[HN Gopher] My network home setup v3.0
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       My network home setup v3.0
        
       Author : giuliomagnifico
       Score  : 138 points
       Date   : 2022-08-15 10:06 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (giuliomagnifico.blog)
 (TXT) w3m dump (giuliomagnifico.blog)
        
       | Nextgrid wrote:
       | All of that hardware in a _wooden_ box scares me. I 'd recommend
       | keeping all that in a metal enclosure in a utility room where the
       | hardware can catch fire without setting the entire house ablaze.
        
         | giuliomagnifico wrote:
         | Ahah yes correct, I'm a bit scared too. This is why I have put
         | inside the cabine a SwitchBot connected thermostat and I have a
         | Homebridge plug-in that sends me various alerts via push
         | notifications (using Pushover app) when the temperature inside
         | the cabinet goes above "28-32-36-it's_on_fire oC". And it
         | works, see alerts screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/BvEesUD.png
         | 
         | I've explained my setup at the beginning of the post, there's
         | also the "temperatures alerts" in my previous blog post. Also
         | if the temperature raise too much, the A/C above the wooden
         | cabinet turns on and cools down all the hardware. During the
         | night thishappened various times during this hot summer!
         | 
         | > I'd recommend keeping all that in a metal enclosure in a
         | utility room where the hardware can catch fire without setting
         | the entire house ablaze
         | 
         | Yes but you cannot agree with me that the metal racks are
         | terrible/ugly =] I want to have my network things inside my
         | house, possibly where I can see them, and I don't want to have
         | a metal rack inside my living room, see my first post with all
         | the house rooms
         | (http://giuliomagnifico.blog/networking/2022/01/14/my-home-
         | se...).
         | 
         | Anyway I can't say that the fire risk is concrete, as always
         | with electrical things. But I prefer to monitor this risk with
         | sensors and maintenance instead of "move the risk in the
         | garage/car park or cellar" (I also have a fire extinguisher
         | hidden inside a wardrobe, just in case...)
        
           | vladvasiliu wrote:
           | Alerts and a fire extinguisher are great, but what can you do
           | about them if they trigger while you're away?
           | 
           | The A/C starting if things get too hot is great, especially
           | if it doesn't depend on any of said things not being out of
           | order (say because it shut down because of the heat).
        
             | giuliomagnifico wrote:
             | I can turn off the devices remotely if something gets too
             | hot (via WireGuard), but I've never done it for the
             | temperature. But in my house, like every house, there's a
             | fridge, a boiler, the A/Cs, burners with gas, etc...
             | everything could get on fire.
             | 
             | I can also call my parents or neighbors to ask if they are
             | seeing smoke out of my house =] that's the most efficient
             | alarm!
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | > there's a fridge, a boiler, the A/Cs, burners with gas,
               | etc... everything could get on fire.
               | 
               | Most of these appliances don't actually have flammable
               | materials right next to the active components that can
               | catch fire. A circuit board can catch fire but it'll
               | likely self-extinguish because it's in a metal enclosure
               | away from anything flammable.
        
               | giuliomagnifico wrote:
               | My house is all made of wood:
               | http://giuliomagnifico.blog/networking/2022/01/14/my-
               | home-se...
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | I wouldn't be worried about overheating - most hardware will
           | shut down for safety way before you reach temperatures
           | capable of igniting a fire. Instead I'm worried about
           | catastrophic failure (especially of power-related components
           | such as PSUs or that UPS) where the thing explodes out of the
           | blue and spits out sparks and flames.
           | 
           | In this case, you'll very quickly get a self-sustaining fire
           | (thanks to all that firewood around it) and will need to
           | actively extinguish it - turning the power off or starting
           | the AC will not save you.
           | 
           | The best solution, short of an active fire suppression system
           | such as sprinklers (which obviously come with their own
           | problems) is to put the hardware in a place where you can
           | have a device catch fire and be confident that the fire won't
           | spread or get out of hand.
        
             | giuliomagnifico wrote:
             | The floor, like the ceiling, are made of wood, I have other
             | UPS on the floor, also my desk with the notebook is made of
             | wood...
             | http://giuliomagnifico.blog/networking/2022/01/14/my-home-
             | se...
             | 
             | I understand what you say, unfortunately! I hope that
             | nothing will ever happen...
        
         | criddell wrote:
         | Is it much different from putting a bunch of A/V gear in a
         | wooden cabinet? It's not that uncommon for a receiver, game
         | console, cable box, blue ray player, etc... to be in wood
         | furniture.
        
           | vladvasiliu wrote:
           | The main difference I see is that, at least in my case, the
           | A/V gear will be off when I'm not actively using it, i.e.,
           | sitting in front of it.
           | 
           | My network gear runs 24/7, even if I'm away from home for
           | multiple days at a time. I usually only turn it off when I
           | leave for longer (>1 week) holidays.
        
             | VLM wrote:
             | If it has a working remote control or a soft start power
             | switch its never "off".
             | 
             | Most cheap hardware does not have X or Y safety class
             | capacitors so if there's any exposed conductor you're
             | probably marginally safer on an insulator like wood.
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | I'd expect most components to fail under stress which is
               | not the case in a low-power standby mode where only a
               | single 5V power rail is active and sources a few
               | milliamps.
               | 
               | Not great and I personally wouldn't put equipment in
               | cabinets, but I'd expect most failures to occur when the
               | equipment is actively being used & under stress, not
               | during standby.
        
               | VLM wrote:
               | There is a self heating failure mode for capacitors that
               | would depend a little bit on current drawn, but the
               | voltage across a cap would be constant regardless of
               | current drawn so safety and fire related failures are
               | primary based on time.
               | 
               | "Name Brand" products with legitimate UL listings almost
               | entirely use Class X or Y caps where safety regulations
               | require them and would be immune to this problem due to
               | internal construction differences. "No name gray market
               | off aliexpress" would be an unwise choice.
               | 
               | It's surprising how few fires we have from household
               | electronics. The odds are it'll be fine.
        
         | 57FkMytWjyFu wrote:
         | I was thinking you were too worried, and then I went back and
         | saw the UPS. I wouldn't put that inside any enclosure.
         | 
         | From the manual "* Provide 5 cm clearance on top and sides for
         | adequate airflow around the unit."
        
           | giuliomagnifico wrote:
           | The UPS is not even lukewarm. I was scared too, first time I
           | put UPS in another position (see other posts/releases of the
           | setup) with more space but then, after one year of
           | monitoring, I always see that its temperature is the lowest
           | of all the hardware inside, I moved it there (anyway I can
           | move it 5cm from the left side, there's plenty of space). I
           | have others UPS (another range of APC UPS) that are getting a
           | bit warm, but not this one.
        
             | exitb wrote:
             | I imagine its temperature habits might be different in case
             | it becomes active with a power loss or when it recharges
             | after an incident.
        
       | pantalaimon wrote:
       | Looks like it's IPv4 only?
        
         | giuliomagnifico wrote:
         | Yes, my ISP has some issues with IPv6. I will switch all to
         | IPv6 as soon as I get the FTTH connection (I hope!)
        
