Toying with the idea of ubiquiti again... do I need it?

DHR

DHR

DHR

Soldato
Joined
30 Apr 2003
Posts
3,469
Currently running the BT home hub and a couple of their discs, with pihole on a zero for dns duties.

Everyone in the house is full time remote now, so stability is key, the BT kit hasn't been too bad though.

Why the itch and some wants:

* Always got by with networking, never been hot on it though so the practice is always good.
* I have a couple of external services I really want to get going with remote access, namely roon arc
* I hate having what I class as "untrusted" devices on my network, e.g. yi home cameras, hikvision kit etc.

I know there are things like pfsense but an all in one solution would be the dream, needs to last a good few years too.

Thoughts? Don't do it?! Why haven't you already !? I'm open to an onslaught of advice!
 
DHR said:
Currently running the BT home hub and a couple of their discs, with pihole on a zero for dns duties.

Everyone in the house is full time remote now, so stability is key, the BT kit hasn't been too bad though.

Why the itch and some wants:

* Always got by with networking, never been hot on it though so the practice is always good.
* I have a couple of external services I really want to get going with remote access, namely roon arc
* I hate having what I class as "untrusted" devices on my network, e.g. yi home cameras, hikvision kit etc.

I know there are things like pfsense but an all in one solution would be the dream, needs to last a good few years too.

Thoughts? Don't do it?! Why haven't you already !? I'm open to an onslaught of advice!
Click to expand...

The Americans have been spectacularly successful with their anti-Chinese propaganda. It’s entirely feasible that the Chinese government does require all Chinese camera manufacturers to install back-doors in their equipment but do you REALLY think that the US and UK governments don’t impose similar requirements on their manufacturers? And if they do, what are they going to see? Where you park your car? The high view of your garden gate? Nothing, in short.

UniFi is AMAZING if you have 50 access points and you want to add 5 more. You just plug them in and they’re literally configured immediately after adoption. But the ‘security’ is a joke. It’s a bog-standard Stateful Inspection Firewall with some open source Intrusion Protection (SNORT) tacked on. It doesn’t really even do web filtering or child protection features. There are at least 5 better (true) Next Generation Firewalls for the same or less money. Even the wireless access points, so long the jewel in the Ubiquiti crown are being outperformed and undercut on price by the likes of Alta Labs who are ex-Ubiquiti employees doing the same but slightly different. Yiu can buy an all-in-one pfSense appliance from Netgate or a similar device from Arista running Untangle.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with UniFi but it just feels like a marketing-led company living off past glory and literally dying in front of us. You want something to last 10 years? Don’t buy UniFi. Their whole business model relies on forcing users to renew their systems every 3-4 years.
 
Mesh wireless, sadly the nature of the house doesn't lend itself to running ethernet (would be the dream!)

Edit - For the cost involved and my priorities, I'd be leaning toward the pfsense setup, but then its what to do about wifi and the equivalent of the discs.
 
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