Torn Between Unifi Security Gateway Router and UBIQUITI EdgeRouter X 5

Randall8686

Randall8686

Randall8686

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So i have just installed my First UniFi AP and using the controller software is great! However I now want to replace the actual router, From my understanding that EdgeRouter X5 will not work with the UniFi controller software unless i am missing something?

The Unifi Security gateway is twice the price but does work with the software. However i read that its only good for upto 100Mbps internet connections (currently have 80 so not a massive issue) I assume that the 100 limit is due to the "QOS"?

What have people used with the UniFi controller software?
 
Cheers 212 this looks awesome!

WJA96 interesting! Do you know any details? What’s new (obviously newer is always better) ideally want to replace fairly soo but happy to wait if it’s weeks not months.

I’m very happy with the AP.
I don’t need the key as I have Unraid nas and there is a Docker for the “key”
 
Edgerouter 4 is far better spec.

I have the USG. Can't turn on the IPS without taking a performance hit. I have 75/19 VDSL. With IPS on, it just feels a bit less lightning quick..
 
bledd said:
Edgerouter 4 is far better spec.

I have the USG. Can't turn on the IPS without taking a performance hit. I have 75/19 VDSL. With IPS on, it just feels a bit less lightning quick..
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You can’t run IPS on an an EgeRouter 4 so it’s not really any apples/apples comparison.

They should never have added IPS/IDS to the USG. It doesn’t add much protection, generates lots of false positives and makes people complain about how slow the USG is.

One big benefit of the new UniFi router model is it’s probably 4-20 times faster depending on the metric used.
 
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Randall8686 said:
Cheers 212 this looks awesome!

WJA96 interesting! Do you know any details? What’s new (obviously newer is always better) ideally want to replace fairly soo but happy to wait if it’s weeks not months.

I’m very happy with the AP.
I don’t need the key as I have Unraid nas and there is a Docker for the “key”
Click to expand...

The device that will be first to market is probably the Unifi Dream Machine (UDM). I would say realistically you’re looking at January or February for availability in the UK. It’s MUCH faster than the current crop of UniFi routers and it’s aimed squarely at home users as it has a built-in switch and access point as well as the router.

Rather than consider the EdgeRouter line-up, if you’re not going with the USG I would strongly suggest Untangle at about $50/year as the best overall home user package. There is a free Untangle option which makes the USG look pathetic but the $50 option does almost everything anyone could want.
 
£50! Where?

I’m having issues with my AP now. Bandwidth has fallen on its ass and also noticed the WiFi does not reach my ring doorbell. Despite being in the same place as my old ASU’s router. It’s about 10 feet from the ting doorbell although there is a external wall in the way. Going to have to try and move it and see if I can get a better signal but the bandwidth through walls seems terrible compared to my ASUS router.

does anyone know if the antennas work in all directions? Or is it quite directional?
 
212.159.5.208 said:
I got a brand new USG for £50, if you shop about you can get a good deal and try it out at least but I am wondering what the new kit will offer. The USG is not very quick i must admit
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when you say ‘not very quick’ - what do you mean? It’s actually a VERY fast router. It’s only slowed down by the fact that they’ve lumped a lot of extra processing on it after it was designed to be a straightforward gigabit failover router.
 
Randall8686 said:
£50! Where?

I’m having issues with my AP now. Bandwidth has fallen on its ass and also noticed the WiFi does not reach my ring doorbell. Despite being in the same place as my old ASU’s router. It’s about 10 feet from the ting doorbell although there is a external wall in the way. Going to have to try and move it and see if I can get a better signal but the bandwidth through walls seems terrible compared to my ASUS router.

does anyone know if the antennas work in all directions? Or is it quite directional?
Click to expand...

The access points are designed to be mounted in the middle of a ceiling. Anywhere else is not going to work as well. They have a specific antenna design unit for wall-mounted and the new FlexHD is designed to be table or wall mounted.
 
Or go with untangle for pretty graphs AND as much performance as the hardware you run it on can provide.
 
Steveocee said:
USG for pretty graphs.
ER for pure performance.

Wait a few months and grab a new USG with performance ;)
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Yea I think I will wait for the new USG tbh. Untangle I can’t be bothered with I want a ready to go solution, my ageing asus router kept crashing but now I have disabled the WiFi it seems ok. But now I have a taste of the UniFi interface I want more lol!

