Soldato
- Joined
- 24 Sep 2015
- Posts
- 3,674
The UDM is a solid choice, sorry if my post implied otherwise.
Router Advice: Unifi Dream Machine or...?
- Thread starter WantoN
- Start date
Don
Mainly the fact it ideally needs a dedicated PC, or at best virtualised with a network card passed through to it for best performance. For an enterprise environment where you don't have the budget for a "big-name" device, it's ideal - ours has been rock solid, but for a smaller network it's complete overkill.
They're small, use a tiny amount of power, and built for enterprise rollouts so will happily run 24/7 without any fuss. Some of the models can be had dirt cheap as well - plenty of different models reviewed at the below site
https://www.servethehome.com/tag/tinyminimicro/
Personally find them a more capable replacement than a Raspberry Pi for "server" roles, in that they take proper SATA connected Hard drives (and most have an NVME slot) rather than needing a MicroSD or USB connected drive, have proper gigabit ethernet, expandable ram and upgradable processors.
If you haven't already, it's worth taking a look to see what you could sell a 4790k for... probably better to spend that cash towards a more appropriate solution (whatever it is you decide on)
Merry Christmas to you all, and many thanks for all the help guys. It's been incredibly informative and I really appreciate the amount of time and effort you've put in.
For the modem I'll be getting the HG612, cheap and replaceable. And I'll pick up Zen's Technicolour when we switch, and keep one of them as a backup. Basically saving me £100 on the project!
For the router I've decided on the Unifi Dream Machine, it does what I want, I'm familiar with the software, and it's a new product that will continue to evolve and improve. I can also expand by switching out my dumb switches if I want. Plus youve set my mind at rest about some of the horror stories.
For TV I'm going to go with the Sky basic package I already have, as switching to any solution with the same functionality would take two or three years to recoup the upfront cost, plus I like it.
For the telephone I'm going to pick up a second hand VoIP adapter for £30, and trial Voipfone until we switch to Zen. At which time we'll decide whether we'll stick with VoIP, or use Zen's landline. The Voipfone PAYG solution is £1 a month, with no fixed term contract. Perfect.
Kitchen TV will run an Amazon Fire stick and it'll just be for watching Live TV, catch-up and streaming content etc. Recording etc will be handled by the Sky Q box in the AV cabinet.
Thanks to the savings you've made for me, I can buy the bits needed and build a little server project with those old parts. This will be for fun, but I already have several uses planned. I'm going to start experimenting with Proxmox and some VMs / Dockers, but I'll do my own research and tinkering, and decide what fits my needs. If my Raspberry PI duties move to the server, I'll have another project ready, having a go at setting up honeypots. Not that I think I'll need them
For IP cameras later down the line, I'll look into a dedicated solution, eg. Hikvision, which looks incredibly flexible, and affordable. I'll also consider my server / NAS for this purpose.
Hope you've all had a brilliant day, considering we were in lockdown ours was awesome
For the modem I'll be getting the HG612, cheap and replaceable. And I'll pick up Zen's Technicolour when we switch, and keep one of them as a backup. Basically saving me £100 on the project!
For the router I've decided on the Unifi Dream Machine, it does what I want, I'm familiar with the software, and it's a new product that will continue to evolve and improve. I can also expand by switching out my dumb switches if I want. Plus youve set my mind at rest about some of the horror stories.
For TV I'm going to go with the Sky basic package I already have, as switching to any solution with the same functionality would take two or three years to recoup the upfront cost, plus I like it.
For the telephone I'm going to pick up a second hand VoIP adapter for £30, and trial Voipfone until we switch to Zen. At which time we'll decide whether we'll stick with VoIP, or use Zen's landline. The Voipfone PAYG solution is £1 a month, with no fixed term contract. Perfect.
Kitchen TV will run an Amazon Fire stick and it'll just be for watching Live TV, catch-up and streaming content etc. Recording etc will be handled by the Sky Q box in the AV cabinet.
Thanks to the savings you've made for me, I can buy the bits needed and build a little server project with those old parts. This will be for fun, but I already have several uses planned. I'm going to start experimenting with Proxmox and some VMs / Dockers, but I'll do my own research and tinkering, and decide what fits my needs. If my Raspberry PI duties move to the server, I'll have another project ready, having a go at setting up honeypots. Not that I think I'll need them
For IP cameras later down the line, I'll look into a dedicated solution, eg. Hikvision, which looks incredibly flexible, and affordable. I'll also consider my server / NAS for this purpose.
Hope you've all had a brilliant day, considering we were in lockdown ours was awesome
Hey @WantoN. Your setup is pretty much the same as mine because I also have a single AP-AC-Lite so I was quite excited to see which direction you'd take when I read the thread.
Did you get the Dream Machine? If so, what are your impressions of it? I was interested in the pfSense SG-2100/3100 routers but they're perhaps a little complicated and overkill for me. I absolutely love my AP-AC-Lite so the Dream Machine seems like a no-brainer on paper, but the software bugs do worry me and it's disappointing that they didn't include PoE and Wi-Fi 6.
