I have nothing but good things to say about ubiquiti. I run their cameras door bell and network switches at my house and have had nearly 100% uptime for years. Their ui constantly improves and it’s very well integrated into home assistant.
Lotta haters out there but this is just advanced as I want to get in my home lab; and the racks are just so cool even with their gimmicky front touch panel, it’s just so sexy when all the displays in the rack sync up on their animations. Whoever designed these things really had an eye for design.
I still use their access points because it's hard to get anything else as good for the same kind of price, but they burned me killing the development on EdgeRouter.
So I've gone elsewhere for cameras, switching and routing.
This release is a nice point in their favour though but I can't see myself going back all in on Ubiquiti.
Their security issues in the past. Their failure to make the EdgeRouter handle DHCP and DNS properly. Etc...
I've since moved to cheap switches that support all port vlan trunks and LACP bonding, then just plug Proxmox into them and run OpenWRT in a VM for routing all the vlans. The Proxmox+OpenWRT combo even supports hot-plug virtual interfaces as more VLANs are lit up, they just pop up nicely in the web UI.
For the APs, TP-Link is less expensive and better performance. WiFi 7 and 10gbit for less money. No need to run a management OS in a VM either.
This. We used to do a lot of Ubiquiti, then the software quality went way down, their own security officer 'hacked' them and lots of other weird stuff. We were already using debian vm's instead of their horrible cloudkey devices (so slow..). We switched to Aruba Instant-On.
We still use some Ubiquiti. Sometimes i use this script on a Debian VM:
I moved the firmware if my EdgeRouter X SFP to OpenWRT, since it has been years from their last security update and recently the WebUI tripped and broke.
The router works still amazingly fine, only their software has some bugs.
> Lotta haters out there but this is just advanced as I want to get in my home lab
IN all fairness, that hate is reasonable. Ubiquity has _some_ things done super well. As long as your needs are addressed by the config/options/UX/API that they expose, you'll have a pretty good experience. As soon as you need to do something that isn't easy, you're going to be fighting your core network infra the entire time and that's a miserable place to be.
Stick to unifi for switches and *basic* routing. Use their LED lighting / Cameras / Access Control and other side-projects at your discretion.
The thing about the UniFi platform is it iteratively improves. Years ago you couldn’t manage NAT rules or DNS from the GUI, though there were workarounds to modify iptables at the command line and preserve customization across upgrades.
Now days, static routes, SNAT/DNAT, and DNS are all in the management interface. So.. things improve, and every time I’m back using EdgeRouters, Extreme, or Juniper elements I miss the low friction of managing UniFi stacks.
Agreed that if you need VRFs for example, DC power, and are working through similar complexity requirements, Ubiquiti is the wrong stack. I’d say Ubiquiti is not heavy weight, but it seems to address 90% of SMB setups.
This is 100a% wrong from my perspective. I host multiple sites using UniFi, old Router/SwitchOS as well as AirOS/UISP. I have many VLANs under management spanning these different variations of "old" and "new" implementations and none of them are "a miserable place to be". Maybe if one doesn't actually understand networking nomenclature or interop, sure. I happen to have a pretty deep networking background - but Ubiquiti products have actually made it easier in many cases to do some of the more advanced things in other routing platforms.
While I don't like many of the shady things Ubiquiti did with respect to OSS and for a while I did try to move away from them. However what I found was the prosumer market riddled with less polished alternatives. Microtik does offer some interesting hardware for edge cases that UniFi doesn't cover, but when it comes to a unified system Ubiquiti have done an amazing job.
The pricing has gotten a bit outrageous. For example: trying to find a reasonably priced high wattage PoE switch in UniFi's line is no longer an easy task. It's tradeoffs all the way down. I have an original (SwitchOS) 48 port GbE & 4 SFP+, full L3 with a >250W budget and replacing it will be rather pricey or I'll have to make concessions.
But overall... There's no better prosumer option - good, bad or otherwise. They haven't enshittified the product with subscriptions / software upgrades and my guess is they're making this move back to self hosted options to actually save themselves money. A win on both sides.
I have nothing but bad things to say about my shitty UDM from Ubiquiti.
It has issues with 2.4Ghz speeds, it randomly restarts because their software is buggy as hell. Their Apple style UI sucks ass and they have a mobile app that you can barely do anything in so you may as well just go to the web interface.
They have no features like proper QoS (smart queueing does NOT count) and even just little things, like not being able to search clients by IP, or ordering by current speed never working quite properly.
It's a fancy UI over crappy code that's been duct taped together. As soon as I move house I'm moving to Mikrotik again. For APs I may keep unifi, as they're very good at that one thing, but their routers/switches suck imo.
I just think £360 for an IP camera is too steep, half would be a no brainier over ring. Their new Lite switches replace stuff that was rack-mountable, not there's no ears are far as I can tell.
I got into Ubiquiti due to their APs being effectively enterprise level features for consumer level prices. Their coverage and quality was a cut above the TP-Link gear I'd used previously (which was, in turn, better than the D-Link and Netgear stuff that I'd tried).
So I am confused by their Camera prices being so high.
I went with Reolink on cameras and NVRs and don't regret that decision. Probably spent a third of what it would have cost for Ubiquiti. There must be some benefit to the extra cost, but I don't think it's one I'll miss.
Especially when they die after 2 years. Bought 3 G4 Pros direct from Ubiquiti and two are dead. Apparently it's just the POE daughterboard but my RMA requests were rejected due to being out of warranty. My cheap Lorex cameras have been running for 8 years now.
They have a lot of camera models, including a lot of cheaper models, starting at €180 for the G6 turret/bullet if you want 4k or €80 for the G5 turret if you want 1080p.
I've been researching options for a new ground-up home network setup in a new house, and so far UniFi stuff is on top of my list. FTTH company will install their stuff up to an NT in the basement, and from there it'd be my setup - a UCG Ultra gateway, couple of PoE switches across the main house and outbuilding, and 2-3 Wifi 7 APs sprinkled around.
From all I've been looking at, looks like it's the most straightforward setup. Fully centrally managed via the gateway, leaves me plenty of options for PoE-powered security cameras and other expansions in the future, can be upgraded on a component basis when desired, and integrates nicely in HomeAssistant. And with all that, not even really more expensive than what seems like much more fiddly alternatives like the TPLink Omada system and others.
Same for me, buying my dream machine pro (and AP's) was one of my few tech purchases that I have zero regrets buying. It is still running strong after a few years and see no reason to change it anytime soon.
Have they been perfect? No, but this has allowed me to control my network how I actually want to control it.
This has lead me to now having multiple Ubiquiti components (with more planned), my most recent was switching away from Synology to the UNAS Pro and it has been great.
Really the only thing I ever bought from them that I really regretted was the tooless mini rack. Was really cool but I have non ubiquiti things that I need to mount and I doubt they are going to actually make a server I can run k8s anytime soon.
Like others have said, the edgerouter issues have left a somewhat bad taste in the mouth, it felt like the product line was being ignored and abandoned for a long time.
And Ubiquiti seemed to get impacted more than other similar companies by supply chain problems that came following covid, but they do seem to have picked up again noticeably over the last 18-24 months, with lots of new product releases.
I love my ubiquity kit, but they annoy me with half finished stuff.
I upgraded my venerable USG with the new UXG as I have gig service now. The gear is great, even supports IPv6, and uses much less power. But… no internal DNS is enabled. So now, I ended up buying a thin client on eBay to roll my own DHCP/DNS. Not fun. It is baffling to me because there’s lots of complex new features in the Unifi stack, and they already had an interface to configure static names in dnsmasq.
I went the Eufy route for cameras as the batteries were a big draw for me.
What DNS features are you missing? Is this a weird UXG limitation?
I have a UCG-Ultra and was able to set up DNS just the way I wanted. My needs aren't extreme, but I was able to set up a wildcard entry (*.apps.domain -> 192.168.x.y) and fixed addresses and DNS names for various hosts.
The configuration is in a non-obvious place now and has moved around a bit over time. Currently it hides in Settings > Policy Engine > DNS. It shows entries that come from the per-host fixed IP/Local DNS configuration (you can't edit these here) and you can create new entries here (like my wildcard or some other random entry).
I ended up with a bunch of mildly compatible products that were a totally pain to manage. It was _amazing_ when it worked well. It mostly does, but on occasional when things went wrong it was a totally pain pain to fix.
My Tp-link Deco system works just as well for my use case. It occasionally decides to use a terrible channel, but that’s fixed with a quick restart or a few clicks in the app.
Ubiquiti is honestly excellent when it works. When something goes wrong, though, their support really falls flat, as I experienced just this weekend when my Dream Wall died early on a Sunday morning. I'm still working with a makeshift network waiting for a replacement.
I set up my home network with their USG (the small square one they don't even make any more) and a couple wireless access points all the way back in 2018 and all of it has been rock solid ever since. In 7 years I've never actually needed to "reboot my router" to fix any kind of weird network problems like is common with whatever consumer junk they sell at Best Buy. It all just sits there, working quietly, and I don't even think about any of it for months at a time.
