is ubiquiti any good?

[.:MARK:.]

5 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

• Their equipment is okay - it's pretty good for the price but still leaves a lot to be desired. If you know Vyatta CLI then you can do most things but there is still quite a bit missing from the GUI on the EdgeRouter. 
• UniFi's router GUI is a complete joke as far as features go. You should not buy a UniFi gateway.
• UniFi AP's are decent for home/SOHO use however they don't have anything great in the way of enterprise features. 

 

Keep in mind I've got about 3 years of experience selling, installing and configuring UniFi and EdgeMax devices. 

Their CLI is quite divergent from Brocades Vyatta, it takes a lot of reading their forum to know how to do most anything, and also firmware releases can do stuff like break IPSec, and take weeks-months to fix.

[Guest]

14 minutes ago, .:MARK:. said:

Their CLI is quite divergent from Brocades Vyatta, it takes a lot of reading their forum to know how to do most anything, and also firmware releases can do stuff like break IPSec, and take weeks-months to fix.

Actually I'll rephrase what I said as per out little chat - UniFi is pretty shit for what it's meant to be.

[KuJoe]

I've replaced my home and business networks with all Ubiquiti hardware, for the price you can't beat it. The access points are amazing and the UniFi controller is impressive.

[System Error Message]

Ubiquiti edgerouters are their weakest product. Their marketing is shameless, shaming their competitors directly. Even their performance isnt clearly stated.

 

Whats good about ubiquiti edgerouters as that they're more like embedded linux routers. Unlike consumer routers that lock down the linux bit you can install debian packages on the edgerouter that are compiled for MIPS. Speed wise they arent entirely that great. If you're looking to get one get the ER-X.

 

Other ubiquiti products are much better than their edgerouter.

 

Its always better to go with mikrotik or pfsense for routers because they're much more focused and are clear about their performance and features. For switches ubiquiti is better. For wifi both mikrotik and ubiquiti are good but ubiquiti has extra products that put them ahead such as their controller software and networked plugs, sensors.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

The access points are amazing and the UniFi controller is impressive.

Not really - they're a 2 radio access point capable of n,g and ac at 2x2 or 3x3 spatial streams depending on the SKU which are firmware locked to 2.4Ghz/5Ghz. They're also only AC wave 1 capable meaning no suport for MU-MIMO.

 

The controller offers limited functionality for guest networks, next to no usability for paid services, no reporting features. They have weird behavioral issues with OS X devices and have a relatively high failure rate.

 

Don't get me started on their UniFi routers - they're terribly broken. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, System Error Message said:

Ubiquiti edgerouters are their weakest product. Their marketing is shameless, shaming their competitors directly. Even their performance isnt clearly stated.

 

Whats good about ubiquiti edgerouters as that they're more like embedded linux routers. Unlike consumer routers that lock down the linux bit you can install debian packages on the edgerouter that are compiled for MIPS. Speed wise they arent entirely that great. If you're looking to get one get the ER-X.

 

Other ubiquiti products are much better than their edgerouter.

Actually quite the contrary - the EdgeRouters are a decent bit of kit though despite a few issues with them. Also don't buy the ER-X as they're a terrible performing product.

 

One notable issue for the ER's is that their DHCP tables fall over beyond 200 clients. 

[System Error Message]

Just now, Windspeed36 said:

Actually quite the contrary - the EdgeRouters are a decent bit of kit though despite a few issues with them. Also don't buy the ER-X as they're a terrible performing product.

 

One notable issue for the ER's is that their DHCP tables fall over beyond 200 clients. 

Not true, recently hardware NAT was finally working on them. The ER-X has a better CPU than the ERL. Try QoS on the edgerouter and you will see what i mean. Try QoS on mikrotik and it doesnt take much of a performance hit.

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

Actually I'll rephrase what I said as per out little chat - UniFi is pretty shit for what it's meant to be.

 

2 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

I've replaced my home and business networks with all Ubiquiti hardware, for the price you can't beat it. The access points are amazing and the UniFi controller is impressive.

I think in a lot of ways even Ruckus controllers feature and configuration wise is a bit shit, never used UniFi controller and by the sounds of it doesn't bode well.

 

However I do like the Ubiquiti products, great pricing and good features. I have an ERLite-3 running at one location and am very happy with it, I also have a AP AC Pro but it's still in the box. My internet connection also happens to be high speed long range wireless (reason too long to explain) and that uses Ubiquiti.

