is ubiquiti any good?

[DominicNikon]

Just now, Windspeed36 said:

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

im new at this. how do you get POE? i dont think the nighthawk has it?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, DominicNikon said:

im new at this. how do you get POE? i dont think the nighthawk has it?

Few routers have it. You'll need a PoE switch or a PoE injector. 

[DominicNikon]

18 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

Few routers have it. You'll need a PoE switch or a PoE injector. 

have you herd of this?

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-High-performance-AC3000-Tri-band-System/dp/B01K4CZOBS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475611555&sr=8-1&keywords=netgear+orbi&th=1&tag=linus21-20

[skywake]

@Windspeed36

I trust that all of what you're saying is true. But here's the thing, I'm not talking about them as enterprise products. I'm talking about them as an alternative for the consumer grade stuff that you can get for about the same price.

 

Ignoring my second AP for a second, the Edgerouter X + AC Lite combo? That was about $230AU. Not far off the price of my previous Netgear N600 combo unit a few years ago. And sure, for that price you could an AC1900 router/AP combo from TP-Link. And maybe that is case and point. But I'd wager that the pair of Ubiquiti devices would be far more reliable. I've been through far too many routers and APs shopping for price and I don't think I'm the only one. And that's why it gets a lot of praise. 

[System Error Message]

36 minutes ago, Windspeed36 said:

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. 

 

 

 

It is better to have a dedicated server for the task of billing as the APs dont have much hardware resources. Sure mikrotik has such a thing and since all their hardware runs the same OS the APs do too, but i've read about issues with https redirection and the limited hardware resources. Same thing with WPA2 enterprise using radius server, having a dedicated router/server perform the task rather than the AP is much better in terms of management, performance and reliability.

 

Can you name any enterprise product with wave 2 MU-MIMO within the same price range?

 

Actually ubiquiti APs can be powered by other sort of POE stuff, its not proprietary, Infact one combo is to get the mikrotik RB3011 with a ubiquiti AC AP and use the POE out to power it. As long as the POE standards match and there is enough watts they will negotiate the voltage needed.

 

You need to remember that ubiquiti is an alternative. These so called "cisco alternatives" arent as good as cisco themselves but when you dont need to pay top dollar for top of the line you can get away with less, its more to do with your requirements. For many their requirements dont require a professional cisco gear.

 

Only the ubiquiti edgerouters are not enterprise gear, this is because the restriction in configuration is similar to that with consumer routers in that every linux/unix OS is capable of setting that configuration that ubiquiti edgerouters cant. This was done by design.

I can understand your frustration with ubiquiti, their marketing is very misleading.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

It is better to have a dedicated server for the task of billing as the APs dont have much hardware resources. Sure mikrotik has such a thing and since all their hardware runs the same OS the APs do too, but i've read about issues with https redirection and the limited hardware resources. Same thing with WPA2 enterprise using radius server, having a dedicated router/server perform the task rather than the AP is much better in terms of management, performance and reliability.

 

Can you name any enterprise product with wave 2 MU-MIMO within the same price range?

 

Actually ubiquiti APs can be powered by other sort of POE stuff, its not proprietary, Infact one combo is to get the mikrotik RB3011 with a ubiquiti AC AP and use the POE out to power it. As long as the POE standards match and there is enough watts they will negotiate the voltage needed.

 

You need to remember that ubiquiti is an alternative. These so called "cisco alternatives" arent as good as cisco themselves but when you dont need to pay top dollar for top of the line you can get away with less, its more to do with your requirements. For many their requirements dont require a professional cisco gear.

 

Only the ubiquiti edgerouters are not enterprise gear, this is because the restriction in configuration is similar to that with consumer routers in that every linux/unix OS is capable of setting that configuration that ubiquiti edgerouters cant. This was done by design.

 

I seriously don't get how you can defend their UniFi line up? Sure they don't have to have the features given their price but they cannot advertise the product as ENTERPRISE if it DOESN'T have those features.

 

• Billing should not be handled by a local 3rd party server. Meraki do it through their AP's directly and link to PayPal as do Xirrus, Cisco and many others.
• See my above comment - look into Xirrus, $800 USD starting for AC wave 2 AP's.
• Look into the Lite/LR series as well as certain other products. They don't support 802.3af or at PoE and use a proprietary version of the 24V PoE standards so they can run at 24V - I have this information courtesy of a UBNT engineer.
• NO - they're not an alternative. They're a product marketed at enterprise environments but fall far short of what they're advertised to do. Cisco isn't the be all end all of wireless - Aruba, Meraki, Xirrus, Dell and Allied Telesis just to name a few are some of the big names when it comes to wireless. 

