It’s such a shame what Ubiquiti has become these past 3-5 years. Their product used to be fun and reliable. Nowadays, just feels like corporate greed and just another Cisco. I eventually switched out all my Ubiquiti stuff due to it.
They've had their rocky moments, to be sure - and I won't hesitate to ding them for making self-hosting obscure. But, you can do so, and they actually listened and walked back their egregious stuff, so I'll give them credit for that as well, and my APs and ERPoE-5 have been rock solid. I've also liked their latest controller software (I run a VM on a ZFS storage backend, so I can roll it back if an update goes sour).
If anyone from Ubiquiti is listening, the fact that I can self-host is a major reason for my keeping my existing gear and being willing to buy more. I'm not keen on trusting my network administration to third-party server access.
I want to _strongly_ second this. After seeing some Ubiquiti gear in use in various enterprise settings almost a decade ago I personally investigated the brand for home use and bought into some of the WiFi gear for use in conjunction with the rest of my network hardware/software.
If there were ever a requirement to allow public internet ingress or egress from this stuff directly I would immediately replace it. Self-hosting the controller is a base requirement for my use-cases as well.
I think that some of their more recent decisions have been questionable (Unifi Video -> Protect) - but there is still no doubt in my mind that you get a lot for your money, even if you do have to troubleshoot a little bit more than more pro (Cisco et al) stuff...
I'm not sure I love some of the more home automation based stuff as I've not used it - but at least with the Unifi Protect range and the switches / APs I've mostly been happy.
Seems like some of the more vocal people in the Unifi community are angry as they have built businesses around supporting these sort of setups - where I totally understand that a broken firmware update can wreck havoc.
Can't stand Ubiquiti myself. The web interface breaks every convention and I remember constantly running into bizarre problems like not being able to change port forwarding assignments without the devices being online or download benchmarks being exactly half as fast as they should be.
I only recently got into Ubiquiti gear, besides availability issues in their store, I have nothing to complain about, but I'm not a hardcore user. What issues do you have with them?
My stuff just keeps on working. So for me I have no complaints. They aren't perfect but I haven't found anything out there that makes me want to switch to something else.
Mikrotik is decent! While there is some lackluster hardware (and, to be honest, most of their wireless AP solutions kinda suck), I've ran Mikrotik on two small-scale networks (~60 devices each, not including WiFi) + my home network, and had no issues whatsoever. Love them
It's not for everybody, but I run OpenBSD on an APU2 from PCEngines. The hardware is EOL but it's handy to be able to run my setup on virtual any modern commodity hardware, as long as I can fit a couple NICs inside.
A couple years ago my parent's DSL line was accidentally severed, but our neighbors agreed to let us bridge through their WiFi. I setup an old Pentium MMX 200MHz box with a PCI NIC and PCI wireless card and got them online again. It was more of a fun exercise and an effort to put something between our network and theirs, but it was even fast enough for Netflix.
I also found it was just overkill for my home network. And it was a hassle when my controller computer would die and I'd need to sort everything out. Went with a simpler solution with web and ssh interfaces.
I have an outdoor shaded box with a USW Flex in it. That one box kills them quickly. I doubt it gets over 110-120F, so the root cause is a bit of a mystery. Any suggestions for a more robust model?
The box has a long PoE run and then it redistributes out the PoE to 3-4 other PoE devices. The wattage is well within spec, but they usually drop to 100MBit from 1GBit a few months before permanently failing, so there could be some sort of signal integrity problem or over-driving of the phy, etc.
I'm kind of considering trying a Flex Mini, since at least they're cheaper. (The box is waterproof.)
Maybe I'm wrong, so confirm by opening your previously-killed equipment and looking for corrosion, but:
> The box is waterproof
to me just means any water (or humidity) that's in the box when you seal it, stays in the box. Maybe add a dessicant that you can replace every few months?
Used to do this with a tin can full of potassium permanganate (potassium manganate 7 in newspeak). Just heat it till it’s white then put it back after it’s turned purple from absorbing water (I.e. recycle it)
Not even sure if you can buy it now, it’s useful for nefarious things. Used to be in survival kits, it’s a fire starter, disinfectant and mouthwash too.
I can't really get into my parents attic rn to grab a photo, but very similar install.
I've had a Netgear* switch running up there non-stop since roughly 2000! Have never had to reboot it. Granted, power outages have rebooted it, and I have no way of actually checking its up-time.
*Those were the days when Netgear products were solid
That's pretty cool. Is it a managed switch? I feel unmanaged switches have an advantage for being relatively simple with no user facing config or startup/backup images. They're basically just an ASIC with supporting hardware to look up numbers in a table and transmit out the resulting port - it could last decades.