I just played around with positioning and having it on the wall (on its side) meant that my ring doorbell now connects. Doing a bandwidth test I got zero connection outside the front door with it on the ceiling but on the wall I get 30mbps outside the front door. Still poor considering inside the front door it’s over 200 but it seems the power of these is not as good as my asus in terms of wall penetration but the speed inside the house/room it’s in is very good.

I guess I will need to add another AP upstairs for raw performance. I assume the mesh is brilliant on these switching from ap to ap
 
What’s your front door made of? Mine is laminated wood with metal reinforcement for the top and bottom locks and a metal outer skin on both exposed surfaces and there is zero WLAN penetration through it.

If you plot your house on the UniFi designer and correctly allocate materials to the walls, floors, doors etc. It will tell you fairly accurately what penetration you’ll get. I always plan for no more than 1 wall or floor between client and access point and that seems to work pretty well. That said I’m increasingly just putting an in-wall HD access point in every room. Which solves most issues.
 
@WJA96 - You keep neglecting to mention the $50/yr required to activate anything more than the basic functionality for a home user.

Unifi ownership tends to start with an AP or two and then grows, if you want an ER then UNMS is also available to manage the ER line and includes basic Unifi monitoring iirc.

https://www.unms.com/
 
Untangle free version offers everything UNMS or the UniFi USG does. And the $50 version literally buries anything from the Ubiquiti stable. Unless users stop ignoring the fact that the USG (and even the new EdgeRouter designs) are steaming piles of poo, folks will continue to buy them.
 
C’mon, you obviously understand you are comparing two vastly different products. Untangle is a UTM distribution that’s essentially a L7 product with L2/L3 stuff bolted on, in terms of cost to buy/run/licence it has a very different intended market/usage. Even comparing it to L2/L3 router distributions such as PFSense, OPNsense, Sophos XG, VyOS, IPFire, ZeroShell etc. is questionable, you need to bolt on a few 3rd party packages to achieve similar functions, Sophos UTM Home is probably more comparable, but it’s again pitched at a different market.

The USG is a reasonably priced consumer orientated router that has LTS that most consumer routing products would do well to take note of. The main issue that people have is performance when enabling IDS which if memory serves, it was never really intended to run and is largely ineffective for home users.

Is Untangle a better product than a USG? That really depends on the usage case, both have advantages and disadvantages, but they would rarely be compared to each other in most environments other than lab/testing/enthusiast.
 
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I think we’re going to have to disagree on this @Avalon.

Both the USG and Untangle are aimed at the same market. It’s a router/firewall for the prosumer or smaller business user. Both are Linux based firewall routers.

The difference is that the USG was launched in late 2014 and hasn’t been hardware updated since. The last major software update was almost 18 months ago and the last true feature update was in early 2017 when they added Snort IPS/IDS. So, in tech terms it’s ancient hardware running pretty old software. And it’s £100-ish depending on where you buy it. No WLAN capability, no switch, just a pretty basic firewall router for £100. At the end of 2019? And UBNT’s answer is to completely rewrite the basic software on a new hardware platform that might launch early next year with fewer software features than the outgoing USG it replaces. Someone inside UBNT must love it when people come on here and post about buying a USG. And people don’t discourage them? It’s ludicrous.

Untangle runs on anything that will run Debian, so theoretically the hardware will cost about the same as a USG-3P and for that (in the free version) you get;

The fully featured router/firewall (same as paid version)
Virus blocker lite (upgradeable to the full antivirus suite for $25/year)
Full IPS/IDS
Phish blocker (same as paid version)
Web Monitor (same as paid version)
SPAM blocker lite
Application control lite
Ad blocker (same as paid version)
All the VPN options you could want (except the IPSec tunnel for remote business users)
Reporting (same as the paid version)

The $50/year version gets you the full paid version of everything with the exception of the antivirus suite which still costs $25/year. So that’s web content filtering, bandwidth control, SSL inspection, WAN balancing and failover (including failover to LTE).

Yes, you do need to either buy their overpriced hardware or supply your own, but the track record of updating and adding to the features of Untangle is very strong compared to the pathetic activity of UBNT over the last 3 years.

When you compare a USG to Untangle you compare a run-out special hybrid Toyota Prius to a Tesla Model 3. One of them uses software to REALLY leverage the underlying hardware and the other is old technology dressed up to look like something competitive while they desperately try to develop the new one.
 
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