># src: Mirano Verhoef
># Go into root
>su -
>
># Install all required dependencies
apt update ; apt upgrade ; apt install podman -y ; cd ~ ; mkdir 4.2.23 ; cd 4.2.23 ; wget https://fw-download.ubnt.com/data/unifi-os-server/8b93-linux... ; chmod +x 8b93-linux-x64-4.2.23-158fa00b-6b2c-4cd8-94ea-e92bc4a81369.23-x64 ; ./8b93-linux-x64-4.2.23-158fa00b-6b2c-4cd8-94ea-e92bc4a81369.23-x64 install
This is some of the jankiest install installations I've seen in a long time. Not even using && to stop on an error, just plowing ahead for more errors to stack up.
My issue with this comment is my issue with the original article -- what's the actual source for this information?
As far as I can tell, this article has no actual link back to any Unifi press release, git repo, or other project page about this, the closest the author does is link the downloads from Ubiquiti's site (as in, literally, links to the files, and nothing else).
This is janky, yes, and I'm not gonna shill for Ubiquiti, but for lack of a legitimate source, I don't think this is a fair representation of the actual install steps.
The actual source is this: https://community.ui.com/releases/UniFi-OS-Server-4-2-23/21d... but only accessible if you opt-in to the Unifi Early Access program. We are talking beta software / first release here, so any criticism needs to be looked at through that lens.
After many (many!) years I finally got around to my childhood dreams of building a home network rack, centered around the Unifi stack. I've got the new 10 gig switch, the dream machine SE, a bunch of cameras, and I've been very impressed with their stuff. The experience "just works" and feels like they take inspiration from Apple. The whole camera setup can be "closed" by shutting off outside access, this self-hosting option takes it all a step further for those who care deeply about privacy!
There's one big gotcha with Unifi cameras, where you have to cloud-connect your Unifi system if you want "AI" detections[1] (anything other than simple motion detection). I'm hoping they fix it some day[2], but for now I just have motion detection on my Unifi hardware. If this is a problem for you, make sure you understand the tradeoffs here before you commit to a Unifi system.
Still dont understand why this is such a big issue, and I have been reading threads about it for a year now.
Just turn on cloud access, accept the t&cs and then turn it off again. If you are really scared then you can isolate that device in a vlan or DMZ temporarily.
I run many commercial and residential networks, and this is definitely a non issue for me.
Even this only reviews "Smart Detections" and I have smart detections turned off on my Unifi cameras, because it enables cloud AI. Having the ability to have an AI key to process detections locally would be great.
Also, having to buy extra hardware kinda stinks. Would love to be able to have a self hosted Unifi OS server that can do AI key abilities if the hardware supports it.
If only the system would cope with power outages I would agree. My viewports refuse to reconnect to the cameras and need multiple forgets/adoptions to come back to life. The (wired) cameras themselves take hours before they show up again, except for the (WiFi) doorbell. During this period I can see the all online via the managed ubiquiti switches.
I've been using unfi protect/capture (I self hosted capture for a long time) for years and have never had a forgotten adoption any they almost never go down. I do have everything on UPS now but I never saw the issue before that either.
That said I've only used the wired bullet cams so maybe other models are not so nice.
Really the only downside I've seen is about 5ish years ago, all the bullet cams I bought would die after about .75 -> 3 years. All died with the same issue and I had 100% failure rate with any bought during that time frame. Ubiquiti replaced the ones that died during the warranty period but most died just after that expired.
The ones bought before or after that have been great so the issue was solved but I have a nice stack of dead ones that would work great as fake cameras, especially as their IR leds still light up.
My general impression is that it “Just Works” if you don’t do anything remotely interesting with it.
Want to create a VLAN with no Internet connectivity? Better test that it actually has no Internet connectivity because the setting doesn’t actually work.
Want to use the firewall? Better test all the rules — it’s amazingly buggy.
Want to change a WiFi setting without WiFi going down for a minute or two? Good luck — UniFi doesn’t seem to care about making it work.
Want to find information (MAC, switch port, DHCP reservation, etc) about a device that uses the same MAC address on multiple VLANs? Good luck — it looks like UniFi utterly flubbed either their database schema or whatever interface their front end uses to talk to their backend about it, and it’s very, very broken.
Want to find basically any setting based on online docs? Too bad — they keep moving the settings and not updating the docs.
The thing that made me move off of it was issues connecting to devices on mesh'd APs if the ARP entry for that device timed out on the main AP.
Literally couldn't connect to my mobile phone, and after a lot of troubleshooting (which Unifi does pretty much nothing to help you with) I found that when the phone had roamed to the mesh'd AP, ARPs for it wouldn't get answered. If I forced it back to a wired AP or manually added it to the table... all worked fine. Went unfixed for years, heck, I still don't know if it is...
And all the "alerts" about malicious traffic that a bunch of prosumers seem to love? It's not very actionable for figuring out if it's really a problem nor digging deeper...
Oh, and when they had a firmware update that changed the SSID maximum length from 32 (the spec) to 31. My SSID is 32 characters and after that I could no longer edit the network without a UI error. That sucked.
I'm now on OPNsense and Ruckus APs and while it's not as integrated, I couldn't be happier.
This. They make excellent access points and their lite beam/air fibre products are great.
But UniFi has serious limitations when it comes to anything beyond the basics. An off the self Asus all in one home router actually has more features and capabilities.
Idk about you but I’m rocking a site to site link to my parents house, I have vlans for each segment in my home network (iot, priv etc) with full ipv6 routing and custom filtered dns over https with full network name resolution for all dhcp clients by their hostname on my local subnet domain…
I have complete control over my kids network access, can block specific types of traffic by app type or time based rules. I have high visibility into my WiFi setup and everything is on prem and self hosted and integrated with home assistant…
I took a hybrid approach -- Unifi for everything except the firewall, and a Firewalla for that. I'm overall quite happy with it, although you won't get a single pane of glass for management.
Most people don't want to do anything 'interesting'. If you stray too far from the beaten path, I'd argue that you no longer need or something that "Just Works". You need something very configurable, which, by definition, will let you shoot yourself in the foot.
My current setup is Mikrotik for wired and Ubiquity APs for wifi. Their wifi devices have great specs and are difficult to beat. Mikrotik has decent wifi devices but not only they have a footgun minefield - not exactly their fault since Wifi is difficult to get right, so the more settings you expose, the worse it gets. Mikrotik also logs behind in features (they are still at wifi 6). It's an odd combination of philosophies but seems to work, all the vlan logic is offloaded to Mikrotik. And so are firewalls, etc. Then the voodoo Wifi stuff gets handled by Ubiquiti.
> Want to change a WiFi setting without WiFi going down for a minute or two? Good luck — UniFi doesn’t seem to care about making it work.
I am with you on that. It's things like that that prevent adoption by larger businesses and contribute to the perception that they aren't a serious contender. I previously had an Aruba InstantOn setup(which is focused on SMB), and got really accustomed to being able to tweak (most) settings without any interruptions at all. I could even do things like change channel widths (in one direction) without losing connectivity. What was really surprising on Unifi is that I lost connection when I changed settings for a _different_ SSID, for like a minute. That isn't really acceptable.
They still do a lot of things right though, and it shouldn't be too difficult to get their act together. The devices are pretty decent and at a surprisingly low price point.
I did this in 2023 and my experience has been the same. Had 0 problems other than Sonos being, well, Sonos.
Recently set up CCTV at my parents’ with a Cloud Gateway Max, set up a site to site VPN in 3 clicks and now I can support remotely and their Sony smart TV can see my Jellyfin server.
I did a lot of jobs when I was very young. I wouldn't want someone to draw conclusions about me today based on my failed stint at Burger King, for example.
I really love my Dream Machine. Super reliable. What I don't like that much is their UI. It is super weirdly done. It is not natural to use, at least if like me, you use it once every 6 months or more.
I really wish PC with some good m.2 wifi cards in it were more of an option for wireless. PC based routers are awesome, there's great software. It's just the wifi situation keeping us tethered to very special boxes.
Even openwrt has severe limits. It's up to you to flap on all manners of optimizations and tweaks to what is basically a hostapd.cond file. Hostapd.conf is the gatekeeper of one of the most important connective channels on the planet, and we collectively know so so so little of it.
At least the m.2 & m-pcie cards have finally started getting somewhat better availability. It's still 90% Compex reference designs, but they're somewhat purchaseable, after years of this stuff being super hard to get ahold of. Seems usually to be ~$200, for a card that'll do wifi-7 2x2 5+5GHz (ex: Compex WLTE7002E55, using Qualcomm's QCN6274).
That market is pretty small I think, and it's split with the people that jump right to used enterprise aps for their radios (I'm using 3 rukus 850s for instance)
There was a lot of drama around Ubiquity a few years back. Happy to see the company is still alive and the indicator that they're coming back around to self hosting. All the hardware I bought a decade ago is still running fine (without any of the cloud software) and it looks like their newer stuff would be worth the upgrade (10gb everywhere, easily, at last).
As far as I can see, they still flirt with vendor lock in. None of their cameras supported ONVIF when I researched this previously.
Nice hardware, lame software choices, IMO.
I may be misunderstanding this, but as I recall originally the only way to run unifi was to have self hosted it through an app on a Windows machine on your network, then it went to the cloud, then cloud only, and now it seems to be coming back to self hosted? Good if so.
