Ubiquiti vs DD-WRT

fezster · 28 Oct 2017 at 12:02

I have a Netgear R7000 running Kong's DD-WRT. It's been setup for about a year and is generally ok. Prior to that, I used DD-WRT on a D-link 615 for a few years.

A bit of info about my home network. I have multiple virtual access points (multiple ssid's). One for the kids which uses OpenDNS via DHCP and another for guests, which can only access the internet and not my local LAN. And finally one for my immediate family which has access to my LAN and unrestricted DNS.

Whilst this works ok, I do have some instability. Sometimes an SSID won't show. Other times one SSID will lose access to the internet. It's not easy to track and I don't have the inclination to debug it.

So my question (finally!) - would a Ubiquiti AC PRO allow me multiple SSID's and be rock solid? That seems to be the concensus about them generally. My plan is to eventually hook it up to a PfSense router to handle the dhcp and various LAN restrictions. For those with this AP, do you run multiple ssid's with different dhcp settings, and is it stable?

TL;DR - Can ubiquiti AP run multiple ssid's with differing dhcp settings? And is it stable?

neodude · 28 Oct 2017 at 13:12

You can have multi SSIDs with the Ubiquiti but it is only an Access Point and not a router. Your router would need to support VLANs so that you could have each SSID assigned to a different VLAN with the router taking care of the DHCP side of things. I do something similar to what you're after using a Ubiquiti AP and a PfSense router.

fezster · 28 Oct 2017 at 13:25

neodude said:
You can have multi SSIDs with the Ubiquiti but it is only an Access Point and not a router. Your router would need to support VLANs so that you could have each SSID assigned to a different VLAN with the router taking care of the DHCP side of things. I do something similar to what you're after using a Ubiquiti AP and a PfSense router.

Thanks, that's just what I wanted to hear. Yes - I should have made clear, I understand the Ubiquiti is just an AP, and the routing / dhcp side of things I'll use PfSense.

I assume the Ubiquiti can assign an SSID to a VLAN and use 802.1q VLAN tagging? As I plan on having only a single connection between the Ubiquiti and the PfSense box.

Could you tell me how many SSID's you have broadcasting? And do you use the same SSID name for both 2.4ghz and 5ghz bands? And I assume it all works well (no random drop outs or SSID's disappearing)?

Steveocee · 28 Oct 2017 at 14:19

Not quite an AC-PRO user but I use the AC-LR.
I have 4 SSID's all on different networks, I just VLAN tag the traffic as it enters on the various SSID's and then my MikroTik router does the rest.

Unifi has a maximum of 4 SSID's per WLAN "group" and you get 1 group per AP.

fezster · 28 Oct 2017 at 20:20

Thanks guys, very useful. I'll give it a go.

GigaGuy · 28 Nov 2017 at 01:56

Did you get this working? I have the exact same issue. Two unifi AP's behind a ddwrt (r7000 Kong) router. I enabled vlan tagging on one 'test' ssid and I get the dhcp request in the router log. The client never accepts the ip though. Even with static ip in the range, no internet on the new vlan.