       | Pxtl wrote:
       | It's infuriating that this is necessary -- now that printers are
       | pretty optional and those of us that need one have settled on
       | Brother laser-printers, consumer routers are now the 21st century
       | home appliance of "holy shit why is this the worst device I own?"
       | 
       | I have a home network powered by Asus routers, but that's only
       | after years of trial-and-error with other brands (Netgear,
       | Linksys, TP-Link). The fact that Asus is the "crappy inconsistent
       | B-minus grade devices" company normally and that's _way above
       | average_ in routers is a massive step forwards.
       | 
       | The extended features are a joke and I have to reset the routers
       | maybe once a year at worst but they're the first solid home
       | internet connection I've ever had.
       | 
       | If I have to go through the mayhem again, I'll be cribbing from
       | guides like this, but I'll be really really angry about it.
       | 
       | How do normies live?
        
         | nix0n wrote:
         | > why is this the worst device I own?
         | 
         | Part of the problem is, most consumer-grade routers use CPUs
         | that can kind of get by _most_ of the time on passive cooling.
         | Then when the weather is hot or your usage is above-average, it
         | has problems.
         | 
         | Most people want to avoid active cooling on a router, because
         | you've got it out in the open for line-of-sight / signal
         | propagation purposes, and there's kind of a reliability
         | argument for avoiding moving parts.
         | 
         | I'm not trying to say the only advantage of a pro setup is
         | having fans on it, but it's definitely one of the advantages.
        
         | shepherdjerred wrote:
         | > How do normies live?
         | 
         | I think the phrase 'ignorance is bliss' explains this
        
           | Pxtl wrote:
           | A crapload of people have gone remote, though. Meaning
           | they're experiencing the normal hiccups and drops as "oh shit
           | I can't show up to my meeting". So they can't ignore it
           | anymore.
        
         | mmcnl wrote:
         | I have a lot of TP-Link networking hardware equipment. Works
         | flawlessly. Never had to reboot anything. Just works.
        
         | dangus wrote:
         | Necessary? Not really.
         | 
         | How do the normies live? Quite easily.
         | 
         | I use my Internet carrier's WiFi 6 router/modem combination. It
         | works fine. It's free, and I don't get a discount for bringing
         | my own equipment. I spent zero time configuring anything.
         | 
         | I have Internet. I haven't noticed any problems making Zoom
         | calls or playing games online. What I don't know about my
         | bufferbloat score doesn't really hurt me.
         | 
         | Anything I host is in a VPS so I don't need any advanced
         | routing or VLANs.
        
       | jnsaff2 wrote:
       | For this setup I would rather go with some of the Mikrotik gear.
       | I have the hEX S as a router and if you only need 4 device ports
       | it saves you having a separate switch. This one has a newish CPU
       | so routing performance is pretty much line-rate and it also has
       | an SFP cage so depending on your provider setup you might even
       | get the fiber directly into this device (mine sadly uses GPON
       | with dedicated crypto built into the media converter so I could
       | not use it). It is very feature rich and only costs about 75EUR
       | here.
       | 
       | The upgrade pick would be the RB5009 with SFP+, 2.5GBe and 8GBe
       | ports, much-much more CPU. The availability of this is pretty bad
       | tho, I have the PoE version on order.
        
         | Havoc wrote:
         | Hardware side they're in completely different classes - dual vs
         | hex core. 256mb vs 4gb. Don't see any benchmarks for the hex s,
         | but lets just say 4 year newer quad core mediateks clocked
         | twice as high still lose by a factor of 4x [0]
         | 
         | SFP is a plus though, and software support is pretty weak on
         | R4S side - only getting openwrt official support in the
         | upcoming 22.03 release...about a year after you could buy the
         | device
         | 
         | [0] https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/Rockchip-RK3399-vs-
         | Medi...
        
           | vetinari wrote:
           | Depends what do you expect from a router. Mikrotiks
           | traditionally have a relatively weak hardware, but they are
           | pretty optimized for what they do (for IPv4; IPv6 not so
           | much).
           | 
           | Hex S can route gigabit; barely, but still. See
           | https://mikrotik.com/product/hex_s#fndtn-testresults For a 6W
           | device, that's pretty neat.
        
         | SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
         | > you might even get the fiber directly into this device (mine
         | sadly uses GPON with dedicated crypto built into the media
         | converter so I could not use it).
         | 
         | I'm in this situation.. But I have the fiber line coming
         | directly into my gear with the ISP provided modem into another
         | port on the switch. I use an EAP proxy to forward the
         | authentication packets to modem, and all other traffic skips
         | the modem entirely.
         | 
         | I did ask my install guy to give me the separate fiber
         | transceiver (not integrated with the modem), because I didn't
         | have an SFP cage to use the fiber line directly.
        
         | giuliomagnifico wrote:
         | Thanks for the suggestion! When this router will be not
         | sufficient, I'll give a change to Mikrotik, I like their stuff!
         | (But also the nanoPi R5S is nice for 2.5Gb)
        
           | Nextgrid wrote:
           | Mikrotik is a great cost/performance ratio but the complexity
           | and user experience of configuring it is horrible.
        
             | blibble wrote:
             | most of it seems to be a very thin layer on top of the
             | standard linux networking tools (e.g. iptables)
             | 
             | this can be both a pro and a con :)
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | Agreed about the firewall side of things! I was
               | complaining about the switch & VLAN side of things - I
               | find myself pretty proficient in general Linux networking
               | tools but couldn't figure out their
               | switching/bridging/VLAN configuration despite easily
               | being able to do it on a Linux command line with
               | brctl/etc. I suspect it's a necessary evil though as
               | Mikrotik's custom config system for this may not actually
               | use Linux networking subsystems and interacts directly
               | with the hardware to enable hardware offload.
        
             | vetinari wrote:
             | I switched to Mikrotik from Unifi. With Unifi, I was always
             | fighting it, with "most users do not need that, why you
             | do?" (like site-to-site ipsec tunnel with the other side
             | having valid dns hostname, but not fixed ip). With
             | Mikrotik, I just set up the way I need it and it's done.
             | 
             | So yes, the difference is like this:
             | https://i.redd.it/slaeayro0o061.png But in the end, it is
             | worth it.
        
               | PenguinCoder wrote:
               | Agreed; Ubiquiti/unifi is easier to get started with. But
               | as soon as you want to do anything more 'complex', it
               | often can't do it or won't let YOU do it. Mikrotik is at
               | better at not getting in your way. Though, Mikrotik setup
               | is more involved and requires a bit more knowledge about
               | networking than Unifi does. Only thing I really don't
               | like about Mikrotik is the CAPSMAN/AP situation. They're
               | pretty bad and very difficult in my experience, to get
               | working right/seamlessly.
        
           | vladvasiliu wrote:
           | Are you happy with the latency?
           | 
           | The wired buffer bloat screenshot seems quite high to me at
           | 53 ms. Not sure if it's router or something else related.
           | Have you tried connecting directly through the modem?
           | 
           | In my setup, FTTH of the GPON variety (1000/400), I get
           | around 5 ms latency on the buffer bloat page. My old FTTC
           | setup (1000/60, fiber to the curve + COAX through the
           | building) was around 8.
           | 
           | My setup is GPON box -> managed switch -> Router (virtualized
           | on KVM with pass-through NICs) -> managed switch (again) ->
           | 2nd managed switch -> PC.
        