(UniFi is their app/system to configure your ubiquiti network devices and to gather stats from them, it really did change the networking industry for such a low cost product at the time)
The self-hosted app never went away; I've been running it for the last 8 years or so, first on a MacBook Pro, then a Raspberry Pi, and now a repurposed HP T620 thin client.
They promote their cloud controller pretty strongly, followed by the Cloud Key, which is their own preinstalled self hosting setup, but the self-hosted UniFi Network server has stuck around. (It changed names a couple of times; it was the "UniFi Controller", then "UniFi Network Application", and now "UniFi Network Server".)
Lately they luckly built the console into their router products - UniFi Express, UniFi Cloud Gateways and Dream Machines all have the console builtin and act as controllers.
This is what is confusing about this announcement, is anything actually newly available or is this a rename of the existing thing I've been doing in a container for years?
You've always been able to fully self host their core network controller, and not just on Windows. Linux has always been the preferred platform to host it on. However, the other more specialized apps in their ecosystem like their NVR software, etc was not self hostable independent of their controller hardware.
Right now it looks like UniFi OS server doesn't do anything the prior self hosted stack does already. Presumably though they are planning to roll out some of the other parts that currently aren't in the fully self hosted stack.
The UDM pro has the controller built in. Others have mentioned the Cloud Key, of which there are two versions. The controller software runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. I used to run it in docker on Linux. For years. Quite easy to manage.
UniFi OS Server is similar to the old self hosted solution (the controller) except it can run more of the applications. I used to self host some years ago and only the Network was available. Now the OS supports InnerSpace and Identity too.
Last time I used it (some 8 months ago) there was Windows app and mobile app.
In order to configure, check what was going on I needed to run app on my Windows computer. I was looking into using docker or something like that, but I switched to another vendor.
Recently switched from a UDM Pro Max to a Firewalla Gold Pro and couldn't be happier about the move. Software that works > software that has everything but requires magic to get checkboxes to adhere to a save state-this is a common issue with UniFi Network options. They need far better QA before I recommend anyone use them as an OS.
Might be better, but it’s 4x the cost. Firewalla Gold SE at $509, vs UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra at $129. In my experience, the software does work fine. Works way better out of the box than most routers I’ve used.
From what I’ve seen, Unifi seems like the closest to an "Apple-like" experience - especially given how much more robust their capabilities are compared to most other providers.
I couldn't get my Elgato Key Light Air (or whatever its called) to work on my Unifi network - something was amiss with the WLAN settings that others reported was specific to unifi.
I didn't like how they stopped supporting on-prem Unifi Video server, and only allow you to use it with a hardware appliance now.
They moved beyond "just build good product" and into unwanted cloud services and closed ecosystem.
If this is a re-opening of some of their self-hosting, then great. They're back to par, I guess?
If I were a hospital, financial brokerage, etc, I would use Cisco.
But since we're a small business < 50 employees, with 4 sites (office, call center, colocation, cloud) Ubiquiti makes it unbelievably easy to administer, even though I know I'm leaving plenty of performance on the table in terms of switching performance, latency, QoS, and throughput.
Surprised at S2S VPN performance at these price points as well! More than adequate!
What does “OS” in the name stands for? My first thought was “Operating System”, but that doesn’t make sense when what they are providing is a server via a docker container. No one says they installed the Elastic OS…
Ubiquiti themselves call it “software package”:
> Self‑hosted software package that delivers UniFi Network [1]
My second thought was “Open Source”, but the absence of comments complaining about the license make me believe it isn’t this.
They've borrowed the name from the CloudKey/Dream Machine to make it clear that this will have parity, instead of what we had previously where you could only run some of the apps in isolation that would normally be bundled in the full system image for the CloudKey.
I've been self-hosting a Unifi controller (now called 'Unifi Network') for years in a Docker container, and before that I'd run it on a Windows machine whenever I needed to make changes to the configuration - I assume this pivot to call the self-hosted version 'UniFi OS' implies a future where more than just the Network application can be self-hosted.
What do you like to use the UniFi controller container for?
I've tried hosting the same container before but it never seemed to properly "marry" to my UniFi AP, or it would forget the AP the next day, etc. For now I just use the iOS app which is sufficient to update the AP firmware occasionally, but I wish I could get all the insights of the controller.
I had that problem before. You can fix that by SSH'ing into your AP and setting the inform IP to point to your controller. Just make sure the IP address of the host that's running the controller container is static.
You're probably running what's currently called, I think, UniFi Network Server (at one point it was UniFi Controller?).
That lets you configure networking devices but it isn't the "full" Ubiquiti ecosystem (Identity, Site Manager/SD-WAN/Teleport).
Basically before you could run one "app" (the network management one) locally, but Unifi ship a grid of cloud "apps" that you see when you log into unifi.ui.com .
Now they're shipping the thing that hosts the grid itself (enabling multi-site stuff like SD-WAN and the firmware update server), some more of the apps (Identity) and presumably they'll roll out more apps in the future.
1. This is an official Docker image/container from Ubiquiti themselves - no more relying on LinuxServer.io/jacobalberty, etc...
2. With the "UniFI OS" branding, the door is open to the possibility of being able to run Talk, Protect, Access, etc... on your own hardware in the future.
I toast jacobalberty once or twice a year when I login to my Synology / Docker / UniFi Controller app and gaze upon the pretty graphs and throughput visualizer.
Love it. Thank you kind sir for your work!
As others have said, UniFi had some tough years but that early stuff just works and my uptime is in years.
I love the idea of centrally managing network infrastructure that can be ‘self-contained’ in a local service (whether a device, VM, or container).
TP-Link offers a similar solution via their ‘Omada’-enabled devices. Unfortunately, mixing different brands can feel counterproductive, so there’s significant vendor lock-in.
Does anyone know of a similar solution for OpenWrt devices?
Self answering here:
Seems like OpenWisp[1] is what I was looking for.
I haven't used it yet, but I'm adding it to my bucketlist (currently using Omada, but a bit dissapointed with the sluginess)
You really don't need a Ubiquiti account. They of course make it the default, but you can check a "local user only" box and then just create a local user with a username and password. I really appreciate this about them. You don't need internet to set it up.
(As non-curmudgeonly as possible, this is a genuine question I promise!)
I see a bunch of projects and companies these days calling their product an ‘OS’. I'm not too much of a stick-in-the-mud to not see parallels between traditional OSes and things like Kubernetes (which actually doesn't brand itself as an OS, confusingly enough), but I'm genuinely very confused as to what it's supposed to signify in the branding of projects like these — e.g. this seems to just be a server that runs on Windows or Linux and provides a control panel for your UniFi devices and account. Could someone explain to me what the ‘OS’ is supposed to mean here? (Even if it's something very vague like ‘a sense of being a complete solution’!)
This is great and I hope they release all the other apps that right now can only be added on a Dream Router/Dream machine, etc.
What I would like to see:
1. IPv6. I tried for several days to patch various warts in the Unifi Network Server (the unofficial docker container), to make it run on IPv6 only. Everytime I managed yet another horrible hack in some library they are using, I discovered 4 other bugs that prevent IPv6 only operation. There's always stuff that expects an IPv4 address in Unifi.
2. Managing my own hardware gateway from Unifi UI. I get it that Unifi doesn't make money from supporting this, but it would be very cool. Their gateway is not super complicated, and there are materials explaining how to "adopt" some random device, in the end you still need a cert from the company to make it work.
I have always viewed Ubiquiti and UniFi as serving only the business and enterprise market, not consumer grade individuals like me. I have gotten frustrated with the Netgear and TP-Link grade of WiFi equipment available to the consumer customer and have now ventured into UniFi. My main challenge was just getting a single SSID to work around a large home. Mesh WiFi held a promise until I found out that they really aren’t that good unless you are using backhaul wiring. Companies have been using single SSIDs for decades and that’s where the solution was.
I used to do a wireless mesh with U6 (wifi 6) and I 100% agree with you. But with WiFi 7, everything changes. WiFi 7 wireless mesh is actually faster than hardwiring (mainly because my second AP is connected to a 1G flex mini). A WiFi 7 mesh can actually exceed 1G (using Wifiman, I get about 1.5G). Meshing with a WiFi 7 AP works great for me too since all my devices are only WiFi 6 compatible (for now). Highly recommend replacing your APs with a U7-<whatever you want>
> I have always viewed Ubiquiti and UniFi as serving only the business and enterprise market...
I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Ubiquiti gear in SMB space, but enterprise it is not. Ruckus, Aruba, and to a lesser extent Cisco (Meraki) own that space. I wouldn't trust Ubiquiti gear to handle the densities that Ruckus gear can, for example.
For your home frustrations some cheap Ubiquiti gear and spending the money to cable all your APs will do what you need.
I set up a small Ubiquiti setup with Pi-hole, then moved into a home serviced by AT&T Fiber, which comes with an all in one fiber modem and WiFi hub. I started using it before I could unpack, then did a little research on how I could disable WiFi, DHCP, and/or DNS in order to use my own equipment. The WiFi isn't great in all parts of the house so I planned on setting up APs at strategic points. But of course laziness, fear of stuff breaking and my family getting mad at me, and WiFi entrenchment has stopped me from using any of the equipment I bought. I would one day love to switch back over, but I just don't see it happening soon.
