I'm done with Ubiquiti Unifi. Need help with alternatives.

[panteragstk]

Huh. I put in some EAP225's and they all came with injectors. If you need a couple just pm an address if your in the States and I'll ship them.

It was a surprise for sure.

I have a POE switch so I'm good, but thanks for the offer.

 

[panteragstk]

So I got everything swapped out today and it went surprisingly smooth. Stuff like this is usually a pain, but all I had to do was replicate my current SSIDs in the Omada controller, provision the APs and the switch and was on my way. I'm happy to be done with the injectors since I got the POE switch. Cleaned up my cabling a bit, but I've still got to re-do my server rack.

I'm thinking of going with one of their gateways since they're pretty cheap. I don't need it to do much since I've already got a firewall in place, but it will complete the system. Haven't decided yet though.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

So I got everything swapped out today and it went surprisingly smooth. Stuff like this is usually a pain, but all I had to do was replicate my current SSIDs in the Omada controller, provision the APs and the switch and was on my way. I'm happy to be done with the injectors since I got the POE switch. Cleaned up my cabling a bit, but I've still got to re-do my server rack.

I'm thinking of going with one of their gateways since they're pretty cheap. I don't need it to do much since I've already got a firewall in place, but it will complete the system. Haven't decided yet though.

Did you run some speed tests before and after?

 

[panteragstk]

Did you run some speed tests before and after?

Yes. I did most of the testing in the trouble spots and got pretty consistent results. I had a good signal with my Unifi AP-AC-LR but my speed wasn't ever that great.

Now, my signal is better, but I actually have the speed. My office has a minimum of 3 walls between me and an AP. I used to have random issues with signal drops to where conference calls would ask me to switch to a better internet connection. Not anymore, or at least not today.

I'm pretty happy so far, but this is a pretty basic system. I still need to get used to it and poke around to see if more advanced options exist. Same with the Sophos XG firewall. I like what I see so far, but it's pretty different from the UTM. Nothing wrong with that, just need to get used to where everything is.

BTW, I got some spare APs if you're interested.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Yesterday I installed a pair of TP-Link's Omada EAP670s wifi access points at a small client. They are surprisingly beefy/large units compared to the Unifi stuff I'm used to.
I've used a cloud-based controller since they are a tiny family office, and it doesn't make sense to use anything but the cloud since the subscription cost is not a concern for them.
Which, by the way: is charged per device (i.e., in my case, access point), So for two APs for five years pre-pair cost was only $89

What took the longest was figuring out where precisely I needed to go to buy licenses, which is on the bottom left of the Omada cloud portal (right after the login and not inside the Omada cloud controller). You have to remove the cookies banner to see it.

They probably didn't need these top-o-line APs, but they are cheap enough, and I will inherit them sooner or later

 

[jinjuku]

Are they going on multirate PoE+ ports or just 1Gbe?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Are they going on multirate PoE+ ports or just 1Gbe?

you'll laugh here. They are renting space in managed space, and the office manager provides 100 Mbps PoE+ ports.
I had to twist their IT arm to allow my own VPN firewall w/o double natting.

 

[jinjuku]

you'll laugh here. They are renting space in managed space, and the office manager provides 100 Mbps PoE+ ports.
I had to twist their IT arm to allow my own VPN firewall w/o double natting.

Nothing better than bicycle tires on a drag car.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Nothing better than bicycle tires on a drag car.

agree that it is a massive overkill, but still crazy cheap vs. something like a ruckus. And again, for the customer it would be like a difference between soda costs of $0.99 or $1

 

[TLS Guy]

This thread has made by brain hurt. My observation is that there has been a lot of discussion about exotic equipment, but none about the architecture in the home.

Now I know there are more knowledgeable experts here on the nuances of equipment. However, over the years I have been involved in many diverse installations.