Ubiquiti need to rebrand their equipment to be SOHO or small business to compete with D-Link professional, Linksys, Netgear and OpenMesh. You can't put a Ubiquiti AP up against a Xirrus 620 despite being similarly priced because the 630 offers so much more that a UAP-AC-Pro can't do. (Reporting and edge of network application control being 2 big ones)

 

 

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

Actually ubiquiti APs can be powered by other sort of POE stuff, its not proprietary

Some models use IEEE compliant PoE and some do not. For the ones that do not you must use the Ubnt injector or risk damaging the AP.

 

8 minutes ago, System Error Message said:

These so called "cisco alternatives" arent as good as cisco themselves but when you dont need to pay top dollar for top of the line you can get away with less

Cisco wireless I wouldn't rate as the best, personally I'd give that crown to Aruba.

 

Coming from a rather strong background in enterprise networking and enterprise wireless solutions Ubnt is nothing in comparison to the likes of Aruba, even comparing them is an insult to Aruba.

 

Aruba = Enterprise

Ubnt = Small Business 

[System Error Message]

1 minute ago, Windspeed36 said:

I seriously don't get how you can defend their UniFi line up? Sure they don't have to have the features given their price but they cannot advertise the product as ENTERPRISE if it DOESN'T have those features.

 

• Billing should not be handled by a local 3rd party server. Meraki do it through their AP's directly and link to PayPal as do Xirrus, Cisco and many others.
• See my above comment - look into Xirrus, $800 USD starting for AC wave 2 AP's.
• Look into the Lite/LR series as well as certain other products. They don't support 802.3af or at PoE and use a proprietary version of the 24V PoE standards so they can run at 24V - I have this information courtesy of a UBNT engineer.
• NO - they're not an alternative. They're a product marketed at enterprise environments but fall far short of what they're advertised to do. Cisco isn't the be all end all of wireless - Aruba, Meraki, Xirrus, Dell and Allied Telesis just to name a few are some of the big names when it comes to wireless. 

Ubiquiti need to rebrand their equipment to be SOHO or small business to compete with D-Link professional, Linksys, Netgear and OpenMesh. You can't put a Ubiquiti AP up against a Xirrus 620 despite being similarly priced because the 630 offers so much more that a UAP-AC-Pro can't do. (Reporting and edge of network application control being 2 big ones)

 

 

Its the term you get what you pay for. For your info despite having both brands i dont use ubiquiti. I use asus to provide wifi and mikrotik as a router. So if you're buying for something serious you need to do your research.

 

I always mention ubiquiti about their marketing and giving misleading information, i dont defend them.

[System Error Message]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Some models use IEEE compliant PoE and some do not. For the ones that do not you must use the Ubnt injector or risk damaging the AP.

 

Cisco wireless I wouldn't rate as the best, personally I'd give that crown to Aruba.

 

Coming from a rather strong background in enterprise networking and enterprise wireless solutions Ubnt is nothing in comparison to the likes of Aruba, even comparing them is an insult to Aruba.

 

Aruba = Enterprise

Ubnt = Small Business 

I wouldnt use ubiquiti in an enterprise environment unless i only needed basic APs. Thats the only reason to get a ubiquiti AP, only to provide wifi reliably with all the other functionality not handled by the AP.

[DominicNikon]

what do you guys think about this?

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-High-performance-AC3000-Tri-band-System/dp/B01K4CZOBS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475611555&sr=8-1&keywords=netgear+orbi&th=1&tag=linus21-20

[leadeater]

7 hours ago, DominicNikon said:

what do you think in my case?  so at my house we have one netgear nighthawk tri band and were moving into a new house that does not have ethernet built in and it costs to much to get it wired so were going wireless and we need a few more access points and i see linus using ubiquiti

 

23 minutes ago, DominicNikon said:

what do you guys think about this?

https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-High-performance-AC3000-Tri-band-System/dp/B01K4CZOBS/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1475611555&sr=8-1&keywords=netgear+orbi&th=1&tag=linus21-20

 

I must apologize, we have strayed very far from the original purpose of the topic you started.

 

I would keep the current router you have and disable the wireless on it then buy 1 or 2 Ubiquiti access points to cover the house as needed. The big issue already mentioned is getting Ethernet cabling to each access point and I do have to question how many devices you need to network as it may be cheaper to run a cable for 1 or 2 PCs that need it and use a single access point for everything else.

 

Depending on the style of the house it may actually be a simple enough job to run the cabling through the roof space and down the walls to the locations you need.

 

If the house is big there will be no single access point that will give you good coverage through the whole thing, repeaters can work but use as last resort.

[legopc]

On 5-10-2016 at 4:47 AM, System Error Message said:

 

Only the ubiquiti edgerouters are not enterprise gear, this is because the restriction in configuration is similar to that with consumer routers in that every linux/unix OS is capable of setting that configuration that ubiquiti edgerouters cant. This was done by design.

