[HN Gopher] UniFi 5G
___________________________________________________________________
UniFi 5G
Author : janandonly
Score : 337 points
Date : 2025-12-05 07:06 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.ui.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.ui.com)
| cromka wrote:
| The fact that the outdoor version is directional kind of limits
| its adoption in mobile usage, doesn't it? Most similar products
| have omnidirectional antenna. Can't imagine you would rotate it
| by hand on a boat towards the land while on passage
| gvkhna wrote:
| I think it's going to be targeting mostly stationary HA
| redundant uplinks. Backup for primary uplink or low usage
| primary link. In those scenarios pointing at your nearest
| antenna fixed is much better than an omnidirectional antenna.
| cromka wrote:
| They clearly mention mobile use and show it on the animation
| as well. Which is why I am surprised.
| botto wrote:
| This product targets businesses where they will mount it in a
| fixed position and target a specific tower so they get the best
| throughput.
| cromka wrote:
| Did you read through the press release?
| nkrisc wrote:
| Not GP but I'm trying to figure out what you're
| insinuating.
|
| > For tougher environments or deployments with poor indoor
| cellular coverage, the outdoor model maintains the same
| high performance cellular connectivity with improved
| antenna performance in a durable IP67 rated enclosure. It
| is built for rooftop installs, off site locations, and
| mobile deployments where reliability is critical. Just like
| its indoor counterpart, you can also connect it via any PoE
| port, anywhere on your network, greatly simplifying cabling
| requirements.
|
| And the first image they show of the outdoor model is it
| installed in a fixed location on a rooftop.
| k33l0r wrote:
| The video shows it on a moving vehicle
| SigmundA wrote:
| Your quote lists mobile deployments, their bullet point
| also says:
|
| >Built for rooftops, remote sites, and _vehicle based
| setups_
|
| They are insinuating if you actually read their press
| release then you would not state it was targeted only at
| stationary deployments.
|
| Based on the spec sheet 2 out of its 6 antennas are
| directional, this is probably a 4x4 modem so it must have
| some way to switch 2 antenna from directional to omni.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| In their promotional video they call out mobile applications
| and they showing a car driving with it on top of it.
| SigmundA wrote:
| The spec sheet mentions 6 antennas and implies only 2 are
| directional:
|
| (6) Embedded cellular antennas, including (2) high-gain for
| downlink: peak 9 dBi, 85degx85deg
|
| Typically these modems are 4x4 mimo so it must have some method
| for switching the 2 directional with 2 of the omnis in it based
| on which ones is needed.
|
| https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/integrations/u5g-max-outdoor?...
| dagmx wrote:
| The fallback support for UniFi setups will be awesome.
|
| I'm honestly tempted to get it for my house. My ISP downtime is
| pretty low but it does happen every once in a while, at the most
| inopportune times, which impedes working from home.
|
| Having a wireless backup would hopefully cover those downtimes
| botto wrote:
| Yeah, the fact you can use any of the ports on a dream machine
| as a WAN (its not optimal, but is an option) makes it really
| easy to have a couple of fallbacks if you really need high
| redundancy.
| qwerpy wrote:
| We had a 5 day power outage (Bellevue WA, not exactly in the
| middle of nowhere) and after 2 days both the cable internet and
| cell towers went down, so even 5G would not have helped. I had
| backup power but no internet. On the way back from Best Buy
| with my new starlink, everything came back online of course.
| But now I'm ready for the next multi day outage.
|
| I have a network cable from my secondary WAN port on my dream
| machine running to my first story roof where there's a wall
| mount ready for starlink to be plopped in.
| thatwasunusual wrote:
| > after 2 days both the cable internet and cell towers went
| down, so even 5G would not have helped.
|
| I discovered the same thing the hard way myself recently (in
| Norway); turns out that cell towers only has enough battery
| for ~24-36 hours (if you're lucky).
|
| However, someone messing with the fibre to my house is a
| bigger possibility than power outage, so I'll probably end up
| with this 5G product. :)
| lostlogin wrote:
| I've made the second WAN a 10gb uplink.
|
| I wish there were cheaper 10gb switch from Ubiquiti. The link
| Agg is good, but still pricey.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| I used to do that. Now I use starlink as backup
| CTDOCodebases wrote:
| Starlink has a specific backup plan too don't they?