[KuJoe]

1 minute ago, Windspeed36 said:

Not really - they're a 2 radio access point capable of n,g and ac at 2x2 or 3x3 spatial streams depending on the SKU which are firmware locked to 2.4Ghz/5Ghz. They're also only AC wave 1 capable meaning no suport for MU-MIMO.

 

The controller offers limited functionality for guest networks, next to no usability for paid services, no reporting features. They have weird behavioral issues with OS X devices and have a relatively high failure rate.

 

Don't get me started on their UniFi routers - they're terribly broken. 

All I know is after spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars trying to "fix" my WiFi, Ubiquiti has done what no other could and now I have complete coverage in my house with faster speeds than the others could handle. I can't recommend it enough for somebody who wants an affordable solution that just works. Specs aside, I can't argue with results.

 

As for the UniFi routers, I don't have any experience with them. I run the UniFi controller on my desktop (for now) and my routers and switches are all EdgeRouters and EdgeSwitches. I like that I can run BGP on my EdgeRouter Lites so I can mirror my business network at home for really cheap.

[System Error Message]

5 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

All I know is after spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars trying to "fix" my WiFi, Ubiquiti has done what no other could and now I have complete coverage in my house with faster speeds than the others could handle. I can't recommend it enough for somebody who wants an affordable solution that just works. Specs aside, I can't argue with results.

 

As for the UniFi routers, I don't have any experience with them. I run the UniFi controller on my desktop (for now) and my routers and switches are all EdgeRouters and EdgeSwitches. I like that I can run BGP on my EdgeRouter Lites so I can mirror my business network at home for really cheap.

not Unifi routers, its ubiquiti edgerouters. For those that dont have very fast ISPs the edgerouters will suffice for up to 200Mb/s. The ubiquiti edgerouters have been over glorified. Try using them with PPPOE and hardware NAT and they will not be able to achieve gigabit throughput. Pfsense and mikrotik have no issues with performance because they arent reliant on hardware NAT for their midrange to high end even though many of their models have it. I have both the ERPRO and CCR and i like the CCR better because i can do on it things on it that i cant do with the ERPRO in config and networking. Even in performance VPN performance is much better because mikrotik gives you a much better choice of hardware so you can pick a CPU that is good at what you need it for.

[leadeater]

14 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

not Unifi routers, its ubiquiti edgerouters. For those that dont have very fast ISPs the edgerouters will suffice for up to 200Mb/s. The ubiquiti edgerouters have been over glorified. Try using them with PPPOE and hardware NAT and they will not be able to achieve gigabit throughput. Pfsense and mikrotik have no issues with performance because they arent reliant on hardware NAT for their midrange to high end even though many of their models have it. I have both the ERPRO and CCR and i like the CCR better because i can do on it things on it that i cant do with the ERPRO in config and networking. Even in performance VPN performance is much better because mikrotik gives you a much better choice of hardware so you can pick a CPU that is good at what you need it for.

Correct me if I'm wrong here since I don't use either products that much but the ERPro-8 is a $300 device and how much is the CCR you are comparing it with? I don't really expect much from such a cheap device but I also don't think it is fair to compare something that is twice the cost, it should be better.

[System Error Message]

Just now, leadeater said:

Correct me if I'm wrong here since I don't use either products that much but the ERPro-8 is a $300 device and how much is the CCR you are comparing it with? I don't really expect much from such a cheap device but I also don't think it is fair to compare something that is twice the cost, it should be better.

With mikrotik all their routers run the same OS regardless if it costs $30 or $3000. I was talking more about the feature set and how the router performs not using hardware acceleration.

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

With mikrotik all their routers run the same OS regardless if it costs $30 or $3000. I was talking more about the feature set and how the router performs not using hardware acceleration.

True I get the feature point, however if you get devices from both brands at $300 and benchmark them is either one significantly faster? I can't fault Ubnt too much with their hardware and software design choices if they intend to cap their product line at $300~, only so much can fit in that budget.

 

Mikrotik has the advantage of designing products for a higher tier market segment so can make different design choices, running everything in software + CPU does put a heavier burned on the CPU and increases the unit cost. You do get more feature complete products with consistent performance though but at the higher cost and can scale up and down the full product range.

[Guest]

51 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

Not true, recently hardware NAT was finally working on them. The ER-X has a better CPU than the ERL. Try QoS on the edgerouter and you will see what i mean. Try QoS on mikrotik and it doesnt take much of a performance hit.

