*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***
- Thread starter RoyMi6
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- home network rewire ubiquiti wifi
That doesn't work, as I have tested it for me anyway.
Associate
some advice needed - currently have a deco mesh wifi which isn't really giving enough coverage reliably and am looking into ubiquiti but it is a bit overwhelming!
router (draytek with wireless disabled and deco plugged in) is at front of house and i need coverage out to back garden and side of house plus upstairs - roughly 25 metres in each direction
what ubiquiti kit should i be looking at? (have access to power/ethernet in both main attic and smaller attic at side of house where i need signal) - was looking potentially at a nano 3pack
cheers!
router (draytek with wireless disabled and deco plugged in) is at front of house and i need coverage out to back garden and side of house plus upstairs - roughly 25 metres in each direction
what ubiquiti kit should i be looking at? (have access to power/ethernet in both main attic and smaller attic at side of house where i need signal) - was looking potentially at a nano 3pack
cheers!
Soldato
Are these guys any good?are they basically the next gen version of netgear?
Soldato
A NanoHD three pack would give you decent 4x4 AC (WiFi 5) coverage but for less money 3 x U6-lite would give you similar performance on most AC devices (it’s only 2x2) and better performance with AX (WiFi 6) devices. It’s almost impossible to make a recommendation without seeing a floor plan but in general a single access point will easily cover 25m2 and give decent coverage through 1 wall or floor.
Ubiquiti tend to keep devices available for a long time for corporate customers who tend to replace and expand like for like and they don’t cut prices so you really do need to do your homework on what is best for you.
What type of devices will you be attaching to the access points? Very old 1x1 IoT type clients? The very latest WiFi 6 laptops and tablets?
Soldato
They occupy a bit of a grey area. They are waaaaay beyond Netgear, ASUS etc. and they compete in many ways with corporate/enterprise gear like Cisco, Aruba and Arista but the really big corporates still probably wouldn’t see them as truly enterprise.
For home use they can be a bit OTT and they really come into their own when you expand your system. So you start out with two access points and you decide you want to add one on the front of the garage to update your Tesla and one for the back garden. In each case it’s literally a case of plugging them in and clicking the ‘Adopt’ button. And you can have a whole ecosystem with security cameras (overpriced but easy to work with), VOIP phones (overpriced but stupidly easy to deploy) and even lighting (Overpriced and just WHY?).
Their access points are right up there with the very best. Their switches are decent value for money and their routers are close but just seem to fall down when you push them.
Soldato
How do they compare against microtech?
Soldato
You mean MikroTik?
Access points it’s 10-0 to Unifi
Switches its 1-1
Routers it should be 10-0 to Mikrotik but for the fact that UniFi has a genuinely phenomal user interface that basically does all the hard stuff for you. MikroTik almost goes out of it‘s way to make it difficult to do anything. The software on every Mikrotik router is incredibly powerful. RouterOS is what Meta uses for some routing on Facebook and other systems. But you almost need to go on a training course to learn how to do anything useful.
If you’re a hardcore IT user and you fancy a challenge then for me it would be MikroTik every time and if you just want it all to plug in and pretty much work straight away then UniFi is the way to go.
One of the companies I work for sell and installs IT equipment for high end home installs and we mainly install Untangle for routing and security and UniFi for almost everything else. We do Dahua and Hikvision for surveillance and Ajax for security. I’m allowed to pitch anything and that’s what I’d generally be happy to recommend.
If you say what your goals are then there are some seriously experienced people in these forums who appear to quite enjoy helping other people spend their money abd will be more than happy to advise you.
Soldato
What components do you have? You can filter some traffic in Traffic Management. It’s quite basic though. This is one reason I would always personally recommend something other than UBNT equipment for routing/firewall management.
Oh sorry yeah on the USG. I'm looking at a UXG-Pro or whatever the updated pro gateway is called, of the UDM Pro SE (simply because it has more functionality than the gateway, and its cheaper... and I can get rid of my separates). Or... the QNap guardian which if I'm honest is my first want, but its just so expensive.
Soldato
Can I suggest an Amazon or Ali Express N6005, N5105 or J4125 4 x Intel GbE or 2.5GbE firewall appliance running Untangle Home free version? The firewall box will be maybe £200 once you have some ram and an SSD in it and Untangle will do what you want (block specific web addresses on specific clients) without paying an annual fee (although I would suggest buying at least the $50/year home licence).
The ones branded Topton and Kingnovy are regularly featured on ServeTheHome's YouTube channel and they are staggeringly good value if you can buy in dollars or Euro. The pound is pretty weak at the moment but even then these devices are extremely powerful. I have a 6-channel one on my desk at the moment with the Celeron N5105 in it passing traffic up and down at 1Gbps with EVERYTHING turned on in Untangle and it's running a Quectel 5G card off it's integrated SIM tray and mPCIe interface. The hard drive is NVME or SATA and it takes 32Gb RAM. It's plenty for almost any routing requirement and fully configured it was under £350 delivered including taxes.