             | giuliomagnifico wrote:
             | I'm very happy with the bufferbloat (0ms) not quite with
             | the latency but I can't do much, is my ISP that has about
             | 15/20ms ping time. The fiber arrives only to the street
             | cabinet, and then there's a copper cable to my home, I
             | don't know how you can have 1000/60 on FTTC setup, this is
             | absolutely impossible in my country (Italy), we can have
             | 200/20 max speed on FTTC (and this is what I'm using).
             | 
             | There're already the fiber cables on the street, I'm
             | waiting for the vertical lines to my home.
        
               | vladvasiliu wrote:
               | > I don't know how you can have 1000/60 on FTTC setup
               | 
               | This was in an apartment building in Paris, not a
               | detached house. It was a quite common setup when fiber
               | started rolling out: it would arrive in the basement and
               | apartments would be connected through the existing coax
               | (TV) cables.
               | 
               | Checking Wikipedia, maybe FTTB is a more appropriate
               | term.
               | 
               | Now it's mostly GPON FTTH.
               | 
               | ---
               | 
               | edit: regarding the latency, your setup adds around 30 ms
               | of latency, which to me seems rather high.
        
               | giuliomagnifico wrote:
               | Oh okay, then FTTB is more appropriate. Anyway the 30ms
               | it's only on this service/server, my setup adds about
               | 1-1,5ms: https://www.speedtest.net/result/i/5236800213
               | 
               | Ping time from router to AP                  root@R4S:~#
               | ping 192.168.1.3
               | 
               | PING 192.168.1.3 (192.168.1.3): 56 data bytes 64 bytes
               | from 192.168.1.3: seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.150 ms64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.252 ms64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.117 ms64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.170 ms64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.210 ms64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=5 ttl=64 time=1.204 ms64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.232 ms64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=7 ttl=64 time=1.190 ms64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=8 ttl=64 time=1.207 ms^C --- 192.168.1.3
               | ping statistics --- 9 packets transmitted, 9 packets
               | received, 0% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max =
               | 1.117/1.192/1.252 ms
        
               | runjake wrote:
               | Readable:                 PING 192.168.1.3 (192.168.1.3):
               | 56 data bytes        64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=0
               | ttl=64 time=1.150 ms       64 bytes from 192.168.1.3:
               | seq=1 ttl=64 time=1.252 ms       64 bytes from
               | 192.168.1.3: seq=2 ttl=64 time=1.117 ms       64 bytes
               | from 192.168.1.3: seq=3 ttl=64 time=1.170 ms       64
               | bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=4 ttl=64 time=1.210 ms
               | 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=5 ttl=64 time=1.204 ms
               | 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=6 ttl=64 time=1.232 ms
               | 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=7 ttl=64 time=1.190 ms
               | 64 bytes from 192.168.1.3: seq=8 ttl=64 time=1.207 ms
               | ^C        --- 192.168.1.3 ping statistics --- 9 packets
               | transmitted, 9 packets received, 0% packet loss
               | round-trip min/avg/max = 1.117/1.192/1.252 ms
        
               | giuliomagnifico wrote:
               | Thanks, I inserted two spaces before the text but it
               | didn't format all the code, just the first line, maybe
               | because I'm on mobile?
        
       | tibbydudeza wrote:
       | The bane of my existence has always been wireless - family
       | stopped complaining when I switched all the AP's to Ubiquity.
       | 
       | Never rebooted - uptimes in months and they are on battery
       | backup.
       | 
       | It is amazing how much the stock firmware shipped by the likes of
       | Broadcom/Realtek sucks so much - it is not like Mikrotik/Ubiquiti
       | makes their own SOC's to make it more realizable.
        
         | NonNefarious wrote:
         | After several big-name routers that all sucked ass, and finally
         | one that got hacked, I switched to Ubiquiti products. I have an
         | EdgeRouter X and an AP AC Lite.
         | 
         | After several years of use, I can say that Ubiquiti software
         | and support are trash. Their configuration app (I used the iOS
         | version) almost never works, meaning that it almost always
         | fails to find the AP that is one foot away from the phone. It
         | also suffers from unprofessional UI-layout defects. Their Mac
         | app won't run until you manually strip quarantine flags from it
         | because it isn't even signed... then it won't run because it
         | relies on Java 8, and Mac OS hasn't shipped with Java in a
         | decade. And if you jump through enough hoops to get it to
         | launch, it fails to detect any Ubiquiti devices.
         | 
         | Once I somehow tricked their iOS app into communicating with
         | the AP and got it working, it did work for years and has pretty
         | good range.
         | 
         | But now (and this appears to be a somewhat common problem), the
         | AP randomly stops sending data on 2.4 gHz. Here's one of
         | several posts about it: https://community.ui.com/questions/AP-
         | AC-Pro-problems-with-2... And it appears to afflict multiple
         | products.
         | 
         | This can last from minutes to days. Although you're connected
         | to it, you can't even hit the router. Ubiquiti support is
         | utterly useless; it's as if they do everything possible to drag
         | out interactions until you go away, providing vague, terse,
         | one-sentence answers every couple of days that contain no
         | specifics.
         | 
         | My impression is that Ubiquiti is just hanging on, coasting on
         | existing technology and doesn't even have support staff that
         | knows how it works.
        
         | sokoloff wrote:
         | I have 2 Ubiquiti U6LR APs serving most of the house (and 2
         | more older AC-Pros serving the yard/outdoor patio and lower
         | priority/IoT networks in the house). I frequently get
         | complaints from my kids that "my phone doesn't work very well
         | on the WiFi at my friend's house".
         | 
         | The older one finally asked me "do you think the WiFi is just
         | super-good at _our house_?! "
        
           | BrandoElFollito wrote:
           | Ah, how great it would be to hear that from my children :)
           | 
           | There is hope, though, they recently started to speed test
           | the networks they are in and mine is so far winning.
           | 
           | All this does not matter, really, as having 40 vs 200 Mbps on
           | a phone did not matter much.
        
         | JohnBooty wrote:
         | they are on battery backup
         | 
         | Is this useful?
         | 
         | My understanding is that when there is a power failure in the
         | neighborhood, the broadband provider's equipment is usually
         | offline as well.
         | 
         | Of course, the answer is probably: "it depends on your
         | broadband provider's local hardware setup." But I would be
         | interested to hear peoples' thoughts.
        
           | tibbydudeza wrote:
           | Power outages are frequent enough that I invested in a 100AH
           | battery and inverter to keep things going - the local fiber
           | loop remains online as the local POP has batteries so I only
           | need to power the ONT.
           | 
           | My house is brick/mortar so I need 2 AP's to cover the entire
           | house - the AP is one kids bedroom - she insisted a wired LAN
           | connection for her PS5 (online gaming and ping/lag) so I
           | needed to power both a small switch and the AP - got a 12V
           | battery system for that.
        
           | ryandrake wrote:
           | > My understanding is that when there is a power failure in
           | the neighborhood, the broadband provider's equipment is
           | usually offline as well.
           | 
           | I had a friend with a generator who got the opportunity to
           | test this due to an extended power outage. Although I agree,
           | it probably depends largely on how well your local ISP has
           | their act together. He found that Comcast (consumer-grade
           | Internet) in his neighborhood was actually able to keep
           | Internet service running for a little over 24 hours. His
           | generator evidently outlasted Comcast's generator and he lost
           | Internet on the second day.
           | 
           | I'd love to see neighborhood-to-neighborhood, ISP-to-ISP
           | comparisons of Internet connectivity longevity in the event
           | of power outages.
        