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Indeed. It's very cheap ($5?) and is fast enough to do
| 1080p YouTube with unlimited data. It's speed capped so if
| you really need it it's best to upgrade the plan that
| month.
| turbocon wrote:
| Link? Cheapest I can find is $40/month
| CubsFan1060 wrote:
| https://www.satelliteinternet.com/resources/starlink-
| standby...
|
| Interesting option.
| wrobelda wrote:
| You can't use it perpetually they force you to upgrade
| after a while. It's called ,,standby plan" for a reason.
| mcny wrote:
| I for one think this is a great marketing opportunity.
| Even if you have the best gigabit fiber, at five dollars
| a month, this is a no brainer for a lot of people. If you
| can have monthly recurring revenue for starlink doing
| essentially nothing, why not? Also, it is probably easier
| to upsell to existing customers.
| mcny wrote:
| > 0.5Mbps (500Kbps)
|
| I am cautiously optimistic that this means even if
| thousands of these devices suddenly "light up" in an
| outage, the infrastructure should be able to handle them,
| right? Thoughts?
| ansgri wrote:
| There are now quite a few options for wifi APs with cellular
| backup. I use TP-Link, and it's ok for the price, I guess, and
| supports adding OneMesh range extenders.
|
| The problem with this setup for me is that it doesn't work with
| uplink that sometimes becomes unstable yet nominally working,
| and in general LTE fallback triggers slowly.
|
| Are there any prosumer-friendly options for connection
| bundling, which can balance uplinks continuously?
| 9x39 wrote:
| Assuming you're talking about running like a UI router and
| doing multi-WAN uplinks from it, you can.
|
| They support load balancing (e.g. 95% WAN1, 5% WAN2) and SLA
| monitoring (ping/packet loss/jitter) with some voting options
| on what triggers a swap.
|
| I think pfsense has similar options for WAN balancing if you
| don't like UI for routing.
| sschueller wrote:
| I have a wireless backup[1] using Vyos[2] and a 5G router
| provided for free by the 5G service provider for those rare
| moments when both fiber links are dead.
|
| At the same time I would never recommend anyone get 5G internet
| as their primary service if you have other options and
| especially not from one of these cheap providers.
|
| [1] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-
| fiber/
|
| [2] https://sschueller.github.io/posts/vyos-router-
| update/#wan-f...
| sofixa wrote:
| Hey, another person running VyOS!
|
| How are you handling updates? Do you update on a fixed
| cadence, or do you build your own LTS? Or do you just take a
| random nightly and stick to it?
| sschueller wrote:
| I just did the update to 2025-Q2 (I use the quarterly
| stream build).
|
| Initially I thought this is going to be a huge pain. I have
| many interfaces and also pass-through hardware like the
| SFP28 card. I made a copy of my primary router vm and added
| fake interfaces with the same MAC addresses. I then went
| through the update procedure which was very simple.
|
| in vyos vm: wget https://community-download
| s.vyos.dev/stream/1.5-stream-2025-Q2/vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q
| 2-generic-amd64.iso -o vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q2.iso
| add system image /mnt/iso/vyos-1.5-stream-2025-Q2.iso
| # follow prompts reboot # boot screen will
| offer two version now, old and new
|
| That was it and it worked. So from now on I know I can just
| take a snapshot of my vm and do it directly on the main vm
| without making a copy.
|
| You do loose any custom configs you may have. In my case it
| was fstab changes and my cron entries.
| dgroshev wrote:
| Hundreds of us!
|
| I adore VyOS
| hypercube33 wrote:
| VyOS and it's parent Vyatta always have been neat. Shame it
| sold off and kinda got pay walled.
|
| Interesting fact that EdgeOS from Unifi was a fork.
| sofixa wrote:
| > Interesting fact that EdgeOS from Unifi was a fork
|
| That's how I got started with it, my first "proper"
| router was an ER-X. It's sad they abandoned the Edge
| product line to move everything to the UI first Unifi one
| that still doesn't have all the features (specifically,
| conditional routing for address groups/ipsets).
| sgarland wrote:
| Forgive me, I didn't watch the videos: is that what the Dream
| Router supports - normal wired WAN uplink, plus 5G failover? If
| so, yes, that's very attractive.
|
| I have a T-Mobile backup home internet plan, and when I had a
| rack set up, it was my failover from fiber. The Dream Machine
| Pro did auto failover and failback flawlessly. However, I
| recently moved, and am redoing my homelab so I have no rack
| right now; internet is from a Dream Router, so I don't have
| auto-failover. I doubt I'd buy this for the small window of
| time I expect to be in this situation, but if you didn't have
| or want a rack, an AIO with failover would be great.
| kmfrk wrote:
| Yep, that's one of the main reasons people are excited for
| this. Instead of a dedicated ISP modem with 5G, you can just
| use this, plug it into a gateway WAN port set up as the
| secondary failover connection, and you'll have a backup if
| you get knocked offline.
|
| https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052548713-WAN-
| Failo...
