Currently have a full UniFi setup - what's the best alternative?

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sakete

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  • #1
    I currently have a full UniFi setup at home: UXG Pro gateway, a few switches (all non-PoE), Enterprise 6E AP. It honestly works great, never have downtime. Very reliable setup overall.

    But I may get into a situation in the next few months where I'll move to a different house and may need to start from scratch for a variety of reasons. If starting from scratch, is UniFi still the best stuff to get today when comparing feature set and price point? Basically entry-level enterprise grade gear that will be reliable and stable, while still reasonably user friendly.

    And if not, what is the best alternative to consider (preferably all still managed from a single pane of glass)?
     
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    Arty50

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  • #2
    If it aint broke, don't fix it. Considering the fact that used Unifi gear sells for almost the price of new, why not just move your current setup over, keep the units you can reuse, sell the units you don't need on craigslist, and then buy the new pieces you need.

    Edit: AFAIK, the controller settings can migrate across devices also. I'm not sure where your controller sits right now, but you should be able to apply it to the new setup fairly easily.
     
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    sakete

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  • #3
    Arty50 said:
    If it aint broke, don't fix it. Considering the fact that used Unifi gear sells for almost the price of new, why not just move your current setup over, keep the units you can reuse, sell the units you don't need on craigslist, and then buy the new pieces you need.
    Click to expand...
    Well, for a variety of reasons the gear would need to stay behind.

    I'd have to start over, hence my question.
     
    Paladin

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  • #4
    Depends on your needs. Do you really need to duplicate your current setup after you move? You won't decide to ditch a lot of gear rather than move it?

    If you are happy with what you have, you can go with the same thing again mostly. Just make sure you can physically use it all where you are moving to. If you can't get wiring the switches might be useless for the large part and a single AP might do the job so a simple home router might be all you need.

    A lot of people have been looking at Aruba InstantOn or TP-Link Omada but I don't think either of them have the router portion at the level that unifi does. Unifi gets a lot of flack but if you can get it to a stable situation and then not update it until the updates are well tested, it should be fine for a simple setup.
     
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    w00key

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  • #5
    I never managed to figure out why iDevices here randomly choke for 5+ seconds on Aruba's cheap APs. No logging, no diagnostics means staring at the AP 3 meters away wondering why it kicked the iPhone off while gaming causing a disconnect from a multiplayer game.

    -1 Aruba, nah until they add syslog forwarding.


    For me, somehow UniFi has the least issues of all wifi systems I used. I hoped that HP/Aruba would be better but it isn't, sadly. I kinda like the simplicity and cloud controller, one less thing to worry about, but unstable + no syslog = no thanks next time.

    Oh and roaming usually works. For browsing, good enough. But I do wonder once in a while why my phone takes a while to swap while literally walking past the staircase/hallway AP at < 1m distance, instead holding on the ground floor one. Again, no idea, no logging = no problems right?

    I wish reviews would give this higher priority than plain throughput. Stability and roaming speed is more important for me than raw speed.
     
    targetnovember

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  • #6
    I just moved to a house I built, and I got new equipment. I went with OPNSense as a router and Aruba Instant On for wifi with 2 APs. Everything has been fine for me, but there is probably not much roaming happening, or if there is I've never noticed anything. It's possible I'm just not in a very demanding environment, so the main benefit is that I don't notice or need to manage anything since initial setup.
     
    Andrewcw

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  • #10
    If you're used to the "pain" and still can live with it. Then no problem. If you still need to maintain the other location. Then the connect to cloud thing is still fairly handy as you can do one login and then see both sides you need to maintain. They however aren't the only cheap solution out there. And then take a hard look at their current policies.

    I'd probably go with TP-LINK omada if i had to start from scratch again and not have to touch the unifi controller again. But you're sounding like you might have to.
     
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  • #11
    Andrewcw said:
    If you're used to the "pain" and still can live with it. Then no problem. If you still need to maintain the other location. Then the connect to cloud thing is still fairly handy as you can do one login and then see both sides you need to maintain. They however aren't the only cheap solution out there. And then take a hard look at their current policies.