           | zippergz wrote:
           | We have AT&T fiber and it continues working when the power is
           | out, at least for longer than my UPSes last. We have a fair
           | number of short power outages, and I've never had an AT&T
           | outage at the same time.
        
           | asdff wrote:
           | Yes. Summer means my AC units regularly trip breakers. If I
           | didn't have my networking equipment on an APC I would be
           | dropping zoom calls all day.
        
           | Jtsummers wrote:
           | I've, historically, kept my cable/dsl/whatever modems and
           | wireless routers on a UPS and _almost_ always still have
           | connectivity when the power goes out. The only exception was
           | during a hurricane, which seemed like a fair exception in the
           | scheme of things since power was out for most of the city for
           | 1-2 weeks.
        
           | croutonwagon wrote:
           | Not really true at all times, but may be for your situation.
           | Comcast put gennys on our node recently and it works. So even
           | when power goes out, internet stays up.
        
         | kkielhofner wrote:
         | For the cost ($99) IMO it can't be beat:
         | 
         | https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-wireless/prod...
         | 
         | I'd like to see something with 6e but these are still
         | incredible:
         | 
         | - Fast
         | 
         | - Wide compatibility across devices
         | 
         | - PoE
         | 
         | - Put it wherever you want, doesn't have to be in some closet
         | near your modem/router/etc
         | 
         | - Just works. Really. I've run Ubiquity APs for years. Throw
         | devices at it, literally never worry about Wi-Fi again. Say
         | goodbye to it flaking out, slowing down for whatever reason,
         | the occasional reboot, etc.
         | 
         | - Need more coverage? Plug in another AP, couple of clicks,
         | done.
         | 
         | I run a local controller in an LXC container (VM, docker,
         | local, etc available too) with all local login and none of that
         | cloud and phone home stuff enabled.
        
           | rsync wrote:
           | One thing I like about ubiquity aps is that you can configure
           | them with whichever controller you like and then
           | remove/disconnect the controller but the AP still runs on its
           | own. For years.
           | 
           | However, I wonder if this is true in either repeated or
           | multi-ap setups ? That is, if I configure an AP and then one
           | of those wall-mounted directional ubiquity repeaters with
           | another AP on the other end ... shared SSID ... can that
           | configuration run with no controller?
           | 
           | I would think it could but .. I have not tried...
        
             | thrashh wrote:
             | I have a multi-AP setup (but no repeater, all Ethernet
             | backhaul) and I've never even set up a controller. I just
             | used the iOS app once per AP
        
             | nirav72 wrote:
             | Yes. I have two unifi AC pros and two inwall APa. For the
             | longest time , I had the controller as just an app that I
             | launched on my desktop whenever I needed to change
             | something or apply an update the APs. Then I would shut it
             | down. Now I run the controller in a docker container , so
             | the APs autoupdate. But to your original question, always
             | running the controller isn't required.
        
         | Chris2048 wrote:
         | I started with ubiquity, but the company seems to be playing
         | games (and it annoys me how the latest controllers don't
         | properly handle EOL APs a few years old) - So I switched to
         | TPLINK Omada - no problems so far.
        
         | hotcoffeebear wrote:
         | I am seeing mixed reviews about ubiquity these days.
        
           | EricE wrote:
           | Every since they moved their firmware development to Latvia,
           | the pace and quality has decreased significantly.
           | 
           | I picked up a couple of Grandstream Wifi 6 APs to try and
           | other than the gawdawful update process (that has thankfully
           | improved - but you still have to get past the ridiculous
           | initial firmware) they are wicked fast and so far a lot more
           | stable/consistent than the Unifi counterparts. The unifi
           | controller is indeed very slick/pretty to look at, but over
           | the years I've come to realize that the "stats" it reports
           | aren't very accurate so I'm back to librenms to gather/report
           | on my network statistics.
        
           | zzyzxd wrote:
           | I am not 100% happy with it but it is the best prosumer
           | option I can find without making managing home network a full
           | time job for myself.
           | 
           | Security wise it is not great, but I don't think it is worse
           | than other consumer products (tplink, netgear...etc). At
           | least ubiquiti patches vulnerabilities reasonably fast.
           | 
           | Their cloud infra sucks and the whole data breach / lawsuit
           | drama people constantly bring up was all because (I think?) a
           | former employee had a static AWS access key with admin level
           | access. Small companies are usually not good at dealing with
           | internal threats. I don't use the cloud service anyways and
           | self-host the network controller.
           | 
           | Now my biggest complain is that I have to manage a mongodb
           | 3.x cluster for the controller...
        
             | xxpor wrote:
             | FWIW they have a docker option for the controller (what I
             | use) and I'm barely aware it runs mongo.
        
               | zzyzxd wrote:
               | I know there are community maintained container images.
               | "They" don't have an official one though. In fact I run
               | it in a container as well, but I configures it to talk to
               | an external mongodb cluster.
               | 
               | I need it to be an external cluster with some redundancy,
               | so that I can easily backup the database, fix file
               | corruption, and deal with other database errors.
        
               | xxpor wrote:
               | Yeah, sounds like your deployment is probably a lot
               | larger/more serious than my 2 AP at home deployment then
               | ;)
        
           | deelowe wrote:
           | I have an odd issue that clients on the AP cannot communicate
           | with clients connected to the switch. As far as I can tell,
           | this is nothing something in the switch or ap configuration.
        
           | open-paren wrote:
           | I just swapped out my Ubiquiti Dream Machine for an eero Pro
           | 6e because the UDM kept needing a hard reboot in the middle
           | of the night and was very, very noisy. It's the only consumer
           | router I can think of that both needs a fan and idles at 80.
        
             | jaywalk wrote:
             | You must have had defective hardware. I can never hear the
             | fans on my UDM Pro, and it idles right around 40.
        
               | open-paren wrote:
               | It was a non-pro model. From my limited research a while
               | ago, I came to the conclusion that it's common among the
               | non-pro models.
        
           | linsomniac wrote:
           | I had started down the path of going all Ubiquity ~5 years
           | ago. I started with cameras and their camera controller. It
           | was super flaky, when everything was working, it was great,
           | first class app experience. But any time the cameras rebooted
           | (power outage, firmware upgrade), I would literally spend
           | days with some cameras offline, until multiple reboots of
           | impacted or all cameras would eventually fix it.
           | 
           | Then, a few years in a firmware upgrade to the switch (their
           | 250W PoE switch) caused it to start isolating my Google WiFi
           | APs because it would do some loop detection. An hour on the
           | phone with their support (which in that instance was really
           | good) resulted in a a prognosis of "This particular loop
           | detection can't be turned off." So I had to drop a dumb
           | switch in front of the Ubiquiti for the Google APs. I was
           | considering replacing them with Ubiquiti, but needed to run
           | some more wire throughout the house to get what I needed.
           | 
           | Then I ran into a firmware upgrade that bricked 3 of my 4
           | cameras. After going back and forth with their support and
           | getting nowhere, I just gave up. I had replaced the
           | controller with the CloudKey G2 at one point because the old
           | one was no longer supported, and it seemed to help with but
           | not totally resolve the days of rebooting cameras situation.
           | 
           | Honestly, having the cameras bricked was a relief, because of
           | all the consternation that the firmware updates had been
           | causing. I just couldn't bring myself to buy new Ubiquiti
           | cameras.
           | 
           | I ended up pulling out all the Ubiquiti hardware, replacing
           | it with $200 4K very low light cameras that are just amazing
           | (rebranded HIK Vision, "Montavue"). I'm using BlueIris for
           | the camera controller, which is fine. Still using the Google
           | WiFi, which continues to work great. I have 4 APs (one in
           | router role, 3 spread around the house).
        