I use ATT Fiber and using the pass-through mode has worked pretty well for me. The main problem is their box is still a piece of shit that they introduce bugs/regressions into sometimes. But that'll affect their own service as well, regardless of whether you use your own device w/ passthrough. So you might as well hook your stuff up.
There was a guy on dslreports selling certificates for $10 each, and you could just load it up into one of the cheap sfp modules off of aliexpress. Plug it straight into the router of your choice. No reason to use their junk. I've done the same with a different provider.
I think he means self-hosted on your own hardware, rather than requiring their Unifi Protect appliances. You used to be able to with their old Unifi Video .
Unofficially (and therefore not supported), you can just take their binaries and run it on your own hardware. But since they only support their own hardware and it's arm64 hardware, you only get arm64 binaries: https://github.com/dciancu/unifi-protect-unvr-docker-arm64
With them adding generic onvif camera support, I might try it again because the other options aren't amazing either.
This launches with UniFi Network and UniFi InnerSpace, which is a deployment visualization tool. I assume they'll add more of the applications to UniFi OS in the future
It turned out to be surprisingly annoying to do this on Debian due to the MongoDB requirement. I forget the exact difficulties but I ended up having to punt and run the container from linuxserver.io.
This reminds me of the types of applications that are installed on the Ubquiti Dream Machine Pro.
Ubiquiti has a pretty smooth setup that works well together, the recent years of reliability issues, updates, and data security issues however has been enough to stop buying Ubiquiti and protect it with other gear such as NetGate firewalls.
The Dream Machine Pro had lost some critical advanced configurability from the ui and command line compared to it's predecessor, leaving a lot of users in no man's land. Some of it has been resolved from what I can tell. I own one and had to supplement it with another device in front of it temporarily. Once things are in production, we usually don't look for reasons to touch it.
If your internet is 1 gig or less, I'll still vouch for the trusty littel EdgeRouter X, there's a great guide on setting up a nice little home network on it to learn which direction your next steps will be like.
Hopefully this proves itself in a year and it's an easy decision.
I've been a unifi user for quite a few years, enthusiastically at first and with somewhat more trepidation as of late. They seemed to have some kind of hardware talent exodus a couple years ago, and also when they stopped having self-hostable unifi video and network. I ended up capitulating and just bought a cloud-key but wasn't thrilled.
But yes, they still seem to be the best for small business / homelab type people who want something more than "the AT&T guy put a box behind the couch in 1998 and i don't know where it went after that" but also doesn't want to have to do opnsense or a bunch of that stuff.
And they've managed to regain my enthusiasm a bit by adding plain-ole wireguard (not even teleport, though i do like teleport for my phone) to their managed VPN options, and now by bringing back self-hosting.
My main gripe about lack of self-hosting is, I have a bunch of terabytes just sitting around i could put my video footage of my front lawn on, and it's free real estate. but since i can't (couldn't) self-host video on it, I would've had to pay like hundreds of bucks (or is it thousands?) to get the rackmount video server from them. But now that this is back, hopefully I can switch back to self hosting if my cloudkey ever dies. So that's nice.
Whoa this is pretty cool. I’m pretty into homelab stuff but self hosting your own gateway/firewall/router can get pretty tiring. I tried OPNSense and it worked great for a while. I tried self hosting unifiOS (I actually don’t get what’s different from the docker one from back then compared to this one) but it gets annoying. Was easier just to buy a cloud ultra for $130.
The OS being proprietary was the ONLY reason I doubted to commit to the platform, but this is amazing. If this actually works, I'm comfortable to 100% commit into their stuff.
This is awesome because of how un-Apple-like it is. With Apple, they leverage the ecosystem and force you to buy everything to make a cohesive experience. Want to have cellular on your Mac? We expect you to buy an iPhone and a laptop and tether.
If you want to have unifi WAPS without the UCG - this enables that. It's awesome that they do that, even though right now, it's the cohesiveness of the Unifi ecosystem that is a big driver in their success.
I will always moan about Ubiquiti's odd software distribution choices. Just publish an OCI image, for goodness sake. "Installer" executables on Linux.. shudders
It's the level above; it's the thing that hosts the "grid of apps" you see on unifi.ui.com or on a Dream Machine, for example. The Network / Controller app is just one "app" in the "grid of apps." (I get the feeling that the current Controller app was also forked at some point and this might clean that up too, but I haven't looked into the software to see if that's the case yet).
To start, it seems to allow for the multi-site coordinated tools like MD-WAN to work with self-hosted OS installation, and they added Innerspace and Identity (which I suppose is necessary since I think that's how the login works) as "launch" apps. Presumably they'll roll more out in the future - ideally you could fully self-host stuff like Protect.
If they add 'Protect' to this, it would make it much easier to start building a unifi network piecemeal.
I already have a debian-running storage server, that would be a good fit for running this, and it would enable me to start adding their cameras without going all-in in and grabbing a new router and access points at the same time.
What is the use case for this? Their cloud gateways are very affordable. Aside from the academic aspects of it I don’t see why I would want to run a home brew version of their cloud gateway.
The only Ubiquiti gear I use are their APs, and have cheaper solutions for routing/switching, so being able to run the controller for the APs as a container on an existing machine is a nice.
I have nothing but good things to say about ubiquiti. I run their cameras door bell and network switches at my house and have had nearly 100% uptime for years. Their ui constantly improves and it’s very well integrated into home assistant.
Lotta haters out there but this is just advanced as I want to get in my home lab; and the racks are just so cool even with their gimmicky front touch panel, it’s just so sexy when all the displays in the rack sync up on their animations. Whoever designed these things really had an eye for design.
I still use their access points because it's hard to get anything else as good for the same kind of price, but they burned me killing the development on EdgeRouter.
So I've gone elsewhere for cameras, switching and routing.
This release is a nice point in their favour though but I can't see myself going back all in on Ubiquiti.
I've moved on from Ubiquiti access points as well. Their U6 simply does not handle VLANs properly, they never acknowledged the issue let alone fixed it. See https://community.ui.com/questions/U6-IW-how-to-trunk-all-5-...
Their security issues in the past. Their failure to make the EdgeRouter handle DHCP and DNS properly. Etc...
I've since moved to cheap switches that support all port vlan trunks and LACP bonding, then just plug Proxmox into them and run OpenWRT in a VM for routing all the vlans. The Proxmox+OpenWRT combo even supports hot-plug virtual interfaces as more VLANs are lit up, they just pop up nicely in the web UI.
For the APs, TP-Link is less expensive and better performance. WiFi 7 and 10gbit for less money. No need to run a management OS in a VM either.
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They just released v3.0.0 of the EdgeRouter software three days ago.
https://community.ui.com/releases/EdgeRouter-3-0-0/33ee3852-...
But yeah they haven't released any new hardware in quite a long time. But nice to see they are still doing development work on the software.
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For cameras, everyone should be looking into https://openipc.org/
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This. We used to do a lot of Ubiquiti, then the software quality went way down, their own security officer 'hacked' them and lots of other weird stuff. We were already using debian vm's instead of their horrible cloudkey devices (so slow..). We switched to Aruba Instant-On.
We still use some Ubiquiti. Sometimes i use this script on a Debian VM:
https://community.ui.com/questions/UniFi-Installation-Script...
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I moved the firmware if my EdgeRouter X SFP to OpenWRT, since it has been years from their last security update and recently the WebUI tripped and broke.
The router works still amazingly fine, only their software has some bugs.
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What do you use the for routing?
I tried a Mikrotik router recently but conoared to the Ubi devices, configuration feels so clunky and complicated.
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Any recommendations on cameras that can be fully local?
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> Lotta haters out there but this is just advanced as I want to get in my home lab
IN all fairness, that hate is reasonable. Ubiquity has _some_ things done super well. As long as your needs are addressed by the config/options/UX/API that they expose, you'll have a pretty good experience. As soon as you need to do something that isn't easy, you're going to be fighting your core network infra the entire time and that's a miserable place to be.
Stick to unifi for switches and *basic* routing. Use their LED lighting / Cameras / Access Control and other side-projects at your discretion.
The thing about the UniFi platform is it iteratively improves. Years ago you couldn’t manage NAT rules or DNS from the GUI, though there were workarounds to modify iptables at the command line and preserve customization across upgrades.
Now days, static routes, SNAT/DNAT, and DNS are all in the management interface. So.. things improve, and every time I’m back using EdgeRouters, Extreme, or Juniper elements I miss the low friction of managing UniFi stacks.
Agreed that if you need VRFs for example, DC power, and are working through similar complexity requirements, Ubiquiti is the wrong stack. I’d say Ubiquiti is not heavy weight, but it seems to address 90% of SMB setups.
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This is 100a% wrong from my perspective. I host multiple sites using UniFi, old Router/SwitchOS as well as AirOS/UISP. I have many VLANs under management spanning these different variations of "old" and "new" implementations and none of them are "a miserable place to be". Maybe if one doesn't actually understand networking nomenclature or interop, sure. I happen to have a pretty deep networking background - but Ubiquiti products have actually made it easier in many cases to do some of the more advanced things in other routing platforms.
While I don't like many of the shady things Ubiquiti did with respect to OSS and for a while I did try to move away from them. However what I found was the prosumer market riddled with less polished alternatives. Microtik does offer some interesting hardware for edge cases that UniFi doesn't cover, but when it comes to a unified system Ubiquiti have done an amazing job.