What I do know for certain is that any engineering project is founded on a sound reliable architecture plan, that is the simplest and most logical that can be devised. Now know this sounds harsh, but from the first post, it seems to me that there is no coherent architectural design in his set up, and that it is of the "dog's dinner" variety. What I do know is that good elegant architecture is the very foundation of system reliability.

So when I planned this house five years ago now, I planned the Ethernet architecture to the very last detail and supervised its construction and installation.
There are a vast number of units connected to the internet in this home. All fixed units hard wired, and mobile units Wi-Fi. There is a cable modem, and the Netgear Orbi mesh system, that gives even Wi-Fi throughout the home. So it uses a logical flow, of local hubs, two 19" rack hubs in the studio chase and a 19" patch bay. In four years there have been zero failures. I have done video conferencing without issue.

Any failures have all been on Comcast's end, and in fairness they have been few and brief. My biggest issue with them is that the download speed is fast, but the upload slow. The service is copper, but it connects to fiber at the main roadside box. All the circle boxes are passive.

So my point is that the OP has a complex system, and I think sorting it, starts by committing a sound plan on paper, that is reduced to its simplest and most logical elements.

 

[jinjuku]

From all observations of thread dormancy I think they sorted out their issues. I don't think typical homes are complex:

Pull your horizontals to a closet and terminate into a capable switch with POE and robust management features.

Turn on IGMP for vlans and plan your vlan's properly. Just have a priority vlan for voice and security cameras.

2 AP's will cover most average sized homes in the the U.S. I just moved and left three APs for the home owner. Two up and one basement. Using TP-Link Omada controller with those and V5 does auto channel and power.

AP's were ~$55 and the controller was $89. Averaged 300mbps over wifi.

You could even make the horizontal runs 10GBE and go with a switch at the equipment stack and just tag all your vlans back.

 

[panteragstk]

I've been pretty happy with the Omada stuff as well as the Sophos firewall.

I have been testing OpenSense since it does a lot more and can use 2.5gb chipsets and Sophos can't.

Sure, my network is more complex than it needs to be, but I've been in IT for a few decades so I'm the one that has to build and maintain everything. For the most part it's been 99% set it and forget it.

Everything else in my house is complex too. Not as complex as it used to be, but to the average person I'm doing a LOT.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Some AH threads about esoteric and/or vintage record players or considerations of Qts and standing wave impacts on speakers design (forgive me for mixing terms, just trying to make a point)
I usually curiously read them but do not try to interject my 2c. Some other threads are about my bread and butter, what I professionally do for over 25 years. This one is such.

Netgear Obri is supposed to be a capable HOME Wifi mesh system, and probably nothing wrong with it for most, even prosumers. I have an axe to grind with NetGear's software and I'd never buy them, but that's just me.

The OP, Panteragstk, already had a Small Business level Wifi Solution from Unifi and was looking for an alternative for various (and good) reasons. It's he who led me down the rabbit hole of TP-Link Omada. So I wanted to try it, using my customer as a guinea pig.
And Yes, as Jinjuku correctly said, I vastly overengineered the wifi solution, but now even they may bring tons of people into their two small offices - The wireless AP wouldn't be choking points.
But then again, Overengineering is what we do in AH, as rule of thumb.

 

[TLS Guy]

From all observations of thread dormancy I think they sorted out their issues. I don't think typical homes are complex:

Pull your horizontals to a closet and terminate into a capable switch with POE and robust management features.

Turn on IGMP for vlans and plan your vlan's properly. Just have a priority vlan for voice and security cameras.

2 AP's will cover most average sized homes in the the U.S. I just moved and left three APs for the home owner. Two up and one basement. Using TP-Link Omada controller with those and V5 does auto channel and power.

AP's were ~$55 and the controller was $89. Averaged 300mbps over wifi.

You could even make the horizontal runs 10GBE and go with a switch at the equipment stack and just tag all your vlans back.

That sounds like a sound architectural plan to me. Big or small, you always need a sound plan to avoid problems. That is my point.