           | dano wrote:
           | I've deployed Unifi equipment in a number of small home and
           | office environments without any problems at all. Some have
           | been running for a decade or more. Management is a piece of
           | cake and in homes it has high SAF (Spouse Appreciation
           | Factor) because it just works.
           | 
           | If you have questions where you think I can help, drop me an
           | email.
        
             | EricE wrote:
             | Just don't upgrade your firmware unless you have a damn
             | good reason to and you will be fine with UBNT stuff. It's
             | borderline criminal that automatic updates are turned on by
             | default :p
        
           | mbesto wrote:
           | Been using for 6+ years now. Around ~10 APs purchased. I've
           | never looked back.
           | 
           | I think the mixed reviews are from HN where people are
           | complaining about their security posture (for good reason).
        
             | gurchik wrote:
             | What about their security posture?
        
               | jjoonathan wrote:
               | Is this a situation where one company decides to break
               | from the pack and care a little about security and then
               | social media dogpiles them for not doing more?
        
               | tablespoon wrote:
               | > Is this a situation where one company decides to break
               | from the pack and care a little about security and then
               | social media dogpiles them for not doing more?
               | 
               | I believe they did something like force cloud-login with
               | some software update a few years back.
               | 
               | They also apparently were downplaying a major security
               | incident, and sued Brian Krebs for reporting on it:
               | https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/03/ubiquiti-
               | sues-jo....
               | 
               | I have some Ubiquiti stuff, and it works fine, but I've
               | been meaning to look deeper into all this, but I just
               | haven't had the time. I just stopped updating the
               | controller software (none of their gear is external-
               | facing, and IIRC it's only needed for
               | configuration/management) because cloud login is an
               | absolute dealbreaker for me.
        
               | twblalock wrote:
               | You can turn off the remote login. It's encouraged as the
               | default, but not necessary.
               | 
               | Even the local login, from a device on the network, can
               | be set up to require two-factor auth. That alone makes it
               | more secure than a lot of consumer-grade stuff which only
               | requires a password, which is often never changed from
               | the default.
               | 
               | I'm happy with my Unifi Dream Machine as a one-device
               | home network. I thought about getting rid of it a while
               | back when some bad press about Unifi security was
               | published, but it turns out it was fake news and Brian
               | Krebs has lost all credibility in my eyes for continuing
               | to promote it even after it was debunked.
        
               | tristor wrote:
               | > I believe they did something like force cloud-login
               | with some software update a few years back.
               | 
               | No, what they did was update the software to prefer
               | cloud-login and push you to set it up during onboarding
               | for new products because they use cloud-login for remote
               | management and anti-theft/device tracking.
               | 
               | It's always been entirely optional. I just set up a new
               | network because I moved and gifted my previous network to
               | the buyer's of my prior home. I'm still using local
               | accounts only with no remote management, and it works
               | perfectly fine on the latest generation of Ubiquiti gear
               | with the latest firmwares. The only thing I login to my
               | UI account for is to use the store and buy hardware.
               | 
               | The other thing with Brian Krebs was a faked security
               | incident by an insider who was trying to extort money
               | from Ubiquiti and Brian Krebs played the fool by
               | assisting them.
               | 
               | Granted, there are /many/ issues I have with Ubiquiti,
               | but generally speaking if you use local accounts and keep
               | the firmware updated it is no worse than any other edge
               | networking device exposed to the Internet.
        
               | tablespoon wrote:
               | > No, what they did was update the software to prefer
               | cloud-login and push you to set it up during onboarding
               | for new products because they use cloud-login for remote
               | management and anti-theft/device tracking.
               | 
               | Was that all? Did they add telemetry or something else? I
               | had read that I'd need to edit some text config file or
               | something to opt-out of something I didn't want, because
               | they provided no option in the UI.
               | 
               | I believe this might be what I was thinking of: https://w
               | ww.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/fhlowt/where_is_t....
               | 
               | I took a wait and see before I sorted it all out (since
               | none of their stuff is external facing on my network),
               | and haven't gotten around to it.
        
               | drewzero1 wrote:
               | No, I think GP is referring to their big data breach last
               | year[0]. From TFA linked in that discussion:
               | 
               | > the attacker(s) had access to privileged credentials
               | that were previously stored in the LastPass account of a
               | Ubiquiti IT employee, and gained root administrator
               | access to all Ubiquiti AWS accounts, including all S3
               | data buckets, all application logs, all databases, all
               | user database credentials, and secrets required to forge
               | single sign-on (SSO) cookies.
               | 
               | It has shaken a lot of people's confidence in Ubiquiti's
               | internal security practices.
               | 
               | 0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26638145
        
         | TheRealYeti wrote:
         | We've been running 4x UAP AC Lites unattended with no
         | controller via Ubiquiti Toughswitch for 5 years and have had
         | zero issues.
        
         | WorldMaker wrote:
         | This was partly why I recommended Amplifi to my parents. I like
         | that Ubiquiti finally has a consumer brand this is mostly "off
         | the shelf" configured.
         | 
         | I don't think Amplifi is getting enough love in the consumer
         | market today. I know anecdotally when walking my parents
         | through the Amplifi purchases I had to ask a Best Buy employee
         | to leave and stop confusing my parents because he didn't
         | understand why anyone would want the "weird new" Amplifi brand
         | and not "the better brands" Google Home or Netgear Orbi. I
         | didn't feel like explaining Ubiquiti's decades in Enterprise to
         | the kid.
         | 
         | It doesn't help that Ubiquiti has had some recent troubles, and
         | I'm still not sure even Ubiquiti knows what the long term
         | horizon looks like for Amplifi products. But I appreciate that
         | they _are_ trying to make headway in the consumer space, and
         | that from what I can tell the consumer products _do_ show the
         | experience from Enterprise products.
        
           | gorkish wrote:
           | Amplifi has a poor value prop ever since UDM/Dream Router
           | became a thing, although I previously recommended it for the
           | same reasons you do.
           | 
           | It would be nice to have a less complex app/frontend
           | management interface for less tech-savvy end users -- if you
           | could use the Amplifi app to see status and do basic
           | troubleshooting on an Unifi network for instance--
        
       | m_eiman wrote:
       | Related: what's the current best option for those of us who like
       | old UniFi's ease of use, but don't like new Unifi's "use our
       | cloud, or else..." attitude and the constant firmware issues?
        
         | zapt02 wrote:
         | As far as I know you can set up a local UniFi management point
         | using using the latest version of the Cloud Key Gen2 Plus
         | firmware. However you won't be able to use Unifi Protect (the
         | security camera offering) as that still requires a cloud
         | account to set up. But once you have set up the cloud account
         | you can revert back to local-only operation and no video data
         | leaves your LAN.
         | 
         | https://community.ui.com/questions/BUG-USG-PPPoE-or-Static-I...
        