The pricing has gotten a bit outrageous. For example: trying to find a reasonably priced high wattage PoE switch in UniFi's line is no longer an easy task. It's tradeoffs all the way down. I have an original (SwitchOS) 48 port GbE & 4 SFP+, full L3 with a >250W budget and replacing it will be rather pricey or I'll have to make concessions.
But overall... There's no better prosumer option - good, bad or otherwise. They haven't enshittified the product with subscriptions / software upgrades and my guess is they're making this move back to self hosted options to actually save themselves money. A win on both sides.
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I have nothing but bad things to say about my shitty UDM from Ubiquiti.
It has issues with 2.4Ghz speeds, it randomly restarts because their software is buggy as hell. Their Apple style UI sucks ass and they have a mobile app that you can barely do anything in so you may as well just go to the web interface.
They have no features like proper QoS (smart queueing does NOT count) and even just little things, like not being able to search clients by IP, or ordering by current speed never working quite properly.
It's a fancy UI over crappy code that's been duct taped together. As soon as I move house I'm moving to Mikrotik again. For APs I may keep unifi, as they're very good at that one thing, but their routers/switches suck imo.
I just think £360 for an IP camera is too steep, half would be a no brainier over ring. Their new Lite switches replace stuff that was rack-mountable, not there's no ears are far as I can tell.
The gateways are awesome value.
I got into Ubiquiti due to their APs being effectively enterprise level features for consumer level prices. Their coverage and quality was a cut above the TP-Link gear I'd used previously (which was, in turn, better than the D-Link and Netgear stuff that I'd tried).
So I am confused by their Camera prices being so high.
I went with Reolink on cameras and NVRs and don't regret that decision. Probably spent a third of what it would have cost for Ubiquiti. There must be some benefit to the extra cost, but I don't think it's one I'll miss.
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Especially when they die after 2 years. Bought 3 G4 Pros direct from Ubiquiti and two are dead. Apparently it's just the POE daughterboard but my RMA requests were rejected due to being out of warranty. My cheap Lorex cameras have been running for 8 years now.
They have a lot of camera models, including a lot of cheaper models, starting at €180 for the G6 turret/bullet if you want 4k or €80 for the G5 turret if you want 1080p.
Looking at the various options, £360 is on the upper end (until you get into the insane DSLR lens one)
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I've been researching options for a new ground-up home network setup in a new house, and so far UniFi stuff is on top of my list. FTTH company will install their stuff up to an NT in the basement, and from there it'd be my setup - a UCG Ultra gateway, couple of PoE switches across the main house and outbuilding, and 2-3 Wifi 7 APs sprinkled around.
From all I've been looking at, looks like it's the most straightforward setup. Fully centrally managed via the gateway, leaves me plenty of options for PoE-powered security cameras and other expansions in the future, can be upgraded on a component basis when desired, and integrates nicely in HomeAssistant. And with all that, not even really more expensive than what seems like much more fiddly alternatives like the TPLink Omada system and others.
Same for me, buying my dream machine pro (and AP's) was one of my few tech purchases that I have zero regrets buying. It is still running strong after a few years and see no reason to change it anytime soon.
Have they been perfect? No, but this has allowed me to control my network how I actually want to control it.
This has lead me to now having multiple Ubiquiti components (with more planned), my most recent was switching away from Synology to the UNAS Pro and it has been great.
Really the only thing I ever bought from them that I really regretted was the tooless mini rack. Was really cool but I have non ubiquiti things that I need to mount and I doubt they are going to actually make a server I can run k8s anytime soon.
Like others have said, the edgerouter issues have left a somewhat bad taste in the mouth, it felt like the product line was being ignored and abandoned for a long time.
And Ubiquiti seemed to get impacted more than other similar companies by supply chain problems that came following covid, but they do seem to have picked up again noticeably over the last 18-24 months, with lots of new product releases.
I love my ubiquity kit, but they annoy me with half finished stuff.
I upgraded my venerable USG with the new UXG as I have gig service now. The gear is great, even supports IPv6, and uses much less power. But… no internal DNS is enabled. So now, I ended up buying a thin client on eBay to roll my own DHCP/DNS. Not fun. It is baffling to me because there’s lots of complex new features in the Unifi stack, and they already had an interface to configure static names in dnsmasq.
I went the Eufy route for cameras as the batteries were a big draw for me.
What DNS features are you missing? Is this a weird UXG limitation?
I have a UCG-Ultra and was able to set up DNS just the way I wanted. My needs aren't extreme, but I was able to set up a wildcard entry (*.apps.domain -> 192.168.x.y) and fixed addresses and DNS names for various hosts.
The configuration is in a non-obvious place now and has moved around a bit over time. Currently it hides in Settings > Policy Engine > DNS. It shows entries that come from the per-host fixed IP/Local DNS configuration (you can't edit these here) and you can create new entries here (like my wildcard or some other random entry).
This was basically why I moved away from them.
I ended up with a bunch of mildly compatible products that were a totally pain to manage. It was _amazing_ when it worked well. It mostly does, but on occasional when things went wrong it was a totally pain pain to fix.
My Tp-link Deco system works just as well for my use case. It occasionally decides to use a terrible channel, but that’s fixed with a quick restart or a few clicks in the app.
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Wait the UXG doesn't do DHCP/DNS? The UCGs all do those which is a weird design choice.
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Ubiquiti is honestly excellent when it works. When something goes wrong, though, their support really falls flat, as I experienced just this weekend when my Dream Wall died early on a Sunday morning. I'm still working with a makeshift network waiting for a replacement.
I set up my home network with their USG (the small square one they don't even make any more) and a couple wireless access points all the way back in 2018 and all of it has been rock solid ever since. In 7 years I've never actually needed to "reboot my router" to fix any kind of weird network problems like is common with whatever consumer junk they sell at Best Buy. It all just sits there, working quietly, and I don't even think about any of it for months at a time.
all the replies not getting this is satire :) well played.
Oh I highly doubt it's satire. Some Ubiquiti folks are just like that, even in real life.
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># src: Mirano Verhoef ># Go into root >su - > ># Install all required dependencies apt update ; apt upgrade ; apt install podman -y ; cd ~ ; mkdir 4.2.23 ; cd 4.2.23 ; wget https://fw-download.ubnt.com/data/unifi-os-server/8b93-linux... ; chmod +x 8b93-linux-x64-4.2.23-158fa00b-6b2c-4cd8-94ea-e92bc4a81369.23-x64 ; ./8b93-linux-x64-4.2.23-158fa00b-6b2c-4cd8-94ea-e92bc4a81369.23-x64 install
This is some of the jankiest install installations I've seen in a long time. Not even using && to stop on an error, just plowing ahead for more errors to stack up.
My issue with this comment is my issue with the original article -- what's the actual source for this information?
As far as I can tell, this article has no actual link back to any Unifi press release, git repo, or other project page about this, the closest the author does is link the downloads from Ubiquiti's site (as in, literally, links to the files, and nothing else).
This is janky, yes, and I'm not gonna shill for Ubiquiti, but for lack of a legitimate source, I don't think this is a fair representation of the actual install steps.
The actual source is this: https://community.ui.com/releases/UniFi-OS-Server-4-2-23/21d... but only accessible if you opt-in to the Unifi Early Access program. We are talking beta software / first release here, so any criticism needs to be looked at through that lens.
Also there is the official announcement now: https://blog.ui.com/article/introducing-unifi-os-server
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Their code must be perfect and thus no need to worry about pesky errors.
I think this is like adding overflow detection to a math equation in a textbook.
Things like this get the information out there in human-readable form to be understandable, and error checking would be for the reader.
Or said another way, more like gist.github.com vs github.com/some÷project.git
The fix is a simple as replacing semicolons with double ampersands.
After many (many!) years I finally got around to my childhood dreams of building a home network rack, centered around the Unifi stack. I've got the new 10 gig switch, the dream machine SE, a bunch of cameras, and I've been very impressed with their stuff. The experience "just works" and feels like they take inspiration from Apple. The whole camera setup can be "closed" by shutting off outside access, this self-hosting option takes it all a step further for those who care deeply about privacy!
There's one big gotcha with Unifi cameras, where you have to cloud-connect your Unifi system if you want "AI" detections[1] (anything other than simple motion detection). I'm hoping they fix it some day[2], but for now I just have motion detection on my Unifi hardware. If this is a problem for you, make sure you understand the tradeoffs here before you commit to a Unifi system.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1cifnut/unifi_pro...
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1dbyvan/home_assi...
Still dont understand why this is such a big issue, and I have been reading threads about it for a year now.
Just turn on cloud access, accept the t&cs and then turn it off again. If you are really scared then you can isolate that device in a vlan or DMZ temporarily.
I run many commercial and residential networks, and this is definitely a non issue for me.
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https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/ai-key
Even this only reviews "Smart Detections" and I have smart detections turned off on my Unifi cameras, because it enables cloud AI. Having the ability to have an AI key to process detections locally would be great.
Also, having to buy extra hardware kinda stinks. Would love to be able to have a self hosted Unifi OS server that can do AI key abilities if the hardware supports it.
If only the system would cope with power outages I would agree. My viewports refuse to reconnect to the cameras and need multiple forgets/adoptions to come back to life. The (wired) cameras themselves take hours before they show up again, except for the (WiFi) doorbell. During this period I can see the all online via the managed ubiquiti switches.