I can understand your frustration with ubiquiti, their marketing is very misleading.

7

Fucking edgerouters run linux... Appearently you have never touched them or you dont know what cli is because you can customize these plenty. And I have touched plenty of equipment to have a vague idea of what im talking about. And man you are totally losing again... get your shit straight

[System Error Message]

2 hours ago, legopc said:

Fucking edgerouters run linux... Appearently you have never touched them or you dont know what cli is because you can customize these plenty. And I have touched plenty of equipment to have a vague idea of what im talking about. And man you are totally losing again... get your shit straight

on the contrary, i run opensuse as my main linux server. I have tried to use the edgerouters like a linux machine. Some of the things you can do are nice but nothing that really helps with routing. I used both SSH and SFTP when im configuring the edgerouter. Being able to use a program like htop is nice but trying to integrate snort, squidguard and clamav together on the edgerouter doesnt work. It does work on raspberry pi or even opensuse. Sure the edgerouters run linux but they cant achieve what you can with a normal linux distro.

 

Heres the fun thing about configuration restrictions. Try to give a static IP address to an interface that has a dhcp client configured on the edgerouter. Every linux machine is capable of this but on the edgerouter this feature is restricted on purpose. A common use for this is when you still want to be able to configure your modem thats in bridge mode so you would define a static IP for it and set it as WAN and do NAT on it (so your PCs can browse and configure modem) and at the same time the dhcp client needed to get IP address from your ISP. This will not work on the edgerouter.

[DominicNikon]

On 10/4/2016 at 10:59 PM, Windspeed36 said:

 

can i have a netgear nighthawk provide wifi to the 1st floor and a  ubiquiti access point upstairs? or would devices have issues switching because i own a nighthawk and like every one here says  ubiquiti is the best

[leadeater]

10 hours ago, System Error Message said:

Being able to use a program like htop is nice but trying to integrate snort, squidguard and clamav together on the edgerouter doesnt work.

Problem is that is trying to run something on a device that is never designed to run it and fundamentally speaking should not be tried. Edgerouters are pure routers nothing more, the mentioned software packages are nothing to do with routers.

 

The fact that a device may be running a Linux operating system and there for should be able to hack on software to the device doesn't mean you should. Sure there are various different reasons to try it but we need to be very clear when using these experiences when drawing conclusions on devices and giving advice on them. Not being able to do something that shouldn't be possible is not a negative aspect of a device.

[leadeater]

31 minutes ago, DominicNikon said:

can i have a netgear nighthawk provide wifi to the 1st floor and a  ubiquiti access point upstairs? or would devices have issues switching because i own a nighthawk and like every one here says  ubiquiti is the best

You could do this yes, but there will be slight issues going between the APs. If you want to go with this I would use different SSIDs and connect to the correct one depending where you are in the house.

[System Error Message]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Problem is that is trying to run something on a device that is never designed to run it and fundamentally speaking should not be tried. Edgerouters are pure routers nothing more, the mentioned software packages are nothing to do with routers.

 

The fact that a device many be running a Linux operating system and there for should be able to hack on software to the device doesn't mean you should. Sure there are various different reasons to try it but we need to be very clear when using these experiences when drawing conclusions on devices and giving advice on them. Not being able to do something that shouldn't be possible is not a negative aspect of a device.

I was responding to the guy who quoted me saying that you can customise the edgerouter plenty so i gave him my example usage.

[DominicNikon]

23 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Problem is that is trying to run something on a device that is never designed to run it and fundamentally speaking should not be tried. Edgerouters are pure routers nothing more, the mentioned software packages are nothing to do with routers.

 

The fact that a device many be running a Linux operating system and there for should be able to hack on software to the device doesn't mean you should. Sure there are various different reasons to try it but we need to be very clear when using these experiences when drawing conclusions on devices and giving advice on them. Not being able to do something that shouldn't be possible is not a negative aspect of a device.

can you help me price out something fully ubiquiti? router and 2 access points?

i will be buying 200-300 mbps when it comes out 

[leadeater]

27 minutes ago, DominicNikon said:

can you help me price out something fully ubiquiti? router and 2 access points?

i will be buying 200-300 mbps when it comes out 

@Windspeed36 Probably be the best for that. I also don't think a Ubiquiti Edgerouter is the best option for you, user friendliness is not it's strong point so if you are not used to business orientated devices it could be a fair challenge to use.