         | VLM wrote:
         | The firmware issue is probably very individual device
         | dependent. I remember the old USG plus an old cloud key (both
         | no longer sold for a long time) had some stability issues maybe
         | two or three years ago if you enabled every possible monitoring
         | feature simultaneously, that issue is long gone. UniFi is much
         | like MS or IBM in that they sell such an incredibly wide range
         | of products its quite possible our experiences have nothing in
         | common.
         | 
         | The original cloud key is quite slow but totally usable;
         | there's a docker container and running on anything faster than
         | a Pi its quite fast and snappy.
        
         | giuliomagnifico wrote:
         | Some Ubiquity devices support OpenWrt:
         | https://openwrt.org/toh/ubiquiti/start
        
         | dotBen wrote:
         | UDM Pros include their own local Unifi management runtime which
         | will administer the full local network.
         | 
         | After the security incident a few years ago, Ubiquiti pushed an
         | update that let's you login to it via a local credential rather
         | than their cloud identity server.
         | 
         | I don't see anything in UDM Pro's Unifi that is dependent on
         | their cloud (other than checking for updates)
        
         | tristor wrote:
         | > but don't like new Unifi's "use our cloud, or else..."
         | attitude
         | 
         | They don't have this attitude and never have. You can use local
         | accounts, have always been able to use local accounts.
         | 
         | The only thing out there that's better than Ubiquiti is actual
         | enterprise gear, all of which now requires subscription
         | licensing. Unfortunately if you want a buy once / cry once
         | solution for prosumer usage, Ubiquiti is the best option. I
         | hunted for alternatives several times, and nobody is
         | competitive. Microtik is the next closest option, but it's
         | frankly garbage and with bigger security issues.
        
           | unethical_ban wrote:
           | They heavily push their cloud management, apparently tried
           | doing required cloud logins for their UDMs (implied in
           | another comment), and 100% require you to purchase their
           | hardware or use their cloud for Unifi Protect. In the past,
           | one could run the Protect software on their own machine.
           | 
           | Ubiquiti is the least smelly networking solution in a room
           | full of really smelly options. They are not consumer friendly
           | like they used to be.
        
             | tristor wrote:
             | > Ubiquiti is the least smelly networking solution in a
             | room full of really smelly options.
             | 
             | Agreed entirely. Unfortunately this is a market that's not
             | well served because there's a lot more money to be made
             | just shoveling consumer garbage out or putting small
             | businesses over the barrel with subscriptions rather than
             | offering a proper prosumer product.
        
         | EricE wrote:
         | No one (at least that I have found) has as mature/slick looking
         | a controller as Unifi. And once I realized that I rarely
         | changed settings for my core network, particularly on my AP's,
         | I really started to broaden my search. A friend turned my onto
         | the Grandstream APs (I thought they only did phones?!?) and I
         | have to say so far I'm really impressed. They are a bit uglier
         | than the Unifi UFOs and the update process for the firmware
         | that shipped with them was an utter nightmare to figure out -
         | but now that I'm past that I'm very pleased with them. They
         | seem to be a lot faster and more stable than the Unifi
         | equivalents. I've set up a lot of UBNT kit, been heavily
         | involved in the forums and their beta products - but the
         | quality and timeliness of firmware updates has really fallen
         | off the last five or so years. Unsurprisingly about the same
         | time they shipped all the firmware coding overseas. One of the
         | biggest reasons I was a huge proponent of them was the constant
         | and tight interaction of the developers in their community
         | forums. That also fell off a cliff around the same time. The
         | market is ripe for someone else to step in.
         | 
         | Surprisingly Cisco, with their small business line, has one of
         | the better looking contenders. No subscription - and I didn't
         | need anything (not even an email) to download firmware updates
         | or the controller (!!) Not your fathers Cisco! Their controller
         | lags Unifi, but not by much. I scored a router and switch off
         | of ebay just to dabble and it was pretty promising. I haven't
         | looked at it for a while; I probably need to fire it back up
         | and see if it's matured any. In the end for firewall I went
         | back to OpnSense. Unifi switches are OK but their one year
         | hardware warranty, frankly, sucks. If I were to by new switches
         | I'd probably just go back to netgear. Their lifetime warranty
         | is pretty hard to beat. I've had them replace 10 year old
         | switches with nary a blink of the eye so it's not just lip
         | service.
        
         | jnsaff2 wrote:
         | None is probably the "best option" but this is the evolution I
         | went through in the past few months:
         | 
         | 1. had the UDM for about a year, then at some point found out
         | that some firmware update had completely trashed 2.4GHz wifi.
         | Like you can connect to it but if you transfer more than 1MB or
         | so it just hangs, reconnect works but basically unusable, 5GHz
         | works fine but in my house the office just did not get good
         | enough coverage. Like, dude, you had ONE JOB!
         | 
         | 2. Bought a Ruckus AP and an Mikrotik hEX S to do routing. Wifi
         | is better but office still did not have good enough coverage.
         | 
         | 3. Finally gave up and just ran some CAT 6A from the router to
         | my office. Night and day.
         | 
         | From my research Ruckus gear is really good and requires no
         | controller nor cloud connectivity whatsoever but expensive.
         | Mikrotik is nice for wired stuff, but mostly quite dated for
         | wireless, also they still carry a lot of their previous
         | generation gear .. a lot of it has really wimpy CPU's, so do
         | some research. Also the configuration can be a bit involved,
         | tho lot of internet advice on a decent setup.
        
         | vetinari wrote:
         | I've switched to Mikrotik, for routing and switching. With
         | wifi, Mikrotik still doesn't have good AX offer, so I kept
         | nanoHDs for the time being.
         | 
         | It is more complex, you have to get used to Winbox, but after
         | that, there's no way back to Unifi. There are no dashboards
         | that look nice in screenshots, but on the other hand, the stats
         | provided make sense.
         | 
         | But wrt firmware issues, Mikrotik also has occasional one.
        
           | PenguinCoder wrote:
           | If you want fancy dashboards, I'd suggest using a different
           | product for that purpose. Can enable SNMP on the Mikrotik
           | devices, and let something like Munin do the graphing for
           | you.
        
             | vetinari wrote:
             | Nah, I'm fine with few windows in Winbox. Fortunately,
             | Winbox remembers what was opened last time, so that's my
             | dashboard.
        
       | wiradikusuma wrote:
       | Does anyone know a "for dummies" guide for setting up home
       | network, esp. for "smart" home (CCTV, smart TV, speakers, Google
       | Home)?
       | 
       | Not only software-level, but "hardware" e.g. best location,
       | enclosure, cabling, etc.
        