The ER-X's aren't powerful enough and don't have enough onboard storage/memory to deal with their load. Originally DPI wasn't introduced because the system couldn't handle it. 

[System Error Message]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

True I get the feature point, however if you get devices from both brands at $300 and benchmark them is either one significantly faster? I can't fault Ubnt too much with their hardware and software design choices if they intend to cap their product line at $300~, only so much can fit in that budget.

 

Mikrotik has the advantage of designing products for a higher tier market segment so can make different design choices, running everything in software + CPU does put a heavier burned on the CPU and increases the unit cost. You do get more feature complete products with consistent performance though but at the higher cost and can scale up and down the full product range.

If you did a fair comparison mikrotik is faster for the price. For example with hardware NAT the mikrotik hEX can do gigabit speeds and costs only $69. At the $300 price mark the RB1100AHX2 is bottlenecked by the fact that it uses switch chips but you can get a total of 4Gb/s through the use of hardware acceleration. Without hardware acceleration the RB1100AHx2 is much faster than the ERPRO and this is the comparison that ubiquiti didnt make, rather they compared the ERPRO using hardware acceleration to the RB1100AHx2 without hardware acceleration used. Just wait till you start using QoS and the tables start turning.

[System Error Message]

4 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

The ER-X's aren't powerful enough and don't have enough onboard storage/memory to deal with their load. Originally DPI wasn't introduced because the system couldn't handle it. 

The ER-X uses mediatek's SoC, its a dual core MIPS clocked higher than the ERL. Both have the same amount of onboard storage and memory. The mediatek's SoC is much better than the SoC used in the ERL. You should however go through the block diagram to see for yourself. The mediatek's SoC is also much newer.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

The ER-X uses mediatek's SoC, its a dual core MIPS clocked higher than the ERL. Both have the same amount of onboard storage and memory. The mediatek's SoC is much better than the SoC used in the ERL. You should however go through the block diagram to see for yourself. The mediatek's SoC is also much newer.

No -  the ERX's have 256MB RAM and 256MB storage while the ERL and ERPoE5 have 512MB RAM and 2GB storage. Ubiquiti even state in their release notes for each firmware revision that ERX customers may have issues with storage capacity of previous images. 

 

As I said, I have been selling, installing and configuring Ubiquiti products for quite a while. 

[System Error Message]

In summary what i'm saying regardless of peoples experiences is factually the ubiquiti edgerouter line is the weakest product that ubiquiti has to offer and has been overglorified too many times. Its still better than consumer routers but the marketing and information they provide for it is misleading. If you're in the market for a router for consumer use than ubiquiti edgerouters are better than the consumer line but pfsense and mikrotik are much better than ubiquiti when it comes to routers and other things like UTM distros are much better too.

 

The ER-X does have a better CPU, im talking about the more recent models that are dual core not the older single core ones. 256MB of ram is easily more than enough for being a router, its only if you plan to run other things that you may run into trouble.

 

So if you're looking at ubiquiti dont look at the edgerouter line, its not as good as they say. Look at their other products instead that are much better. I even see some with outdated knowledge as they do have very decent indoor AC wifi APs. You will be hard pressed to find outdoor APs with 4x4 MU-MIMO because their main purpose isnt really to provide wifi to normal wifi clients with that huge tx power of theirs, its mainly for directional wifi or wifi bridging as with each channel/stream you need an antenna for it. Trying to align 4 dishes from the same AP to another is a chore as you want to avoid aligning 2 dishes with the same dish.

 

Many seem to misunderstand the different purposes of their product lines or even other business providers as well.

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

If you did a fair comparison mikrotik is faster for the price. For example with hardware NAT the mikrotik hEX can do gigabit speeds and costs only $69. At the $300 price mark the RB1100AHX2 is bottlenecked by the fact that it uses switch chips but you can get a total of 4Gb/s through the use of hardware acceleration. Without hardware acceleration the RB1100AHx2 is much faster than the ERPRO and this is the comparison that ubiquiti didnt make, rather they compared the ERPRO using hardware acceleration to the RB1100AHx2 without hardware acceleration used. Just wait till you start using QoS and the tables start turning.

Thanks, merely curious. Not going to be running either for anything except for the one ERL-3 I have running at my friends place. Only thing that would interest me from Mikrotik is MPLS/VPLS support.