 

Option 1:

Router: Keep Existing $0

Wireless: 2x Ubiquiti AP AC Lite $160 ($80 each)

 

Option 2:

Router: Keep Existing $0

Wireless: Existing + 1x Ubiquiti AP AC Lite

 

Option 3 (I don't recommend this at all):

Router: Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite 3 $90

Wireless: 2x Ubiquiti AP AC Lite $160 ($80 each)

[DominicNikon]

21 minutes ago, leadeater said:

@Windspeed36 Probably be the best for that. I also don't think a Ubiquiti Edgerouter is the best option for you, user friendliness is not it's strong point so if you are not used to business orientated devices it could be a fair challenge to use.

 

Option 1:

Router: Keep Existing $0

Wireless: 2x Ubiquiti AP AC Lite $160 ($80 each)

 

Option 2:

Router: Keep Existing $0

Wireless: Existing + 1x Ubiquiti AP AC Lite

 

Option 3 (I don't recommend this at all):

Router: Ubiquiti Edgerouter Lite 3 $90

Wireless: 2x Ubiquiti AP AC Lite $160 ($80 each)

I don't know but i herd the lite ones are slow? How hard is a edge router to use?  

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, DominicNikon said:

I don't know but i herd the lite ones are slow? How hard is a edge router to use?  

Hard to say how hard an edgerouter is to use, totally depends on networking experience etc. I would say if you have only ever used a home router and also never used linux then beyond what I would say is safe to use, these are a completely different to home devices and if configured wrong puts you as risk.

 

As for the UAP Lite's these are fine, I wouldn't call them slow I would just say the Pro is faster. Two Lites are better than one Pro also.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, DominicNikon said:

I don't know but i herd the lite ones are slow? How hard is a edge router to use?  

 

17 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Hard to say how hard an edgerouter is to use, totally depends on networking experience etc. I would say if you have only ever used a home router and also never used linux then beyond what I would say is safe to use, these are a completely different to home devices and if configured wrong puts you as risk.

 

As for the UAP Lite's these are fine, I wouldn't call them slow I would just say the Pro is faster. Two Lites are better than one Pro also.

Depends - you can use the wizard and it might get you there depending on your setup. If you want PPTP VPN accounts well then have fun with CLI. If the wizard doesn't work for you then you need to setup interfaces, DHCP, NAT, firewall rules and a few other things that slip my mind at the moment.

 

I'd just stick with what you've got and add 2 UAP-AC-Pro's - the lite's are slower in that they are about 800mbit/2 spatial streams. 

[skywake]

All things being equal, here are some benchmarks for different variations of wireless AC. Near-perfect signal, 5Ghz band:

 

AC1200: ~350Mbps

AC1750: ~400Mbps

AC1900: ~500Mbps

 

AC Lite -> AC1200

AC Pro -> AC1750

[.:MARK:.]

I simply don't understand any of the arguments here XD, could someone please make some sense?

EdgeRouters, or pretty much any other product in it's market from other companies, are going to be quite unfriendly to the user and require configuration to work optimally and securely, and generally this is good for people like myself who like to configure things my way and don't use a wizard or some consumer router/ap thing. for those that need to ask, it's pretty much implied that they shouldn't really touch it.

 

Also, EdgeRouters are pretty damn good at what they do, there are alternatives out there on the market, like any other electronic device, and usually it makes sense to choose what is appropriate for your application.

I personally use an ERLite-3, I have this hooked up to a couple of other people in an IPSec VPN and the performance of forwarding with NAT and IPSec is great, no complaints there. The problems arise when you have one and you try to maintain up to date software, their firmware releases are quite rocky. Since they are using Vyatta as a base and that means essentially a debian environment, updating the packages and software on it every few months and breaking things in the process is not great, and CVEs that exist are of the individual packages in the system, so they don't update the firmware when a vulnerability exists, but just when they get around to a major update release.

 

On the other hand, it's quite nice to have a machine like an EdgeRouter, it's as people have said, a linux based system, so a lot of interesting things can be done on it (though some things I think should be done on their own servers). So they can add features easily, like OpenVPN compatibility, while it may be slow since it isn't accelerated, this kind of thing is very flexible because they can add linux packages and a way to configure them into the firmware and it's done. You can also control it like a linux system, like having custom scripts to do things based on an event or some kind of condition.

 

And lastly, while their web-ui is poor, it's just a layer of abstraction to the CLI which is quite extensive, and I find it to be a quicker way of doing simple things like NAT rules, port-forwarding...

 

But these are my opinions on EdgeMax, not UniFi, UniFi is quite garbage from what I have seen.

[leadeater]

15 minutes ago, .:MARK:. said:

On the other hand, it's quite nice to have a machine like an EdgeRouter, it's as people have said, a linux based system, so a lot of interesting things can be done on it (though some things I think should be done on their own servers).

Yep agree rather strongly with that last point. Setup your routing, NAT and site-to-site VPNs with the edgerouter then use servers for the rest, you'll have a much better over all experience with this method than trying to shove everything not only on to a single device but one that isn't that powerful to start with.