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I'm liking the look of the DM more and more, I originally wanted the ER4 but this looks a better bet.
Want it to handle full FTTP easily, which oddly majority of routers can't do.
Amplifi Alien seems interesting as well but not looked at that yet.
Want it to handle full FTTP easily, which oddly majority of routers can't do.
Amplifi Alien seems interesting as well but not looked at that yet.
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The Amplifi is decent, but it's very much a consumer orientated router. It's designed to be user friendly and as such, is missing a lot of control options. The UDM is more of a prosumer router, it's on the fence. You're lacking the control you may need for an office or other larger installation, but it has more than enough features for small business or home use.
Soldato
How do you find the UDM for VPN use?
Soldato
Amplifi isn't the same development group as Unifi or EdgeMax and it's very much the stepchild which has been banished out of the main UI forums like an embarrassment. Everything else is all in one place - Protect, Talk, Unifi, EdgeMax, AirMax, AirFibre, GigaBeam, UISP and UFibre are all on the UI forums. But Amplifi is off by itself in a dark, forgotten alley. If you go with the UDM or UDM Pro the world of Unifi is open to you but for Amplifi users they're stuck combing eBay for remainder stock or used Amplifi repeaters once that model stock is sold through. It's a dead duck product.
Thanks.
Stacks up with what I've read today, the Alien initially sucks you on with the wifi6 future proof aspect and the fastest processor.
How does the UDM attack up speed wise with the ER4, I'm used to comparing the packets per second but can't find it for the DM.
Also sooner of the reviews of the dream machine say it's not ready and it's like a beta product.
Soldato
In theory it utterly destroys it but in addition the UDM can run Suricata/Snort and interact with the Unifi Controller, which the EdgeMax products can't.
The challenge with most reviews is the authors are lazy and fail to make the distinction between the UDM, which is a reasonably mature product now, and the UDM Pro. The UDM Pro is a Beta product and it's been a reputational disaster for UBNT. If you want most of the launch features to just work (never mind work properly) you still need to run Beta firmware.
The only issues I have with the UDM (and the Pro for that matter) are they still can't do multi-WAN and their handling of commercial VPNs (which most retail routers handle just fine with preset scripts) is non-existent.[/QUOTE]
Straight away I'd want guest network, with zero access to the network storage for instance.
Secondary network for my smart network stuff to again limit what they can access.
Custom DNS so I can use the Pi-hole on my NAS.
I'd also like to lock it down so any new devices need to be approved before it gets a connection to the network.
Secondary network for my smart network stuff to again limit what they can access.
Custom DNS so I can use the Pi-hole on my NAS.
I'd also like to lock it down so any new devices need to be approved before it gets a connection to the network.
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Soldato
Guest network is a Unifi controller feature. It's literally just a tick in a box and it creates the guest network with the name you assign it.
You can create multiple physical networks and VLANs.
You can certainly assign any DNS server you like, but PiHole breaks DPI so your statistics are broken.
What would packet inspection enable me? Not sure what is be losing with DPI.
Soldato
It shows you where all your traffic is going. And gives you a pretty report. But because PiHole isn't a transparent DNS server it doesn't know where your web requests were sent so it can't plot those pretty graphs.
Hi mate,
I've not acted yet. Money is very, very tight so I need to be careful.
I'm considering Mikrotik equipment. Very competitively priced, and very powerful. Less than a third the price and does most of what I want. It's down to their HeX S, hAP ac³ or the UDM.
I decided to build out my mini server first as it's going to cost me very little and I can try pfSense (and alternatives) on it.
I'll update if and when I go ahead, and with what.
I looked at the Amplifi but wasn't impressed with the range, and the software is comparably quite limited.
I'm also wondering if Ubiquiti will release a WiFi6 successor.
That HeX S actually looks perfect, especially since it includes a PoE port so I could ditch the PoE injector for the AP-AC-Lite.
I’ve always heard that RouterOS has a steep learning curve, but my requirements are very simple so it shouldn’t be too difficult to configure a basic WAN+LAN setup.
Opportunity to learn mate
One thing about the Mikrotik is that most of the Poe is passive, so check your specs.
At that price it's hard to argue, especially when we've both got APs already!
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Soldato
Opportunity to learn mate
One thing about the Mikrotik is that most of the Poe is passive, so check your specs.
At that price it's hard to argue, especially when we've both got APs already!
The PoE is indeed 24V Passive but luckily the UAP-AC-Lite, UAP-AC-LR and UAP-AC-M can all be powered from 24V Passive PoE, so the plan would work. Sort of. Because it’s on PoE pass-through, so you would power the HeX off the PoE injector and then take the feed to the UAP-AC-Lite from the pass-through port on the HeX.
Soldato
Damn. Was hoping to get rid of one plug under the TV cabinet
You will. Just not the one you thought you would. Plug the PoE injector into Port 1 on the HeX and that will power the HeX. You don’t need the other power supply.