 

[highfigh]

This thread has made by brain hurt. My observation is that there has been a lot of discussion about exotic equipment, but none about the architecture in the home.

Now I know there are more knowledgeable experts here on the nuances of equipment. However, over the years I have been involved in many diverse installations.

What I do know for certain is that any engineering project is founded on a sound reliable architecture plan, that is the simplest and most logical that can be devised. Now know this sounds harsh, but from the first post, it seems to me that there is no coherent architectural design in his set up, and that it is of the "dog's dinner" variety. What I do know is that good elegant architecture is the very foundation of system reliability.

So when I planned this house five years ago now, I planned the Ethernet architecture to the very last detail and supervised its construction and installation.
There are a vast number of units connected to the internet in this home. All fixed units hard wired, and mobile units Wi-Fi. There is a cable modem, and the Netgear Orbi mesh system, that gives even Wi-Fi throughout the home. So it uses a logical flow, of local hubs, two 19" rack hubs in the studio chase and a 19" patch bay. In four years there have been zero failures. I have done video conferencing without issue.

Any failures have all been on Comcast's end, and in fairness they have been few and brief. My biggest issue with them is that the download speed is fast, but the upload slow. The service is copper, but it connects to fiber at the main roadside box. All the circle boxes are passive.

So my point is that the OP has a complex system, and I think sorting it, starts by committing a sound plan on paper, that is reduced to its simplest and most logical elements.

You think this is bad? Go to the Home Theater discussion pages on FaceBook and read the comments from people recommending that WiFi should be used because it's as good or better than hard wired. I finally had to post "Nobody who knows networking thinks that WiFi is better than hard wired". Then, someone posted that he uses WiFi for his fridge and stove and it works great.

And they have lived their whole lives with some kind of personal computers! It's as if they don't even know that how something connects to a network matters.

 

[jinjuku]

I finally had to post "Nobody who knows networking thinks that WiFi is better than hard wired". Then, someone posted that he uses WiFi for his fridge and stove and it works great.

Depends. Wi Fi has a lot going for it mainly portability. At some point Wi Fi is 'good enough'. Now I dropped a on-wall AP that has a three port switch on the bottom for my HT system. It's POE and I didn't have to pull multiple horizontal CAT6 runs.

Wired my AVR, Game Console. TV and other stuff could be wired but I left it wireless.

Here are a few more wins in the AP side: redundancy. If properly setup you can do a 12-15dbi deployment with multiple low cost AP's and if you lose one it 'self heals' buy ramping up to 18-21dbi elsewhere if needed.

Another is client density. The EAP 6XX HD models with QAM 1024 can support 300 clients (in ideal circumstances).

Now if we are talking a speed drag race of course wireless loses that one. But most client loads aren't drag races for the home.

At one point I ran SM OS2 fiber and had low power systems hitting sustained 330MB/s. But I just went back to wireless to ease up on the cabling and reduced the complexity.

 

[highfigh]

Depends. Wi Fi has a lot going for it mainly portability. At some point Wi Fi is 'good enough'. Now I dropped a on-wall AP that has a three port switch on the bottom for my HT system. It's POE and I didn't have to pull multiple horizontal CAT6 runs.

Wired my AVR, Game Console. TV and other stuff could be wired but I left it wireless.

Here are a few more wins in the AP side: redundancy. If properly setup you can do a 12-15dbi deployment with multiple low cost AP's and if you lose one it 'self heals' buy ramping up to 18-21dbi elsewhere if needed.

Another is client density. The EAP 6XX HD models with QAM 1024 can support 300 clients (in ideal circumstances).

Now if we are talking a speed drag race of course wireless loses that one. But most client loads aren't drag races for the home.

At one point I ran SM OS2 fiber and had low power systems hitting sustained 330MB/s. But I just went back to wireless to ease up on the cabling and reduced the complexity.

