Comment by cassianoleal
1 day ago
I've recently been convinced to implement a Unifi stack for my home network. I got a Cloud Gateway, a 10G switch and a couple WiFi APs.
The Cloud Gateway will be sold or given away. It's utter crap. I'm now building an OpenWRT container on IncusOS as my Internet gateway/router.
The switch is meh. It's easy to admin, which is nice - though I'm having to run UnifiOS on another container on said IncusOS.
The APs are fine. Decent power and the central administration with the switch is actually quite nice.
If I knew everything I know now, I wouldn't have bought any of those but they will do for now.
I love by Dream Machine Pro. Seems to just work and keep everything up to date. I have it running my security cameras as well and it has been pretty much bullet proof.
What needs do you have for a router that the Cloud Gateway is missing or is bad at? A PiHole equivalent is about all I can think I'm missing.
IPv6 support is basic at best. The zone-based firewall is very prescriptive and limited. ACL stuff is not great. To increase the MTU of the physical interface connected to the ISP I would need to hack a systemd unit that did it on boot (I either need it at 1508 so the PPPoE interface uses 1500, or I need to MSS clamp it and have it effectively reduced to 1492). Initial configuration requires the device to be connected to the Internet.
There were a few other niggles, and in the end I just found it easier to do what I need on OpenWRT.
1492 is the default frame size set by unifi on wan pppoe. You neither need to know such esoteric details nor need to set them. “It just works”
You can also modify your frame size: Unifi Devices - Gateway - Settings - MSS Clamping.
In my view , unifi gives you all the power and very good defaults at a very reasonable price. Their nearest competitors (eero on consumer side and ruckus / Aruba on business side) have less features and more price.
just genuinely curious about your MTU use case and why this is required...?
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The MTU thing is a bit bizarre - all connections I've seen on PPPoE in practice (fiber or DSL) used 1492 MTU to fit data into frames (and ISPs configured their routers like that too). What are you trying to hack with this unusual 1508 frame size?
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I really like the DM Pro and have it deployed to an office of about 50 people. It's a pretty no-fuss solution and fairly simple to manage.
For my personal setup, I decided to go with OPNSense and I couldn't be happier. Much more control, at the cost of being a little more hands on.
I think the best (rough) comparison here is MacOS vs Linux (or more accurately in this case, FreeBSD).
I'm slowly in the process of migrating from an EdgeRouter and Edgeswitches (including the 16XG for my SAN backplane) to Unifi. Am comfortable at the command line (and actually just had Claude help me build a bunch of configs and an IaC harness for my whole infrastructure) but the SPOG will be nice - that and Ubiquiti has basically abandoned the Edge* line. This was prompted by not wanting to by having persistent problems with the Cat 6 STP termination and the length of the run between my office and the rack in my garage, and my Mac Studio and Edgeswitch would generally only negotiate at 5gbps and even then be error prone, so I got a Unifi switch with 8 ports and 2 SFP+ and ran fiber to the garage for the uplink, and just a short 10' run between the switch and my studio gave me rock solid 10gig (I just run the controller, for now, on a small VM, with my 2 WAPs, but will go all in when I pull the trigger, though, oof, $2,500 for everything I need).
+1 for Dream Machine Pro. Own one at home and have stretched them pretty far in SMB environments.
I use it with 8 APs in a mesh and a few switches, all UI, and it just works. I also have a lot of success helping out some local SMBs by setting up UI for them.
My UniFi Fiber has an adblock integrated, wouldn't UDM also have it?
I went with eero and really wish I'd gone with unifi
Apart from the shitty software and basic features either missing or locked behind a monthly cost, the network itself is not bad at all, I get 600-700mbps on wifi throughout the house and have my servers wired on 2.5gbe
But the one thing I really thought I was buying into by choosing an amazon brand was ease when it came to buying upgrades, and yet I ended up having to buy extra hardware (like the wired gateway) from ebay and sellers in the US as amazon does not sell their own hardware everywhere
I started with Unifi and it's been pretty great overall. I've integrated all the cameras into Home Assistant, it's all local, and can bridge with HomeBridge so it all shows up and plays nicely with HomeKit as well. Rock solid and very few complaints.
I've had standalone routers, Eero Pro, Google Wifi, TP Link Deco, TP Link Omada, and probably some I'm forgetting. They all had something that just enraged me.
I finally bought a Unifi and I'm very happy with it so far, 6 months in. There's a few things I haven't tried, like rebooting it while it doesn't have an internet connection (I'm looking at you, Deco!), but so far my big complaints are that it's opinionated about the initial setup, and setting up a static IP for a device that isn't connected yet is a serious PITA. I had devices on my old system that I didn't want to have to change IPs (because the computers talk to each other) and that was not easy. If I had to do it again, I'd probably just let it do what it wants and deal with changing all those configs to the new IPs.
FWIW, I just have it as a router, and my Wifi is still some of my expensive standalone Asus wifi routers acting as just access points. I didn't see a point in replacing them when they were working great as APs.
What were your constraints and how were they not met? Looking to buy the same, Dream Machine specifically.
What do you know now then?
See the answer I gave to the sibling comment.