    I'd probably go with TP-LINK omada if i had to start from scratch again and not have to touch the unifi controller again. But you're sounding like you might have to.
    Click to expand...
    Any reason why Omada is better? I used Unifi and it just worked for me, but I wasn't chasing the latest features and bought relatively old gear.

    And read release notes before upgrading, not just yolo rollout and pray.
     
    stevenkan

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  • #12
    I have Unifi in 3 locations. I used to love them, and then I started hating on them a bit for allegedly orphaning my older WAPs, and then lately I found that they didn't actually orphan them, despite many warning of their imminent orphanage, so now I like them again.

    I'm not setting up a new site any time soon, but I may need some PTP links, and Unifi is currently in the lead.
     
    Andrewcw

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  • #13
    w00key said:
    Any reason why Omada is better? I used Unifi and it just worked for me, but I wasn't chasing the latest features and bought relatively old gear.

    And read release notes before upgrading, not just yolo rollout and pray.
    Click to expand...

    Because every upgrade even if it is months old has a potential to be a YOLO upgrade. They might not fix a problem within a week, month, year, multiple years. It's Ubiquiti's MO. It's what they're famous for. And the Cherry on top is when they either drop your platform or decide to do a massive change to the TOS. Most people just lived with the problems because for a long time they were the only game in town at their pricepoint.
     
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  • #14
    Andrewcw said:
    Because every upgrade even if it is months old has a potential to be a YOLO upgrade. They might not fix a problem within a week, month, year, multiple years. It's Ubiquiti's MO. It's what they're famous for. And the Cherry on top is when they either drop your platform or decide to do a massive change to the TOS. Most people just lived with the problems because for a long time they were the only game in town at their pricepoint.
    Click to expand...
    Platform: isn't that only the protect line? Yeah that was doomed from the start.

    Fixing problems: idk basic VLAN and SSIDs work just fine, all the known issues are pretty rare. There was a major DHCP issue years ago but workaround was not updating for a while. What major remaining issues do you have?

    TOS: I cannot find anything on this. Got a link?

    Upgrades potentially disruptive: eh all network gear vendor are like this. Don't do a Junos upgrade without reading the release notes and stick to the JTAC recommended release and not latest if you don't want shit to randomly break. It doesn't get better even if you spend more, much more.


    I'm looking at the last few Omada firmware update threads and they look pretty much same same as on the Unifi forums. Beta beta beta, oh hey finally a release build months ago, known issues, but nothing major. But I would never trust an update without looking through the comments first, it looks wonky enough. To me it looks like Unifi just has a ton more users doing weird (advanced?) configs to trigger more edge cases. Community is way more active.

    Also weird that some of their pre-release announcements are immediately locked for replies so for comments on those, see all the separate posts on the forum. Why...
     
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    NervousEnergy

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  • #15
    w00key said:
    I never managed to figure out why iDevices here randomly choke for 5+ seconds on Aruba's cheap APs. No logging, no diagnostics means staring at the AP 3 meters away wondering why it kicked the iPhone off while gaming causing a disconnect from a multiplayer game.

    -1 Aruba, nah until they add syslog forwarding.


    For me, somehow UniFi has the least issues of all wifi systems I used. I hoped that HP/Aruba would be better but it isn't, sadly. I kinda like the simplicity and cloud controller, one less thing to worry about, but unstable + no syslog = no thanks next time.

    Oh and roaming usually works. For browsing, good enough. But I do wonder once in a while why my phone takes a while to swap while literally walking past the staircase/hallway AP at < 1m distance, instead holding on the ground floor one. Again, no idea, no logging = no problems right?