         | jamiegreen wrote:
         | Definitely also need this. I am too dumb to understand this
         | setup haha
        
         | Fabricio20 wrote:
         | I want to share my small take on this, from someone who runs a
         | decent smart home setup. You want to avoid cloud stuff, if you
         | keep that in mind a lot of options you can just exclude and
         | your horizon becomes limited (in a sense) - but you get the
         | best parts!
         | 
         | If you have a strong 2.4GHz wireless network already (a proper
         | mesh system in your home), look into having your smart stuff
         | run over wireless, no point in having zigbee. If you don't have
         | a strong wireless network, first consider getting one, else
         | look into zigbee devices.
         | 
         | Run home assistant, doesn't matter what devices you want to
         | have on your network, home assistant is a must for a decent
         | smart home experience. You can run it on a raspberry pi 3b+ or
         | a spare server in a docker container. Spare server is faster
         | but the pi can handle it.
         | 
         | Setup all your devices to talk to home assistant, then make
         | home assistant expose the devices to Google Home or Alexa,
         | instead of directly exposing the devices to the cloud services.
         | 
         | Smart TVs are not good, my experience with LG and Samsung has
         | been of ADs and abandoned software, instead get a good TV
         | (image quality, etc..) and plug a Mi Box or Roku or Amazon
         | Firestick into it.
         | 
         | CCTV is a mixed topic, you can go the closed circuit camera
         | option (NVRs and suff) or you can go with ip cameras. Just
         | don't use wireless cameras, everything wired for this.
         | 
         | If you want some hardware brands and comparisons, check out The
         | Hook Up on youtube for the specific topic. I can vouch for
         | Sonoff, Shelly, Reolink, etc..
        
           | archi42 wrote:
           | I'm not happy with ZigBee: Only a single, flaky edge between
           | two floors means one floor sometimes craps out and can't be
           | talked to by the coordinator/home assistant. The WiFi devices
           | (Shelly&Sonoff) are much better thanks to great WiFi (3
           | indoor APs, one outdoor).
           | 
           | However, we have a few ZigBee remotes/portable buttons and
           | sensors (motion and temperature/humidity), which are a great
           | addition. I already know where to put another ZigBee router
           | to finally make that floor reliable. But I can only do so
           | once my SO&I agree on what fixture to put there, and that's
           | complicated ;-)
           | 
           | Maybe look at the nVidia Shield as a more privacy-friendly
           | alternative to FireTV et al. (at least that's what Mozilla
           | says). Sadly it's pretty expensive.
           | 
           | Can't say anything about NVR.
           | 
           | The remainder I can totally agree with. If I unplug my modem,
           | only thing lost are weather report and mower bot control.
        
       | bilal4hmed wrote:
       | Anyone have experience with TP-link omada. The cost to set up
       | Ubiquiti ( not to mention space for racks etc ) is just to much.
       | I have gigabit internet so the UDR is out of the question for me.
       | I wfh so I just need something that is solid and works ( I tend
       | to run the same equipment at my parents house as well )
        
         | gre wrote:
         | I have been happy with the TP-Link AXE-5300 mesh three-pack
         | that I got from Costco for $300. The wifi 6e is slightly
         | disappointing as my Samsung devices tend to pick the wifi 6
         | network instead. It's been reliable the whole time.
         | 
         | Currently I'm using: ATT fiber modem, Mikrotik
         | CRS354-48P-4S+2Q+RM for PoE+, tplink deco axe5300
         | 
         | https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B087X7KNWS
         | 
         | https://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-AXE5300-Tri-Band-Whole-Home-S...
        
           | bilal4hmed wrote:
           | thank you :)
        
       | dont__panic wrote:
       | I see that Giulio here has attained an A+ buffer bloat rating for
       | his or her home network. I've tried this in the past with limited
       | success, mostly because I don't want to introduce another failure
       | point (dedicated router, separate from wireless access point) to
       | my network.
       | 
       | Am I being silly? I'm concerned about what could happen if
       | there's a failure when I'm not home to maintain everything, since
       | I'm the only person who can or wants to work with this equipment.
       | 
       | I'd love to reduce my buffer bloat to improve the quality of my
       | my video and audio calls. But I'm not sure it's worth it. Or if
       | the results in this post demonstrate an average use case with a
       | crappy ISP.
        
         | giuliomagnifico wrote:
         | There're lots of variables, like tour internet speed, your
         | hardware, etc.. OpenWrt is great at managing bufferbloat, and a
         | router + AP is not a +1 point of failure, if you consider that
         | I can switch or turn off the AP but I can leave the home
         | internet online.
         | 
         | Anyway I leave alone but With a VPN you can manage your home
         | LAN from everywhere. I've done a similar setup for my parents,
         | when they call me saying "we don't have internet" I can simply
         | check what's going on, I wrote a post here:
         | http://giuliomagnifico.blog/networking/2022/07/21/setting-up...
        
           | master_crab wrote:
           | Not sure if it's mentioned in the webpage but the biggest
           | possible issue with this WG setup is if the ISP's DHCP
           | changes your endpoint IP (or worse, the ISP double NATs their
           | customers).
        
             | giuliomagnifico wrote:
             | I'm using DDNS to retrieve the IP every time it changes,
             | it's mentioned in the article. I set the IP endpoint to
             | xyz.duckdns.org not to the IP
        
         | kkielhofner wrote:
         | If your router+ap supports OpenWRT you can reflash and have
         | best of breed QoS up and running in a few clicks via the Luci
         | web interface that IMO is vastly superior to the goofy web UIs
         | that come on SOHO routers.
         | 
         | Bonus is OpenWRT also seems to be much more stable than
         | manufacturer hardware as long as your hardware is well
         | supported. Plus you don't have to worry about your manufacturer
         | no longer supporting firmware on your model and OpenWRT is much
         | faster to respond to the occasional security issue, etc.
         | 
         | OpenWRT has gotten some flak over the years by leaving devices
         | behind when they no longer have enough flash and/or RAM. That
         | said OpenWRT is likely going to support your hardware longer
         | than the manufacturer will.
        
           | dont__panic wrote:
           | I have a router similar to the router in the linked post, and
           | OpenWRT was a mess on there. Turns out that my router was
           | saddled with a crappy processor downgrade at some point after
           | initial release, and I got one of the crap CPUs.
           | 
           | OpenWRT didn't even support the CPU by default, and when I
           | managed to get OpenWRT on there, I had serious QoS problems
           | because the CPU wasn't up to snuff. I liked OpenWRT a lot but
           | it was a really frustrating experience.
        
             | EricE wrote:
             | to be fair, the real problem was the crappy hardware you
             | tried to run it on - not OpenWRT :p
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | 404mm wrote:
       | Should the flow be described as:
       | 
       | Internet -> Modem -> router -> managed switch - access point ?
       | 
       | Anyway, thanks for sharing the setup. I love how everybody here
       | has a different takeaway from this. For me, it was nanoPi. I just
       | ordered R4SE for my tinkering with OpenWrt.
       | 
       | I have a symmetric fiber gig connection that is quite stable but
       | I'm thinking about getting a secondary connection from a
       | different provider. My "dream" is to have HA (active/passive)
       | routers that can fall back on the backup (slower) line and back
       | when there's need. The rest of my HW is small and spread out
       | throughout a house than not a single failure will severely affect
       | my home.
        
         | giuliomagnifico wrote:
         | > Internet -> Modem -> router -> managed switch - access point
         | 
         | Yes, also. depends if you are in download or upload =) be
         | careful with the R4SE (the model with inside eMMC storage), I
         | don't know if the R4S OpenWrt build will run also in the R4SE.
        