I've been using unfi protect/capture (I self hosted capture for a long time) for years and have never had a forgotten adoption any they almost never go down. I do have everything on UPS now but I never saw the issue before that either.
That said I've only used the wired bullet cams so maybe other models are not so nice.
Really the only downside I've seen is about 5ish years ago, all the bullet cams I bought would die after about .75 -> 3 years. All died with the same issue and I had 100% failure rate with any bought during that time frame. Ubiquiti replaced the ones that died during the warranty period but most died just after that expired.
The ones bought before or after that have been great so the issue was solved but I have a nice stack of dead ones that would work great as fake cameras, especially as their IR leds still light up.
Surely the expected solution for that is a UPS on the POE switch?
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Yea Ubiquiti is brutal after a power outage. I got a battery back up for my rack just to avoid post power outage down time.
My general impression is that it “Just Works” if you don’t do anything remotely interesting with it.
Want to create a VLAN with no Internet connectivity? Better test that it actually has no Internet connectivity because the setting doesn’t actually work.
Want to use the firewall? Better test all the rules — it’s amazingly buggy.
Want to change a WiFi setting without WiFi going down for a minute or two? Good luck — UniFi doesn’t seem to care about making it work.
Want to find information (MAC, switch port, DHCP reservation, etc) about a device that uses the same MAC address on multiple VLANs? Good luck — it looks like UniFi utterly flubbed either their database schema or whatever interface their front end uses to talk to their backend about it, and it’s very, very broken.
Want to find basically any setting based on online docs? Too bad — they keep moving the settings and not updating the docs.
Just to reiterate for those that missed it:
If you change the schedule of a WiFi network your entire network (wired and everything) goes down for two minutes.
Just a simple admin policy change… full network outage.
Clown. College.
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The thing that made me move off of it was issues connecting to devices on mesh'd APs if the ARP entry for that device timed out on the main AP.
Literally couldn't connect to my mobile phone, and after a lot of troubleshooting (which Unifi does pretty much nothing to help you with) I found that when the phone had roamed to the mesh'd AP, ARPs for it wouldn't get answered. If I forced it back to a wired AP or manually added it to the table... all worked fine. Went unfixed for years, heck, I still don't know if it is...
And all the "alerts" about malicious traffic that a bunch of prosumers seem to love? It's not very actionable for figuring out if it's really a problem nor digging deeper...
Oh, and when they had a firmware update that changed the SSID maximum length from 32 (the spec) to 31. My SSID is 32 characters and after that I could no longer edit the network without a UI error. That sucked.
I'm now on OPNsense and Ruckus APs and while it's not as integrated, I couldn't be happier.
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This. They make excellent access points and their lite beam/air fibre products are great.
But UniFi has serious limitations when it comes to anything beyond the basics. An off the self Asus all in one home router actually has more features and capabilities.
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Idk about you but I’m rocking a site to site link to my parents house, I have vlans for each segment in my home network (iot, priv etc) with full ipv6 routing and custom filtered dns over https with full network name resolution for all dhcp clients by their hostname on my local subnet domain…
I have complete control over my kids network access, can block specific types of traffic by app type or time based rules. I have high visibility into my WiFi setup and everything is on prem and self hosted and integrated with home assistant…
I took a hybrid approach -- Unifi for everything except the firewall, and a Firewalla for that. I'm overall quite happy with it, although you won't get a single pane of glass for management.
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Most people don't want to do anything 'interesting'. If you stray too far from the beaten path, I'd argue that you no longer need or something that "Just Works". You need something very configurable, which, by definition, will let you shoot yourself in the foot.
My current setup is Mikrotik for wired and Ubiquity APs for wifi. Their wifi devices have great specs and are difficult to beat. Mikrotik has decent wifi devices but not only they have a footgun minefield - not exactly their fault since Wifi is difficult to get right, so the more settings you expose, the worse it gets. Mikrotik also logs behind in features (they are still at wifi 6). It's an odd combination of philosophies but seems to work, all the vlan logic is offloaded to Mikrotik. And so are firewalls, etc. Then the voodoo Wifi stuff gets handled by Ubiquiti.
> Want to change a WiFi setting without WiFi going down for a minute or two? Good luck — UniFi doesn’t seem to care about making it work.
I am with you on that. It's things like that that prevent adoption by larger businesses and contribute to the perception that they aren't a serious contender. I previously had an Aruba InstantOn setup(which is focused on SMB), and got really accustomed to being able to tweak (most) settings without any interruptions at all. I could even do things like change channel widths (in one direction) without losing connectivity. What was really surprising on Unifi is that I lost connection when I changed settings for a _different_ SSID, for like a minute. That isn't really acceptable.
They still do a lot of things right though, and it shouldn't be too difficult to get their act together. The devices are pretty decent and at a surprisingly low price point.
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This was absolutely my experience. I ended up tearing it all out and selling it on eBay.
I run OPNsense now with a Ruckus standalone AP, and it has been bulletproof.
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I did this in 2023 and my experience has been the same. Had 0 problems other than Sonos being, well, Sonos.
Recently set up CCTV at my parents’ with a Cloud Gateway Max, set up a site to site VPN in 3 clicks and now I can support remotely and their Sony smart TV can see my Jellyfin server.
IIRC some Sonos issues are related to STP. AFAIK it's, like you said, Sonos being Sonos. Lol.
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I am more interested in your childhood than your network at this point.
> I finally got around to my childhood dreams of building a home network rack
My childhood dream was to build crazy buildings, before that it was a space explorer. Not sure a home network rack ever made the list!
That's because Robert Pera, CEO/founder used to work for Apple for a few years when he was very young.
Has he said that?
I did a lot of jobs when I was very young. I wouldn't want someone to draw conclusions about me today based on my failed stint at Burger King, for example.
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I really love my Dream Machine. Super reliable. What I don't like that much is their UI. It is super weirdly done. It is not natural to use, at least if like me, you use it once every 6 months or more.
I like the way they do VLANs. It's easy enough that it can be managed by people that don't understand all the low level terminology.
> feels like they take inspiration from Apple
the founders are ex-Apple
I really wish PC with some good m.2 wifi cards in it were more of an option for wireless. PC based routers are awesome, there's great software. It's just the wifi situation keeping us tethered to very special boxes.
Even openwrt has severe limits. It's up to you to flap on all manners of optimizations and tweaks to what is basically a hostapd.cond file. Hostapd.conf is the gatekeeper of one of the most important connective channels on the planet, and we collectively know so so so little of it.
At least the m.2 & m-pcie cards have finally started getting somewhat better availability. It's still 90% Compex reference designs, but they're somewhat purchaseable, after years of this stuff being super hard to get ahold of. Seems usually to be ~$200, for a card that'll do wifi-7 2x2 5+5GHz (ex: Compex WLTE7002E55, using Qualcomm's QCN6274).
Get some access points. Something like the TP-Link EAP610[1] (I have not used one of these, yet).
[1]: https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=11...
Given the context, Unifi access points work rather well for that. Wired router.
I use OPNsense with a Ruckus standalone AP. It has been bulletproof.
That market is pretty small I think, and it's split with the people that jump right to used enterprise aps for their radios (I'm using 3 rukus 850s for instance)
There was a lot of drama around Ubiquity a few years back. Happy to see the company is still alive and the indicator that they're coming back around to self hosting. All the hardware I bought a decade ago is still running fine (without any of the cloud software) and it looks like their newer stuff would be worth the upgrade (10gb everywhere, easily, at last).
As far as I can see, they still flirt with vendor lock in. None of their cameras supported ONVIF when I researched this previously. Nice hardware, lame software choices, IMO.
They support ONVIF now in their backend.
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> There was a lot of drama around Ubiquity a few years back
I've noticed a lot less Ubiquiti hate comments on HN since that one employee got arrested.
I may be misunderstanding this, but as I recall originally the only way to run unifi was to have self hosted it through an app on a Windows machine on your network, then it went to the cloud, then cloud only, and now it seems to be coming back to self hosted? Good if so. (UniFi is their app/system to configure your ubiquiti network devices and to gather stats from them, it really did change the networking industry for such a low cost product at the time)
The self-hosted app never went away; I've been running it for the last 8 years or so, first on a MacBook Pro, then a Raspberry Pi, and now a repurposed HP T620 thin client.
They promote their cloud controller pretty strongly, followed by the Cloud Key, which is their own preinstalled self hosting setup, but the self-hosted UniFi Network server has stuck around. (It changed names a couple of times; it was the "UniFi Controller", then "UniFi Network Application", and now "UniFi Network Server".)
Lately they luckly built the console into their router products - UniFi Express, UniFi Cloud Gateways and Dream Machines all have the console builtin and act as controllers.
And my experience with the cloud key was freaking awful.
Terrible little underpowered device that frequently wouldn't come back up after losing power.
I switched to Aruba because of the cloud key and haven't looked back.
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This is what is confusing about this announcement, is anything actually newly available or is this a rename of the existing thing I've been doing in a container for years?
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You've always been able to fully self host their core network controller, and not just on Windows. Linux has always been the preferred platform to host it on. However, the other more specialized apps in their ecosystem like their NVR software, etc was not self hostable independent of their controller hardware.
