Ubiquiti Failure rate

[Jinu]

HI Folks

 

I was planning a major network upgrade for my house and was planning to use all Unifi equipment. However when i search the net for Ubiquiti failure rate i was surprised to find the number of posts talking about the high failure rate of their switches, AP. It seems to have to do POE and their devices overheating.

 

I have to buy unifi equipment at a significant premium compared to what folks in the USA pay, but i love their interface and am ok with the premium, but i am not ok with poor quality stuff that fails within 2 years. 

 

What is your experience on Unifi equipment with respect to untimely failures ?

[RollinLower]

i've been running a Unify AP Pro for years with no issues. and i even bought this thing secondhand!

granted, it is the only piece of ubiquity equipment in my network, but i've never had any issues with it.

[Jinu]

2 hours ago, RollinLower said:

i've been running a Unify AP Pro for years with no issues. and i even bought this thing secondhand!

granted, it is the only piece of ubiquity equipment in my network, but i've never had any issues with it.

Thanks for the prompt response, but even on ubiquiti own forums, you get to see complaints of failure, usually of the power supply, but what is worrying is usually the failures are within 2 years. And from what i understand from the forums, though Ubiquiti has made the power supplies replacement, its still a failure point and the power supplies dont come cheap

[Velcade]

People on the internet always complain the loudest.  It's like those "How's my driving? Call xxx-xxx-xxxx" how many people do you think call and complement the driver?

 

Ubiquiti stuff is great.  I've been using their network gear for little over 5 years without issue.  

[brwainer]

People complain when a device fails, they rarely praise it when it lasts for 5+ years.

 

At the large scale there isn’t an overall issue with their quality, however I do believe that the small gen 1 switches, the US-8 and US-8-60W, have a more fragile power supply circuit. They are also the switches that most people are talking about when complaining that they run hot. The gen 2 replacement, USW-Lite-8-PoE, seems to be a big improvement.

 

Every POE switch from every vendor will eventually experience failures of either individual ports or groups of ports (the active POE functionality is often combined into chips that are responsible for 4 or 8 ports, so that group may die together). POE by its nature exposes the switch to noise and transients that otherwise get filtered out by the isolation transformer at each port. They are especially more sensitive to nearby (indirect) lightning strikes. At my prior employer we experienced higher failure rates for POE switches from Cisco, HP/Aruba, Extreme, and Ruckus - very large enterprise brands. I see no reason why this should be different for Unifi POE switches. 
 

The final point which may sway your decision is that Unifi only has a one year warranty, or two years if you buy direct from their store. All other business equipment brands offer limited lifetime warranty, with “lifetime” usually meaning as long as they continue providing software support for the device, with a well-published EOL schedule.

[Falcon1986]

I haven't had any problems so far after 2 years of use and I've used both the PoE injectors and the UniFi PoE switches.

 

[Knocks on wood]

 

Because power is unpredictable, I have everything on a UPS. And nothing is stacked on the other to worsen heat dissipation; most components are wall-mounted in a well-ventilated office.

[Jinu]

Hi Folks
Sorry guys but the heat issue in ubiquity products is worrying. I happened upon the internal pictures of a Unifi Dream machine (see attached image or refer link for whole FCC document) and i find the thermal dissipation design very poor. This one image tells the whole story. Maybe I am wrong, but I am having trouble figuring out what kind of airflow was conceptualized for moving the heat out of the box, considering that under load this CPU can reach temperatures of 80-90 degrees. Some issues i see
1. The outer box holding the whole thing together has only vents (and that too tiny vents) at the bottom of the device. The top is completely sealed.
2. The fan is blowing air towards the top of the device
3. the CPU is only passively cooled and the fan air, if at all it reaches there will do so with great difficulty
4. The power supply module is not cooled (but might not be a problem as compared to the sizzling CPU)

It almost feels like this was originally designed as a fanless device, but given the number of heating complaints and failures, they added the fan as an after thought. People are coming out with unique solutions to cool their Unifi devices 
- External fan solution for UDM
- External fan solution for USG

 

Anyways i am planning to upgrade to an ubiquity setup, but some of the parts are out of stock so will update on the temp issue one i have my own setup. Keeping my fingers crossed especially because where i stay ambient temps are in the range of 30 degrees C

[Falcon1986]

31 minutes ago, Jinu said:

Keeping my fingers crossed especially because where i stay ambient temps are in the range of 30 degrees C

Then you need to place your gear in a well ventilated area or employ some active cooling. Any piece of electronic equipment will fail much faster if it has to work at high temperatures without adequate cooling.

 

If you have issues with the design of any company's products you should contact them directly and offer your solutions. And I'm not talking about the support forums; that's for end user to end user support. Ubiquiti has a beta section that allows users to test their equipment before it's finally released to the public, so you can try there and send your recommendations.

 

I will say that I've heard of quite a few features being requested (not really related to heat management) by end users but Ubiquiti has yet to implement them after many years. The company has its own interests to take care of as well.

 

What most people forget after they buy Ubiquiti equipment is that their operation model does not offer technical support directly from them. It is up to the consumer to either do it themselves by self-learning or getting experienced third-partiez. This is how they keep their costs down so they can provider pro-sumer grade equipment directly to buyers who are not interested in licensing fees. If you want the ability to have reliable technical support then you should consider another company whose fees you're willing to pay for. Obviously, this model doesn't make sense for the home user as it does for businesses.

 

There are other companies who are trying to use this model as well. I'm quite interested in the EnGenius lineup.