[skywake]

@Windspeed36

To be fair to the Edgerouter X, it is a pretty cheap device. And for the average home user the performance issues won't come up anyways. Most home users don't have >200Mbps internet connections. And anyways, it's probably better than most of the cheap off-the-shelf routers most people use.

 

I can only speak for my own setup because I haven't used them outside of that. But I recently replaced an old Netgear (circa ~2013, Netgear) with an Edgerouter X. On my crappy 8Mbps Australian internet? It's noticeably better. And I don't think it's just a placebo effect either. Is it because my old router was playing up? Maybe. But it's still quite a bit better than I remember the old router ever being.

 

It's a similar deal with the WiFi. I used to run a mix of DLink and Netgear access points. And it was ok. But there were always weird connectivity issues. Fair enough when I only had one access point not having decent coverage. But odd issues still cropping up with two? So as infomercial as this sounds I did bite the bullet and get a couple of AC Lites. Haven't had an issue with WiFi since. Are they the fastest access points ever? Well no. But what good is fast if you keep losing connectivity? Especially if you have crappy internet anyways......

[DominicNikon]

2 hours ago, Windspeed36 said:

• Their equipment is okay - it's pretty good for the price but still leaves a lot to be desired. If you know Vyatta CLI then you can do most things but there is still quite a bit missing from the GUI on the EdgeRouter. 
• UniFi's router GUI is a complete joke as far as features go. You should not buy a UniFi gateway.
• UniFi AP's are decent for home/SOHO use however they don't have anything great in the way of enterprise features. 

 

Keep in mind I've got about 3 years of experience selling, installing and configuring UniFi and EdgeMax devices. 

can you hook up unifi aps to a netgear night hawk?

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, skywake said:

It's a similar deal with the WiFi. I used to run a mix of DLink and Netgear access points. And it was ok. But there were always weird connectivity issues. Fair enough when I only had one access point not having decent coverage. But odd issues still cropping up with two? So as infomercial as this sounds I did bite the bullet and get a couple of AC Lites. Haven't had an issue with WiFi since. Are they the fastest access points ever? Well no. But what good is fast if you keep losing connectivity? Especially if you have crappy internet anyways......

The issue is that they're not home AP. They're marketed as ENTERPRISE AP'S and they are TERRIBLE if you measure them as an enterprise AP. I don't care what people say about price to performance for them. If you want a product to be taken seriously when you brand it as an enterprise wireless access point, you need to make sure you're providing enterprise features. 

 

As an enterprise AP, they have almost no functionality for billing/paid wireless services, they have no reporting features and very limited capability for guest access.

 

From a physical hardware point of view, they're a 2x2 or 3x3 spatial stream dual band fixed radio access point - a very basic AP in today's standards. You've got manufacturers coming out with AP's that have 8 radios that can be mapped purely to 5Ghz. 

 

• They have no support for 802.11AC wave 2 meaning no multi user MIMO. I understand that there aren't currently clients that do this but Ubiquiti have confirmed they don't currently have plans to support this any time soon. I just recently implemented a new wireless solution for a business across 3 physical sites with a 5 year life cycle. I guarantee you'll see MU-MIMO capable devices within 2-3 years. If I'd gone with UniFi, it would be quite out dated when this came around. 
• They use god damn PROPRIETARY POE VOLTAGE. Look at Cisco - they had a heap of proprietary standards for routing and switching, most of which I've forgotten about because no one uses them and even Cisco is dropping them.
• The AP's have known issues with Apple products, specifically older Mac laptops (2007-2013ish era)
• The original UAP-AC: branded an enterprise AP didn't have layer 3 roaming that worked. IT WAS BROKEN  FROM DAY 1 DUE TO POOR DESIGN AND NEVER FIXED.
• They have next to no support. Yeah, their forums are active but good luck with phone support or warranty replacement. Forget anything about advanced replacement. 

 

Ubiquiti really need to take a good look at their UniFi platform and remove the Enterprise Wireless branding because it's not. 

 

 

 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, DominicNikon said:

can you hook up unifi aps to a netgear night hawk?

Yes - provided you use a PoE injector or PoE switch.

[DominicNikon]

1 minute ago, Windspeed36 said:

Yes - provided you use a PoE injector or PoE switch.

so i cant use it unless i have POE?

[Guest]

Just now, DominicNikon said:

so i cant use it unless i have POE?

Correct - all Ubiquiti UniFi AP's require PoE power. The voltage/compliance depends on the specific SKU.