Right now it looks like UniFi OS server doesn't do anything the prior self hosted stack does already. Presumably though they are planning to roll out some of the other parts that currently aren't in the fully self hosted stack.
> then it went to the cloud, then cloud only, and now it seems to be coming back to self hosted
It never went cloud-only. You could always self-host.
They've had different versions of cloud hosted offerings over the years. A few companies have also offered their own cloud hosted instances.
There was the little cloud key thing that they had for a while and then there's a version 2 of that.
There's also been a container version for quite a while too.
Gen 1 cloud key: https://dl.ubnt.com/qsg/UC-CK/UC-CK_EN.html
Gen 2 cloud key https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/uck-g2
Container from linuxserver.io https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-unifi-network-applicat...
The UDM pro has the controller built in. Others have mentioned the Cloud Key, of which there are two versions. The controller software runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. I used to run it in docker on Linux. For years. Quite easy to manage.
I run it on FreeBSD arm64 very successfully also.
UniFi OS Server is similar to the old self hosted solution (the controller) except it can run more of the applications. I used to self host some years ago and only the Network was available. Now the OS supports InnerSpace and Identity too.
It has always been self hosted as an option. I can’t speak to any Windows versions, but I’ve always run on Debian.
Last time I used it (some 8 months ago) there was Windows app and mobile app.
In order to configure, check what was going on I needed to run app on my Windows computer. I was looking into using docker or something like that, but I switched to another vendor.
Recently switched from a UDM Pro Max to a Firewalla Gold Pro and couldn't be happier about the move. Software that works > software that has everything but requires magic to get checkboxes to adhere to a save state-this is a common issue with UniFi Network options. They need far better QA before I recommend anyone use them as an OS.
1 of numerous examples: https://community.ui.com/questions/Device-Static-IP-Not-Savi...
A minor UI bug versus not patching multiple security vulnerabilities?
https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/44144642...
Might be better, but it’s 4x the cost. Firewalla Gold SE at $509, vs UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra at $129. In my experience, the software does work fine. Works way better out of the box than most routers I’ve used.
Yeah I use an OpenWRT router that cost ~$125 and should have just about all of the capability of the $500 Firewalla
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What issues did you encounter when using Unifi?
From what I’ve seen, Unifi seems like the closest to an "Apple-like" experience - especially given how much more robust their capabilities are compared to most other providers.
The idea that Ubiquiti pushes out buggy software as production-ready and that we're all their beta testers is a pretty common meme on their subreddit.
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I couldn't get my Elgato Key Light Air (or whatever its called) to work on my Unifi network - something was amiss with the WLAN settings that others reported was specific to unifi.
I didn't like how they stopped supporting on-prem Unifi Video server, and only allow you to use it with a hardware appliance now.
They moved beyond "just build good product" and into unwanted cloud services and closed ecosystem.
If this is a re-opening of some of their self-hosting, then great. They're back to par, I guess?
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That was definitely the case. It's not always the case anymore.
$889 for a SOHO router? Who is this aimed at?
1 bug from 5 years ago?
If I were a hospital, financial brokerage, etc, I would use Cisco.
But since we're a small business < 50 employees, with 4 sites (office, call center, colocation, cloud) Ubiquiti makes it unbelievably easy to administer, even though I know I'm leaving plenty of performance on the table in terms of switching performance, latency, QoS, and throughput.
Surprised at S2S VPN performance at these price points as well! More than adequate!
What does “OS” in the name stands for? My first thought was “Operating System”, but that doesn’t make sense when what they are providing is a server via a docker container. No one says they installed the Elastic OS…
Ubiquiti themselves call it “software package”:
> Self‑hosted software package that delivers UniFi Network [1]
My second thought was “Open Source”, but the absence of comments complaining about the license make me believe it isn’t this.
Any guesses?
1: https://blog.ui.com/article/introducing-unifi-os-server
They've borrowed the name from the CloudKey/Dream Machine to make it clear that this will have parity, instead of what we had previously where you could only run some of the apps in isolation that would normally be bundled in the full system image for the CloudKey.
My guess actually is "Operating System", because this piece of software is required* for operating all your UniFi devices (central management).
* Required if not each should be a standalone, some devices won't work without UniFi OS AFAIK.
I've been self-hosting a Unifi controller (now called 'Unifi Network') for years in a Docker container, and before that I'd run it on a Windows machine whenever I needed to make changes to the configuration - I assume this pivot to call the self-hosted version 'UniFi OS' implies a future where more than just the Network application can be self-hosted.
I used to run in on raspberry pi, it worked flawlessly. Its like a hardware container ;-)
What do you like to use the UniFi controller container for?
I've tried hosting the same container before but it never seemed to properly "marry" to my UniFi AP, or it would forget the AP the next day, etc. For now I just use the iOS app which is sufficient to update the AP firmware occasionally, but I wish I could get all the insights of the controller.
I had that problem before. You can fix that by SSH'ing into your AP and setting the inform IP to point to your controller. Just make sure the IP address of the host that's running the controller container is static.
https://www.unihosted.com/blog/how-to-set-inform-in-unifi-a-...
How is this different than the docker container I am running now? I must be missing a detail or two.
You're probably running what's currently called, I think, UniFi Network Server (at one point it was UniFi Controller?).
That lets you configure networking devices but it isn't the "full" Ubiquiti ecosystem (Identity, Site Manager/SD-WAN/Teleport).
Basically before you could run one "app" (the network management one) locally, but Unifi ship a grid of cloud "apps" that you see when you log into unifi.ui.com .
Now they're shipping the thing that hosts the grid itself (enabling multi-site stuff like SD-WAN and the firmware update server), some more of the apps (Identity) and presumably they'll roll out more apps in the future.
1. This is an official Docker image/container from Ubiquiti themselves - no more relying on LinuxServer.io/jacobalberty, etc...
2. With the "UniFI OS" branding, the door is open to the possibility of being able to run Talk, Protect, Access, etc... on your own hardware in the future.
I toast jacobalberty once or twice a year when I login to my Synology / Docker / UniFi Controller app and gaze upon the pretty graphs and throughput visualizer.
Love it. Thank you kind sir for your work!
As others have said, UniFi had some tough years but that early stuff just works and my uptime is in years.
I'm not seeing an official docker image...
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I love the idea of centrally managing network infrastructure that can be ‘self-contained’ in a local service (whether a device, VM, or container).
TP-Link offers a similar solution via their ‘Omada’-enabled devices. Unfortunately, mixing different brands can feel counterproductive, so there’s significant vendor lock-in.
Does anyone know of a similar solution for OpenWrt devices?
Self answering here: Seems like OpenWisp[1] is what I was looking for. I haven't used it yet, but I'm adding it to my bucketlist (currently using Omada, but a bit dissapointed with the sluginess)
[1] https://openwisp.org/
> Next, we need to log in with our Ubiquiti account.
Right. They don't learn.
> You can also proceed without an Ubiquiti account
Can you? Or you have to make one and only then maybe possibly to some extent run the thing without one?
You really don't need a Ubiquiti account. They of course make it the default, but you can check a "local user only" box and then just create a local user with a username and password. I really appreciate this about them. You don't need internet to set it up.
Good. Did they fix their APs too or those can't be initialized without an account still?
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Original announcement from UniFI: https://blog.ui.com/article/introducing-unifi-os-server
(As non-curmudgeonly as possible, this is a genuine question I promise!)
I see a bunch of projects and companies these days calling their product an ‘OS’. I'm not too much of a stick-in-the-mud to not see parallels between traditional OSes and things like Kubernetes (which actually doesn't brand itself as an OS, confusingly enough), but I'm genuinely very confused as to what it's supposed to signify in the branding of projects like these — e.g. this seems to just be a server that runs on Windows or Linux and provides a control panel for your UniFi devices and account. Could someone explain to me what the ‘OS’ is supposed to mean here? (Even if it's something very vague like ‘a sense of being a complete solution’!)
It combines several major software packages into one release and OS.
Think of it more like a vendor distro
So it's used to mean a joint release of several different software packages?
Thank you!
This is great and I hope they release all the other apps that right now can only be added on a Dream Router/Dream machine, etc.
What I would like to see:
1. IPv6. I tried for several days to patch various warts in the Unifi Network Server (the unofficial docker container), to make it run on IPv6 only. Everytime I managed yet another horrible hack in some library they are using, I discovered 4 other bugs that prevent IPv6 only operation. There's always stuff that expects an IPv4 address in Unifi.
2. Managing my own hardware gateway from Unifi UI. I get it that Unifi doesn't make money from supporting this, but it would be very cool. Their gateway is not super complicated, and there are materials explaining how to "adopt" some random device, in the end you still need a cert from the company to make it work.
I have always viewed Ubiquiti and UniFi as serving only the business and enterprise market, not consumer grade individuals like me. I have gotten frustrated with the Netgear and TP-Link grade of WiFi equipment available to the consumer customer and have now ventured into UniFi. My main challenge was just getting a single SSID to work around a large home. Mesh WiFi held a promise until I found out that they really aren’t that good unless you are using backhaul wiring. Companies have been using single SSIDs for decades and that’s where the solution was.