[Edit]You need the SDWAN licence for Untangle to run off the 5G WWAN and conventional WAN interfaces at the same time.[/Edit]
The ones branded Topton and Kingnovy are regularly featured on ServeTheHome's YouTube channel and they are staggeringly good value if you can buy in dollars or Euro. The pound is pretty weak at the moment but even then these devices are extremely powerful. I have a 6-channel one on my desk at the moment with the Celeron N5105 in it passing traffic up and down at 1Gbps with EVERYTHING turned on in Untangle and it's running a Quectel 5G card off it's integrated SIM tray and mPCIe interface. The hard drive is NVME or SATA and it takes 32Gb RAM. It's plenty for almost any routing requirement and fully configured it was under £350 delivered including taxes.
[Edit]You need the SDWAN licence for Untangle to run off the 5G WWAN and conventional WAN interfaces at the same time.[/Edit]
I can buy in Euro, so that is definitely worth looking into. I take it you mean the micro fanless appliance type boxes?
6 2.5GbE ports is pretty attractive, I do sorta wonder whats the catch? Other than having to configure it myself of course. How good is it for routing? I don't do anything magical on my Unifi stuff, just have a few different networks and Vlans for IoT devices.
Don't think I'll ever need 5G WWan, we can't even get 3G here
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Would you recommend Untangle over PfSense, to effectively replace a USG? I have a cloudkey gen2 running my cameras and APs so that could just stay of course.
The "Firewall Network Appliances" look like considerably cheaper versions of the Protectli stuff. If you rate 'em good enough though I'm certainly happy
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6 2.5GbE ports is pretty attractive, I do sorta wonder whats the catch? Other than having to configure it myself of course. How good is it for routing? I don't do anything magical on my Unifi stuff, just have a few different networks and Vlans for IoT devices.
Don't think I'll ever need 5G WWan, we can't even get 3G here
.Would you recommend Untangle over PfSense, to effectively replace a USG? I have a cloudkey gen2 running my cameras and APs so that could just stay of course.
The "Firewall Network Appliances" look like considerably cheaper versions of the Protectli stuff. If you rate 'em good enough though I'm certainly happy
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Untangle is good, but they've recently been acquired by Arista so who knows what future the home license has. Personally I would go with OPNsense over PF.
How come? I've got experience of PFSense so its a bit of familiarity. I'm happy to learn new though, just wondering why.
Soldato
I can buy in Euro, so that is definitely worth looking into. I take it you mean the micro fanless appliance type boxes?
6 2.5GbE ports is pretty attractive, I do sorta wonder whats the catch? Other than having to configure it myself of course. How good is it for routing? I don't do anything magical on my Unifi stuff, just have a few different networks and Vlans for IoT devices.
Don't think I'll ever need 5G WWan, we can't even get 3G here
Would you recommend Untangle over PfSense, to effectively replace a USG? I have a cloudkey gen2 running my cameras and APs so that could just stay of course.
The "Firewall Network Appliances" look like considerably cheaper versions of the Protectli stuff. If you rate 'em good enough though I'm certainly happy
Yes, I do indeed mean the fanless appliances. There is no catch except it's Ali Express so if it doesn't work it could be interesting trying to get support but if you pay with Paypal you get some protection.
According to ServeTheHome forums the Topton, Kingnovy, HsiHing, Honor Store, Protectli and many others are all basically the same devices. And then they say it's a lottery which case and motherboard you get. I've seen about a dozen of them and they are all pretty similar. Generally the pictures are of what you are getting. Just make sure if you want an NVME hard drive that you get the N5105 or N6005 devices as the J4125 is still mSATA in 99.9% of cases.
Would I recommend Untangle over pfSense? Yes, and I would caveat that with I'm an Untangle reseller so I would say that wouldn't I? But as I make less than 40p per year on a home licence I'm not heavily invested in it as a product
To tackle the 'issue' posted by @ChrisD., yes, Untangle is such a gobsmackingly amazing product that Arista Networks spent a LOT of money acquiring it. For some reason @ChrisD. thinks they're going to just blow all that money and throw all their existing customers under the bus. I look at it like this. They could have just got xSense for free. So can you. But instead they chose to spend money on Untangle. On that basis alone I would at least install the Untangle trial on your chosen hardware platform and see what you think of it. It will cost you nothing to try all the features for 14 days and nothing after that if you just use the basic features.
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Really? Where have I said this?
Soldato
Every time Untangle is mentioned you throw in that Arista bought them and that the Home licences might not have a future. Untrue?
Untrue. I think I've maybe mentioned it one time before. I'm more than happy to be proved wrong.
Soldato
So are you denying that have posted about staff leaving? About uncertainty surrounding the product after the acquisition? If you search your username and Untangle you mention the acquisition more than once and variations on the phrase "Who knows?" also come up more than once since the acquisition. Certainly you're keen to let people know they were bought and that you think the future is uncertain.