One of the posters obviously agrees with your first statement and he wrote "It works fine when I'm in my pool", which may have been a joke, but if not, it completely missed the point of the debate. WiFi, at its best, can't be as fact as wired because it's original design includes avoiding data collisions, whereas wired only detects them and is fast enough that small ones don't matter but it comes close enough for practical purposes. However, we learned that ages ago in terms of the timeline of WiFi and the advances have been extreme- at the time, the standard was 802.11b/g and 802.11n was still over the horizon for consumers.

The other main problem is in how people plop their router in places where they can't really work properly and they just don't want to pay to have cables run, nor do they want to RTFM.

People see ads for Gigabit and they immediately want it, thinking that it will cure their network problems, but don't know what their system demands from the network, so many waste their money. Personally, I have used several brands of routers and I do use WiFi for many devices, but I added cabling to my house when I was renovating it, so it's not a problem to use hardwired connections. In my customers' houses, I did add cabling in all of them and with some brands, the WiFi has been stable and has worked well for years, although the Luxul APs weren't doing it for them, or me. They state the speed on the box, but when I called to get a clarification, they said those models aren't capable of such speed with each channel whereas, the Linksys I bought last December and the EERO I have installed all provide the same speed as their WAN service is supposed to allow. Mine is usually around 350Mbps using WiFi and none of my equipment needs that speed, but 300Mbps is the lowest Spectrum offers.

Sure beats dial-up.

 

[jinjuku]

One of the posters obviously agrees with your first statement and he wrote "It works fine when I'm in my pool", which may have been a joke, but if not, it completely missed the point of the debate. WiFi, at its best, can't be as fact as wired because it's original design includes avoiding data collisions, whereas wired only detects them and is fast enough that small ones don't matter but it comes close enough for practical purposes. However, we learned that ages ago in terms of the timeline of WiFi and the advances have been extreme- at the time, the standard was 802.11b/g and 802.11n was still over the horizon for consumers.

It's all trade offs, I do switch/route/mobility/firewall. On a project with 74 switches across 30 closets, new collapsed core, and 532 AP's that I'm doing the predictive design for.

The predominate design mandates are for a killer wifi network. We now spec connectivity at 3 wifi clients for every user and 1/8th wired for every user.

I got into this at AVS forum where they wanted to bring up a custom home (we are talking like $10M) and matrix 4:4:2 hdmi over IP. In that case yes you are putting in things like sfp+/sfp28 or 56, SM fiber, sfp+dd, or even odmf. Setting up multicast and 200gb core HA because you may have four 48Gbit streams on mcast terminating at your IGMP querier.

But for the bulk of home owners 2-3 wifi 6 with multi-gig ethernet AP's will more than meet demand.

It's crazy what you can do for well under $1000.

 

[Trell]

For my home use Ubiquiti Unifi works very well, and I've used this setup (with a number of Ubiquiti Unifi devices) for several years.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

It's all trade offs, I do switch/route/mobility/firewall. On a project with 74 switches across 30 closets, new collapsed core, and 532 AP's that I'm doing the predictive design for.

The predominate design mandates are for a killer wifi network. We now spec connectivity at 3 wifi clients for every user and 1/8th wired for every user.

I got into this at AVS forum where they wanted to bring up a custom home (we are talking like $10M) and matrix 4:4:2 hdmi over IP. In that case yes you are putting in things like sfp+/sfp28 or 56, SM fiber, sfp+dd, or even odmf. Setting up multicast and 200gb core HA because you may have four 48Gbit streams on mcast terminating at your IGMP querier.

But for the bulk of home owners 2-3 wifi 6 with multi-gig ethernet AP's will more than meet demand.

It's crazy what you can do for well under $1000.

I recently saw a demo on Ekahau's Connect/Sidekick 2 solution. Expensive, but seems like an interesting long-term investment, especially if you do large Wifi Networks often or you hate/wasting time on Wifi mapping