I used to do a wireless mesh with U6 (wifi 6) and I 100% agree with you. But with WiFi 7, everything changes. WiFi 7 wireless mesh is actually faster than hardwiring (mainly because my second AP is connected to a 1G flex mini). A WiFi 7 mesh can actually exceed 1G (using Wifiman, I get about 1.5G). Meshing with a WiFi 7 AP works great for me too since all my devices are only WiFi 6 compatible (for now). Highly recommend replacing your APs with a U7-<whatever you want>
But my wired network is already 2.5G and some devices are 10G compatible.
Interesting. That’s sounds really promising. Please tell me more. Are there any YouTube videos or resources you can point to?
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> I have always viewed Ubiquiti and UniFi as serving only the business and enterprise market...
I've gotten a lot of mileage out of Ubiquiti gear in SMB space, but enterprise it is not. Ruckus, Aruba, and to a lesser extent Cisco (Meraki) own that space. I wouldn't trust Ubiquiti gear to handle the densities that Ruckus gear can, for example.
For your home frustrations some cheap Ubiquiti gear and spending the money to cable all your APs will do what you need.
I set up a small Ubiquiti setup with Pi-hole, then moved into a home serviced by AT&T Fiber, which comes with an all in one fiber modem and WiFi hub. I started using it before I could unpack, then did a little research on how I could disable WiFi, DHCP, and/or DNS in order to use my own equipment. The WiFi isn't great in all parts of the house so I planned on setting up APs at strategic points. But of course laziness, fear of stuff breaking and my family getting mad at me, and WiFi entrenchment has stopped me from using any of the equipment I bought. I would one day love to switch back over, but I just don't see it happening soon.
I use ATT Fiber and using the pass-through mode has worked pretty well for me. The main problem is their box is still a piece of shit that they introduce bugs/regressions into sometimes. But that'll affect their own service as well, regardless of whether you use your own device w/ passthrough. So you might as well hook your stuff up.
Same. Pass through mode FTW. Was very glad this was an option and works.
ATT fiber pass through -> UniFi Security Gateway -> UniFi 8 port Witch w/ PoE -> UniFi AC Pro WAP
Awesome combo with uptime in years.
There was a guy on dslreports selling certificates for $10 each, and you could just load it up into one of the cheap sfp modules off of aliexpress. Plug it straight into the router of your choice. No reason to use their junk. I've done the same with a different provider.
This is interesting--do you have a link to the sale or instructions as to how that was working?
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This is full circle. You used to be able to host the unifi stack on anything that would run Java. Glad to see them returning to their roots!
It would be cool if they brought back the self-hosted security camera solution UniFi Protect.
Im pretty sure it never went away?
I think he means self-hosted on your own hardware, rather than requiring their Unifi Protect appliances. You used to be able to with their old Unifi Video .
Unofficially (and therefore not supported), you can just take their binaries and run it on your own hardware. But since they only support their own hardware and it's arm64 hardware, you only get arm64 binaries: https://github.com/dciancu/unifi-protect-unvr-docker-arm64
With them adding generic onvif camera support, I might try it again because the other options aren't amazing either.
You could always self-host UniFi Network. https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012282453-Self-Host...
This launches with UniFi Network and UniFi InnerSpace, which is a deployment visualization tool. I assume they'll add more of the applications to UniFi OS in the future
It turned out to be surprisingly annoying to do this on Debian due to the MongoDB requirement. I forget the exact difficulties but I ended up having to punt and run the container from linuxserver.io.
What hardware were you using to host it?
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This reminds me of the types of applications that are installed on the Ubquiti Dream Machine Pro.
Ubiquiti has a pretty smooth setup that works well together, the recent years of reliability issues, updates, and data security issues however has been enough to stop buying Ubiquiti and protect it with other gear such as NetGate firewalls.
The Dream Machine Pro had lost some critical advanced configurability from the ui and command line compared to it's predecessor, leaving a lot of users in no man's land. Some of it has been resolved from what I can tell. I own one and had to supplement it with another device in front of it temporarily. Once things are in production, we usually don't look for reasons to touch it.
If your internet is 1 gig or less, I'll still vouch for the trusty littel EdgeRouter X, there's a great guide on setting up a nice little home network on it to learn which direction your next steps will be like.
Hopefully this proves itself in a year and it's an easy decision.
This looks to be an executable that deploys podman containers for you, that is bizarre, and makes me question why it's called Unifi 'OS'?
Yes, a virtual appliance or system image a la Home Assistant OS would seem like a better fit...
That would make it impossible to deploy it next to other services on an existing machine... why would you want less flexibility?
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Or just a docker-compose file, since it's already in container format.
Does it support UniFi Deep Packet Inspection (DPI)? https://www.unihosted.com/blog/understanding-unifi-deep-pack...
So UniFi stack is the better alternative to Ring (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44620002)?
Is UniFi the sweetspot for prosumer networking if one wants switches, APs, cameras, etc. without a CCNP?
I've been a unifi user for quite a few years, enthusiastically at first and with somewhat more trepidation as of late. They seemed to have some kind of hardware talent exodus a couple years ago, and also when they stopped having self-hostable unifi video and network. I ended up capitulating and just bought a cloud-key but wasn't thrilled.
But yes, they still seem to be the best for small business / homelab type people who want something more than "the AT&T guy put a box behind the couch in 1998 and i don't know where it went after that" but also doesn't want to have to do opnsense or a bunch of that stuff.
And they've managed to regain my enthusiasm a bit by adding plain-ole wireguard (not even teleport, though i do like teleport for my phone) to their managed VPN options, and now by bringing back self-hosting.
My main gripe about lack of self-hosting is, I have a bunch of terabytes just sitting around i could put my video footage of my front lawn on, and it's free real estate. but since i can't (couldn't) self-host video on it, I would've had to pay like hundreds of bucks (or is it thousands?) to get the rackmount video server from them. But now that this is back, hopefully I can switch back to self hosting if my cloudkey ever dies. So that's nice.
So I’m confused, this is just the network management appliance right, you can’t use this to make a switch or firewall?
Seems like a strange sink of capex because the pocket sized network appliance is cheep.
Cameras, networking, door controls, etc.
Yes it has the whole UniFi Network piece, which is various unifi routers, switches, wireless access points, wireless mesh units, etc.
Whoa this is pretty cool. I’m pretty into homelab stuff but self hosting your own gateway/firewall/router can get pretty tiring. I tried OPNSense and it worked great for a while. I tried self hosting unifiOS (I actually don’t get what’s different from the docker one from back then compared to this one) but it gets annoying. Was easier just to buy a cloud ultra for $130.
The OS being proprietary was the ONLY reason I doubted to commit to the platform, but this is amazing. If this actually works, I'm comfortable to 100% commit into their stuff.
This is awesome because of how un-Apple-like it is. With Apple, they leverage the ecosystem and force you to buy everything to make a cohesive experience. Want to have cellular on your Mac? We expect you to buy an iPhone and a laptop and tether.
If you want to have unifi WAPS without the UCG - this enables that. It's awesome that they do that, even though right now, it's the cohesiveness of the Unifi ecosystem that is a big driver in their success.
> If you want to have unifi WAPS without the UCG - this enables that.
You could always do this. UniFi Network always had a self-install option.
Even better - you don't even have to run Network - UniFi APs have standalone mode - https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/12594679474071-Standal...
Love Ubiquiti devices. Easy to manage in environments who don't have strict requirements.
I will always moan about Ubiquiti's odd software distribution choices. Just publish an OCI image, for goodness sake. "Installer" executables on Linux.. shudders
Any hardware recommendation to run unifi on? Curious what people recommend for that kind of staff
A small NUC or similar SFF PC with 4GB+ RAM and an SSD works perfectly - I run mine on a Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB) with minimal resource usage.
thank you kind stranger!
Raspberry is godsent
Just bought a dream 7 and so far it’s the best router I’ve owned. The software portal is a cut above
I have a full Ubiquiti stack at home (router, switches, cameras and APs) and they are great products. The UI keeps getting better and that’s a plus!
I'm curious how is this different from the controller software.
It's the level above; it's the thing that hosts the "grid of apps" you see on unifi.ui.com or on a Dream Machine, for example. The Network / Controller app is just one "app" in the "grid of apps." (I get the feeling that the current Controller app was also forked at some point and this might clean that up too, but I haven't looked into the software to see if that's the case yet).
To start, it seems to allow for the multi-site coordinated tools like MD-WAN to work with self-hosted OS installation, and they added Innerspace and Identity (which I suppose is necessary since I think that's how the login works) as "launch" apps. Presumably they'll roll more out in the future - ideally you could fully self-host stuff like Protect.
What is the advantage of using this over existing OSS solutions?
are there OSS solutions for controlling/configuring unify hardware?
There are not.
If they add 'Protect' to this, it would make it much easier to start building a unifi network piecemeal.
I already have a debian-running storage server, that would be a good fit for running this, and it would enable me to start adding their cameras without going all-in in and grabbing a new router and access points at the same time.
Pepperidge Farm remembers that Unifi Protect used to be self-hostable up to version 3.11. I wish it still was so I could have it on my NAS.
What is the use case for this? Their cloud gateways are very affordable. Aside from the academic aspects of it I don’t see why I would want to run a home brew version of their cloud gateway.
The only Ubiquiti gear I use are their APs, and have cheaper solutions for routing/switching, so being able to run the controller for the APs as a container on an existing machine is a nice.
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