|
| The 5G unit itself also has its own failover with support for
| two 5G SIMs.
|
| "All are equipped with dual SIM slots, with one SIM
| replaceable by eSIM, and are fully unlocked: any major
| carrier, any type of deployment, with one piece of hardware."
|
| You can also see the excitement in the subreddit where people
| are already in the Unifi ecosystem: https://www.reddit.com/r/
| Ubiquiti/comments/1pe5xh4/explore_p....
| jwr wrote:
| The 5G max outdoor looks very good and seems to be a direct
| competitor to the pretty good Mikrotik LHG series. I wonder about
| the antenna gain, though, the Mikrotik certainly _looks_ more
| impressive.
|
| (I've been using Mikrotik LHG LTE6 kit devices for years now)
| Doohickey-d wrote:
| Antenna gain isn't everything: I've set up the LTE6 for people,
| and in some cases I was able to get more speed in the same
| location with the latest iPhone.
|
| In locations where you're at the edge of coverage, and your
| phone is not getting anything at all, it's great.
|
| I sometimes suspected that the modem in these LTE / 5G routers
| is less well tuned and tested with various network than what
| you have e.g. in an iPhone.
| nicolaslem wrote:
| This is my experience as well. Unless you actually need a
| directional antenna, an iPhone will be faster and more
| reliable than dedicated hardware.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Of course it's faster!
|
| The Mikrotik LTE6 device is a Cat.6 LTE device, so up to
| 300/50Mbits, and since some time ago, all iPhones are Cat.20
| and 5G and all that stuff.
|
| But that's not the only important thing. The frequency band
| support for the modem is very important. Not all networks nor
| even cell phone antennas work on the same frequencies, so
| even when connecting to antennas of the same company,
| depending on the antenna you connect, it'll have different
| bands enabled depending on the hardware or the connectivity
| they have there.
|
| You have to check the specs for you modem [0][1] and see what
| bands are supported, what bands are supported in the antenna
| your connecting to [2]... Depending on the category of your
| device [3], and the channels that are allowed to be used at
| the same time, the congestion, the interference, and... it
| can happen than a consumer phone downloads faster than a
| dedicated industrial modem, if the available frequencies
| aren't the most favorable.
|
| -- 0: https://mikrotik.com/product/lhg_lte6_k
| it#product_specification 1:
| https://www.apple.com/iphone/cellular/ 2:
| https://www.cellmapper.net 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/
| wiki/E-UTRA#User_Equipment_(UE)_categories
| kkapelon wrote:
| > direct competitor to the pretty good Mikrotik LHG series
|
| Is there a Mikrotik 5G version though? I am still waiting for
| that.
| Jnr wrote:
| There is this now https://mikrotik.com/product/atl_5g_r16
| cge wrote:
| That device is bafflingly LTE cat20 with 2Gbps downlink,
| and then has LAN connectivity only through a single 1Gbps
| ethernet port.
|
| Actually, it seems one of the advantages of the new
| Ubiquiti devices over Teltonika/Mikrotik/Gl.iNet is that
| they actually have 10 Gbps SFP+ and 2.5 Gbps ethernet
| ports.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| Just bought a Gl.iNet Puli. It's only 4G but seems like a better
| option if you want to supply internet to some devices that you
| move around. Planning to use it for setup and management of a
| headless presentation PC as it can directly be connected to the
| LAN port.
| walterbell wrote:
| Does it support eSIM? For backup internet, eSIM is good for
| avoiding monthly subscription, by paying per GB when needed.
| flanked-evergl wrote:
| I have read that people managed to get an eSIM installed on
| it, but I think there are also physical eSIM options. See
| https://www.gl-inet.com/solutions/esim/
|
| Edit: The SIMPoYo eSIM Physical Card (see https://www.gl-
| inet.com/campaign/simpoyo-cards/ ) seems really cool, may
| even be nice for a phone.
| szszrk wrote:
| I have a mobile 4g router from them and it supports physical
| esim. I even managed to get their suggested card for cheap.
| They have some support in their firmware to set it up, so you
| can do that fully on the router.
| kkapelon wrote:
| I am already doing what is shown in the video with Teltonika
| OTD500, fully unlocked and with esim support as well.
| tow21 wrote:
| How does the Teltonika work out for you - I nearly bought it
| earlier this year but it doesn't have support for external
| antennae. I'm just on the edge of 5G coverage and I'm not sure
| I want to splash out on something which I can't tune for decent
| reception.
|
| Seems an odd omission for a ruggedised outside modem - the
| Unifi also seems to not support external antennae.
|
| (I'd also prefer a unifi version just so it fits in the with
| rest of the networking infra I have in the mokki.)