    I wish reviews would give this higher priority than plain throughput. Stability and roaming speed is more important for me than raw speed.
    Click to expand...
    Counterpoint - I've been running Aruba IO for almost a full year now (3 AP12s on a 2930 switch along with a dozen wired drops) with both the wife and I working multiple days from home each week with fairly critical high availability without the slightest issue. She's a physician that does most follow-up visits over video (autism specialist), and it's got to work without hitches. No complaints at all so far (knocks on wood.)
     
    steelghost

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  • #16
    NervousEnergy said:
    Counterpoint - I've been running Aruba IO for almost a full year now (3 AP12s on a 2930 switch along with a dozen wired drops) with both the wife and I working multiple days from home each week with fairly critical high availability without the slightest issue. She's a physician that does most follow-up visits over video (autism specialist), and it's got to work without hitches. No complaints at all so far (knocks on wood.)
    Click to expand...
    Out of curiosity, are you using one of the AP12s as a router, or do you have a separate device for that?
     
    NervousEnergy

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  • #17
    steelghost said:
    Out of curiosity, are you using one of the AP12s as a router, or do you have a separate device for that?
    Click to expand...
    Separate. All 3 APs (floors 1, 2 and 4 of our townhome) are wired to the 2930 PoE switch, and it sits behind an AT&T BG 320 with the WIFI disabled. The 320 handles DHCP, routing, etc. They're APs only. I haven't run a WIFI router in ages - back at the old house last year I used a home-built IPFire firewall/router with a dumb Charter cable modem. Thought about using it at the new place as well, but research showed it likely wasn't worth it given the limited passthrough support of the 320 and the fact it seemed to be a decent router from a performance standpoint.

    Only issue is having a third party controlling your internet gateway and router and possibly being able to see into your network, but all sensitive work is done on device point-to-point VPN.
     
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  • #19
    NervousEnergy said:
    Counterpoint - I've been running Aruba IO for almost a full year now (3 AP12s on a 2930 switch along with a dozen wired drops) with both the wife and I working multiple days from home each week with fairly critical high availability without the slightest issue. She's a physician that does most follow-up visits over video (autism specialist), and it's got to work without hitches. No complaints at all so far (knocks on wood.)
    Click to expand...
    Yeah well usage for work isn't online gaming. I experienced it a few times too on an Nintendo Switch, it pisses me off to have epic lag or disconnect with perfect signal and line of sight of the unit.

    I think it is the crude way of Aruba's band steering, kicking you off 2.4 Ghz and forcing a reconnect. Since switching to a 2.4 only SSID it hasn't occured again on the Switch. But without any form of logging on that stupid Aruba app, who knows?


    Great if it works. Fucking sucks more than an Asus AP if it doesn't, even that has a logging tab on the web UI to see association and disconnect events.
     
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    sakete

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  • #20
    NervousEnergy said:
    Separate. All 3 APs (floors 1, 2 and 4 of our townhome) are wired to the 2930 PoE switch, and it sits behind an AT&T BG 320 with the WIFI disabled. The 320 handles DHCP, routing, etc. They're APs only. I haven't run a WIFI router in ages - back at the old house last year I used a home-built IPFire firewall/router with a dumb Charter cable modem. Thought about using it at the new place as well, but research showed it likely wasn't worth it given the limited passthrough support of the 320 and the fact it seemed to be a decent router from a performance standpoint.

    Only issue is having a third party controlling your internet gateway and router and possibly being able to see into your network, but all sensitive work is done on device point-to-point VPN.
    Click to expand...
    Do you really need that many APs in your townhouse? I'm using 1 AP for my entire 2800 sq.ft house currently (UniFi 6 Enterprise, which is basically a WiFi 6E router) and get excellent signal and speeds, all over the house, including the basement (to be fair most equipment is hardwired, except laptops and phones).
     
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  • #23
    sakete said:
    Do you really need that many APs in your townhouse? I'm using 1 AP for my entire 2800 sq.ft house currently (UniFi 6 Enterprise, which is basically a WiFi 6E router) and get excellent signal and speeds, all over the house, including the basement (to be fair most equipment is hardwired, except laptops and phones).
    Click to expand...
    Reinforced concrete is good at killing signal. I'm currently 3 meters right above another AP and it measures at -68 dB on 2.4, not found on 5.

    The one on this floor is -50/63 dB.
     
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