> All it took to wire up my garage were some cheap gigabit SFP transceivers (pretty sure I used these ones right here), 40 meters of aqua-clad multimode fiber, and a $75 appointment with a contractor to actually run the fiber.
I'm puzzled as to why someone writing for ArsTechnica would need the contractor to run the fiber. Any idea?
They already said they didn't want to pay to run a conduit and I can't imagine a contractor doing anything at all that involves both a shovel and a fiber run for $75, even 8 years ago.
I wonder if putting the switch behind a UPS or more substantial surge protector/line filtering would help it last even longer. The batteries in a UPS at those temps might give up before the switch does.
I am hearing a several people saying "they are moving away from Ubiquiti" but none say exactly what they are moving to or in past tense what they moved to.
We moved everything from ubiquity to Rakus and Netgear.
My ubiquity switch died right after the warranty expired and same thing with the cloud key. Not only that, every single update crashed my cloud key and had to reset it
Meanwhile, I've had two USW-Lite-16-POE's fail just outside their two year warranty period, alongside a CloudKey and other equipment from them. It's just junk and they don't stand behind it. I'm transitioning away from them as best I can. The only thing I have left is my gateway and some APs.
The hard drive on my Cloudkey Gen2 Plus failed less than a year after I bought it. I don’t blame Ubiquiti for a hard drive failure. I blame them for designing the device to be fanless but constantly hot to the touch (44 degrees as I’m writing this, with two 120mm fans right next to it). Countless support posts complaining about poor hard drive lifespan in that kind of environment, but never a response from Ubiquiti or a redesign.
If you still want to use SOHO equipment, I like Aruba instant-on a lot. Their APs are just as good as Ubiquiti's and you don't need a separate doodad to control them, the first one you set up can control the others.
Still got my USW-8-150 laying literally my feet. Dirt and dust everywhere, I accidentally kick it all the time. I should feel bad for having my network equipment heaped in a pile under my desk but hasn’t bothered it one bit. I was always nervous about it because it runs really warm but really it’s been fine.
Readit News
If anyone from Ubiquiti is listening, the fact that I can self-host is a major reason for my keeping my existing gear and being willing to buy more. I'm not keen on trusting my network administration to third-party server access.
If there were ever a requirement to allow public internet ingress or egress from this stuff directly I would immediately replace it. Self-hosting the controller is a base requirement for my use-cases as well.
I'm not sure I love some of the more home automation based stuff as I've not used it - but at least with the Unifi Protect range and the switches / APs I've mostly been happy.
Seems like some of the more vocal people in the Unifi community are angry as they have built businesses around supporting these sort of setups - where I totally understand that a broken firmware update can wreck havoc.
Seems like they're still dramatically cheaper than Cisco, etc. But they've definitely had a few product flops that didn't make much sense to me.
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A couple years ago my parent's DSL line was accidentally severed, but our neighbors agreed to let us bridge through their WiFi. I setup an old Pentium MMX 200MHz box with a PCI NIC and PCI wireless card and got them online again. It was more of a fun exercise and an effort to put something between our network and theirs, but it was even fast enough for Netflix.
VyOS on a passive Intel box for routing.
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The box has a long PoE run and then it redistributes out the PoE to 3-4 other PoE devices. The wattage is well within spec, but they usually drop to 100MBit from 1GBit a few months before permanently failing, so there could be some sort of signal integrity problem or over-driving of the phy, etc.
I'm kind of considering trying a Flex Mini, since at least they're cheaper. (The box is waterproof.)
> The box is waterproof
to me just means any water (or humidity) that's in the box when you seal it, stays in the box. Maybe add a dessicant that you can replace every few months?
Not even sure if you can buy it now, it’s useful for nefarious things. Used to be in survival kits, it’s a fire starter, disinfectant and mouthwash too.
I've had a Netgear* switch running up there non-stop since roughly 2000! Have never had to reboot it. Granted, power outages have rebooted it, and I have no way of actually checking its up-time.
*Those were the days when Netgear products were solid
I'm puzzled as to why someone writing for ArsTechnica would need the contractor to run the fiber. Any idea?
They already said they didn't want to pay to run a conduit and I can't imagine a contractor doing anything at all that involves both a shovel and a fiber run for $75, even 8 years ago.
Because sometimes you do not want to dig thru insulation and just pay someone for it.
What are you all moving to?
My ubiquity switch died right after the warranty expired and same thing with the cloud key. Not only that, every single update crashed my cloud key and had to reset it