           | 404mm wrote:
           | I checked their wiki before ordering and they sort of
           | consider the SE model as a newer revision of R4S. So I'm
           | hopeful. It if that doesn't work, I'll find some other use
           | for it. Anything that does not run the Chinese flavor of
           | Ubuntu or WRT lol
        
             | giuliomagnifico wrote:
             | The only difference is the SE has the 32gb emmc inside and
             | I'm skeptic that OpenWrt will run fine, surely it will not
             | recognize the internal storage. Anyway you can use the
             | FriendlyElect WRT, basically it's an old release of OpenWrt
             | with some customizations.
        
       | ryandrake wrote:
       | Very useful, informative and timely! I'm moving into a different
       | house soon, and this has given me the motivation and opportunity
       | to update my outdated consumer modem/router/wifi hardware. I'm
       | still living in the past with 802.11n! At my old home, I
       | personally ran ethernet to each room, but I'm older now and the
       | thought of crawling around in a dusty crawlspace drilling holes
       | and running cords no longer appeals to me like it used to. I'm
       | almost ready to swallow my pride and accept the heresy that WiFi
       | might be good enough, now that we are in the world of 802.11ax. I
       | also like OP's choice to separate their router/switching hardware
       | from their AP hardware. Might go down that route too.
        
         | kcb wrote:
         | The primary factor for Wifi performance really is congestion.
         | My Wifi in a rural location performs way better with just the
         | isp router than my multi access point setup in a fairly tight
         | suburb. So far there's just no way around that except temporary
         | fixes with new bands like with Wifi 6E.
        
         | causi wrote:
         | _I 'm almost ready to swallow my pride and accept the heresy
         | that WiFi might be good enough, now that we are in the world of
         | 802.11ax_
         | 
         | Wireless is fine if it's only half of your loop. For example,
         | suppose you want to stream a game from your powerful
         | computer/console to your phone/tablet. There's a perceptible
         | difference between having just the receiver wireless and having
         | the sender and receiver both wireless.
        
       | blurrybird wrote:
       | Please look into CAKE to replace your SQM configuration. Dave
       | Taht and the team have done some incredible work on this through
       | their bufferbloat.net project.
        
         | giuliomagnifico wrote:
         | Yes I'm using CAKE on the OpenWrt router/WAN interface. The
         | screenshot is only the switch SQM.
        
       | logotype wrote:
       | I'm currently running a Cisco ASA 5540 as the perimeter device
       | (with NAT and DHCPD) at home. Replaced the stock fans because it
       | was seriously noisy. Getting about 920Mbp/s. Also running a site-
       | to-site VPN to AWS. It's been working great for many years with
       | absolutely no issues whatsoever. The only problem is that it's
       | starting to show some ageing with no firmware updates since 2018,
       | so I'm replacing this with a recent Palo Alto Networks NGFW with
       | 1+ Gbp/s firewall capability. The FW is then connected with OM3
       | fiber to a SFP port on a 48-port gigabit Cisco switch (2960G),
       | with trunking ports to other managed Cisco switches in the house.
       | The server is connected to the switch using 4 ports in LACP mode
       | for better bandwidth and redundancy. If you can live with the
       | noise I highly recommend old enterprise gear as it can be found
       | for cheap.
        
       | aliljet wrote:
       | Out here in the Bay Area, I've been trying to figure out how to
       | efficiently (and interestingly) use a 10gbe FTTH symmetric setup
       | from Sonic. It's surprisingly hard to find anything for the
       | thrifty consumer that can consume this kind of connection. I'm
       | curious if there is something like the nanoPi R4S targetted at
       | the 10gbe world.
        
         | newman314 wrote:
         | I was just waiting for a comment like this as I anticipate
         | getting the 10G at some point.
         | 
         | From what I've been able to tell, at 10G speeds, you pretty
         | much have to build your own. Currently, I'm planning to get a
         | SFFPC, stick a quad port 10G card in it, maybe run ESXi, router
         | OS TBD: VyOS, DANOS, OpenWRT?
        
         | sliken wrote:
         | 10gbe and thrifty is at least for now not a good match.
         | 
         | Could put in a PCIe dual x 10GBe card into an old PC and if
         | that's not enough ports buy a vlan capable switch with a 10GBe
         | uplink and enough 2.5gbe/1gbe ports for your needs.
        
         | stephen_g wrote:
         | I've been thinking about using maybe Netgate hardware running
         | pfSense in an business setup. Apparently the 1537 model [1] can
         | do over 10 Gbps routing and firewall according to their
         | marketing tests. Base model is a bit over two grand in USD. But
         | probably not super 'efficient' throwing a Xeon at it and not
         | especially thrifty.
         | 
         | It looks like a branded generic Supermicro machine but seems
         | convenient to get it out of the box and the price doesn't seem
         | bad considering what's in it.
         | 
         | 1. https://shop.netgate.com/collections/rack-
         | appliances/product...
        
       | btgeekboy wrote:
       | Saw that they're using a NanoPi - I just picked up an R5S (dual
       | 2.5gbe + single 1gbe) and it's a pretty neat device. Haven't done
       | any significant benchmarks yet, but I was able to use the
       | FriendlyElec wiki to build FriendlyWRT and run it, which makes me
       | feel a little better about running no-name hardware out of China.
        
       | vachina wrote:
       | The last thing you'd probably want at home is a whiny
       | router/switch/IoT device.
        
         | danesparza wrote:
         | Huh? I have a pfSense firewall, a 16 port PoE switch, and
         | several MacBook mini servers. All in the living room. They are
         | all essentially silent (since that was a hard requirement for
         | me). Silent (and good) gear definitely exists for spaces that
         | require it.
        
         | vladvasiliu wrote:
         | True, especially if the setup is directly in the living space.
         | 
         | I'm not familiar with any of OP's components, but it's
         | absolutely possible to have a silent setup.
         | 
         | In my case, I have an HP EliteDesk (salvage from work) that
         | does the routing, etc, which is dead quiet, and it's connected
         | to a fanless Brocade (Ruckus) switch. There's no coil while or
         | anything. The most annoying parts are the blinking lights,
         | which I fixed with some red tape.
        
         | giuliomagnifico wrote:
         | Whiny? There's no noise, it doesn't make any sound (no moving
         | parts/fans, including electrical noise)
        
       | ufo wrote:
       | While we're on this topic... What's the deal with having multiple
       | wifi access points with the same SSID? I have heard some people
       | say you should always use a single SSID because the clients know
       | how to automatically pick the best one. But I have heard others
       | disagreeing and saying that to ensure you're using the right
       | access point you need to use different names for each one and
       | also 2.4ghz vs 5ghz. Anyway, who's right here?
        
         | dsr_ wrote:
         | All five APs in the house use the same SSID. Four of them have
         | both 2.4 and 5Ghz radios; they use the same SSIDs. All of them
         | are connected via ethernet to the switch.
         | 
         | It all works very nicely.
        
         | cmer wrote:
         | You should use the same SSID for 2.4GHz and 5GHz. You should
         | also use the same SSID for all APs _if_ they support roaming.
         | Unifi does, for example. If you just get two random independent
         | wifi routers, they won 't and you might stay connected to the
         | wrong antenna for a while.
         | 
         | https://community.ui.com/questions/Wireless-LAN-Roaming-FAQ/...
        
           | unethical_ban wrote:
           | Some cheap IoT hardware seems to be incapable of connecting
           | to a mixed network, and I have had to have a dedicated 2.4
           | only SSID for them.
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-15 23:02 UTC)