hosted Cloud Controller Service" all about? According to site it should be £20 for the first year and then £60 a year thereafter.
Seems you can get 3 years for £12 when purchasing with the device from one retailer. What is it exactly, is it worth having?
I'm assuming the device can be fully controlled by any other machine on my network - no actual requirement for the cloud controller service?

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Just getting ready to hit the "buy" button on a UAP-AC-LR.
What's this "Ubiquity Unifi 3-year Hosted Cloud Controller Service" all about? According to site it should be £20 for the first year and then £60 a year thereafter.
Seems you can get 3 years for £12 when purchasing with the device from one retailer. What is it exactly, is it worth having?
I'm assuming the device can be fully controlled by any other machine on my network - no actual requirement for the cloud controller service?

One of the retailers offers the 3 years for free. Basically with UniFi products you need the controller to set them up (there is an iPhone app to setup the wireless products), but not necessarily to run them. So for home use the controller is more "nice to have" than "essential". It is *very* nice to have, though.

 

[stoofa]

Hummm, I can only really find one UK retailer selling these - all the others appear to be either European or American making themselves look like a UK retailer. Can't find one with the cloud setup for 3yrs included either.....I'll have to look further.
I'm guessing these are all considered competitors and we can't mention them.

 

[booyaka]

Just getting ready to hit the "buy" button on a UAP-AC-LR.
What's this "Ubiquity Unifi 3-year Hosted Cloud Controller Service" all about? According to site it should be £20 for the first year and then £60 a year thereafter.
Seems you can get 3 years for £12 when purchasing with the device from one retailer. What is it exactly, is it worth having?
I'm assuming the device can be fully controlled by any other machine on my network - no actual requirement for the cloud controller service?

use pc to setup and control - no cost to software

 

[stoofa]

Thanks for all the responses to my questions. LR unit ordered - fingers crossed I can switch off the TalkTalk router and the Devolo wireless and this will cover the house alone.

Ta

 

[Vertigo]

AIUI, the cloud hosted controller service is intended for people managing multiple geographic sites and who want a cloud based system they can access from anywhere.

 

[Silly Goose On The Loose]

What sort of transfer speeds can you get with these? What's the range like with just one?

 

[booyaka]

What sort of transfer speeds can you get with these? What's the range like with just one?

mine (AC-LR) covers my entire 4 bedroom house with 5ghz, out into the garden. 2.4ghz covers about 4 houses down the street - max's out my fibre on my phone anywhere in the house on 5ghz!

 

[Street]

So you only need one of these to cover your home and garden?

I've got one Pro and it easily covers my five bedroom semi and garden. I previously had an Asus RT56U and that struggled.

We've set quite a few of these up in offices and hotels now and they've all been flawless and straightforward to configure.

 

[stoofa]

Well so far so good.
My UAP-AC-LR is now plugged in.
The TalkTalk router has its WiFi disabled. I've also disabled the WAP that was integrated into one of my Devolo powerline adapters.
The Ubiquity is now the only WiFi access point in the house and it's just doing what it should do. Excellent strength signal throughout the house.

Going to do some moving around of it over the next couple of days and once we're happy with it's location will use its mounting kit and attach it to the wall. The POE means that it just has a single thin ethernet cable going to it rather than bulky power connectors - so we can choose optimal location and then run the ethernet cable back to the switch.

Cloud controller is all nice and everything - but I wouldn't pay for it. I've got 3 years included in the price, but when that eventually runs out I won't renew.
Really are top pieces of kit.

 

[Vertigo]

Got my one at work yesterday and have ceiling mounted it without much bother. Looks neat, seems to be working well.

One fail I did notice was that the LAN settings seem to enable a DHCP server by default which is a total no-no for something targetted primarily at business use in my book.

 

[stoofa]

Actually - silly question time.

Obviously my TalkTalk router is handling DHCP on my network.
Under Networks>Edit Networks - LAN on the Ubiquity device there is the setting "DHCP Server" and as above, this is enabled.
I'm assuming that I want to uncheck this as I don't want the Ubiquity device acting as a DHCP server, it should be passing DHCP requests (from connecting devices) to the TalkTalk router?

 

[Vertigo]

Yes, hence my comment previously.

No equipment targetted primarily at businesses should have a DHCP server enabled by default, it's very bad practice.

 

[Deleted member 138126]

I think the DHCP option is intended for the USG (the UniFi firewall product), so if you don't have one, that tickbox doesn't actually do anything. As the UniFi family is intended as an all-in-one solution, it makes sense that it is enabled by default. Green field you buy a USG plus at least one UniFi switch and a bunch of UAPs, and you have a fully working network.

 

[the-evaluator]

Yeah, the DHCP option doesn't do anything unless you're got a Ubiquiti router.

It's enabled on my controller but the address space doesn't even match my home subnet and the AP's aren't dishing out IP addresses.

 

[stoofa]

I've disabled it anyway - but looks like I could have just left it then.

Ta