| kkapelon wrote:
| OTD500 is antenna + router in a single box. There is nothing
| else needed. I just put it outdoors with a POE cable.
| Originally, I used it as a backup, but now I have an
| unlimited SIM, so I use it as a second internet connection.
|
| If you mean the standard routers (like the Rutx50), Teltonika
| itself sells external enclosures with antennas.
| https://www.teltonika-
| networks.com/products/accessories/ante...
| tow21 wrote:
| Yeah, I know - but an antenna embedded within a small box
| is going to be much less effective than a big old
| directional Yagi antenna like
| https://www.satshop.fi/en/4g/4g-5g/4g-antennas.html
|
| Seems weird to cripple the product by not allowing me to
| (optionally) disable the internal antenna and instead use
| and tune an external antenna. And I suspect that is likely
| to make a difference when you are on the edge of coverage,
| but you know exactly where the relevant cell tower is, a
| few km away.
| hardolaf wrote:
| Yeah they're not really putting out new exciting technologies.
| But this is cheaper than every other equivalent solution on the
| market for sale today in the USA.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| Can't wait for this to get OpenWrt support so I can buy it and
| the first thing I do to be to nuke the UBNT firmware.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| Is OpenWRT on Unifi APs any good? I hadn't heard of it before,
| and I couldn't find any performance comparisons on a quick
| search. Ubiquiti has gone downhill on a lot of things the last
| 5 years or so, but their radio firmware has always been a step
| up (within their price range) for me. I wouldn't mind ditching
| the Unifi controller software though.
| yuvadam wrote:
| I don't recall their latest hardware is supported, but why
| would you want that anyway if you're not looking to go all in
| on their controller stack?
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| The controller is annoying and changes completely every 6
| months, and for home I use basically none of its features
| beyond configuring the AP. Virtualy all the issues I've had
| with Unifi APs were controller bugs, telling the AP
| firmware to do stupid things when it could have done
| literally nothing.
|
| That said, I have some concerns that the OpenWRT AP
| firmware is not as optimized as the Unifi firmware is for
| that specific hardware. Mostly for wireless performance,
| but I also don't want to hit some weird CPU bottleneck.
| 9x39 wrote:
| If you dislike their UI, not going to try to convince
| you, but it is part of the value of the system.
|
| Have you looked at Mikrotik? They offer a more
| traditional autonomous OS w/o controllers and both a nice
| CLI and a powerful GUI tool.
| cathepsin wrote:
| I'm using an U6+ with OpenWRT on it, flashed straight after
| unboxing and it's the only thing serving wireless in my
| household
|
| It's alright except for some shenanigans with DHCP trying to
| compete with the router, I fixed that by just disabling DHCP
| on the AP if I recall correctly.
|
| Speeds are pretty much as advertised on the box, the main
| thing using wireless is the TV as it has a 100mbit LAN port
| and it it's always smooth sailing. VLAN-separated SSIDs work
| great as well.
| syntaxing wrote:
| I'm surprised there aren't any better options than flashing
| over a U6+
| kkapelon wrote:
| There are several other companies (e.g. Teltonika, glinet) that
| offer similar solutions that can use OpenWrt today
| ur-whale wrote:
| We're doing ads on HN now?
| skrebbel wrote:
| I see you've never opened HN during an Apple product launch
| event
| grim_io wrote:
| Sir, this might not be a Wendy's, but this is a VC owned site
| that regularly shills its questionable investments.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| And for most of the people here, buying any 5G mmWave modem
| is a questionable investment.
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| I would speculate that most tech purchases by HN crowd are
| questionable investments. But life is not a spreadsheet.
| haunter wrote:
| The majority of posts are ads on HN
|
| Did you know there is an entire post category for ads and self-
| promotion? https://news.ycombinator.com/show
| tucnak wrote:
| > Up to 2 Gbps downlink
|
| > 2.5 Gbit/s PoE to upstream switch
|
| Can anybody explain to me why these supposedly premier networking
| devices are lacking so much in bandwidth? I get it that mmWave is
| really only ever realistically going to hit 2.5G over the air,
| but is there any reason why they're not willing to provide at
| least 10G copper, or an actual SFP port? Hell, even Macs support
| 10G these days. I never understood this. Do they mean 2 Gbps
| downlink per client, or per device in total? If it's the former,
| 2.5G wired seems like a major bottleneck to any serious
| consumption.
|
| If a single client at 2 Gbps is all the promise of 5G amounted
| to, well, it would be disappointing to say the least.
| fulafel wrote:
| The whole 2.5 G spec is a weird step for ethernet speeds too.
| It's unfortunate it took off.
| tucnak wrote:
| They said the same thing about 40G but hey, I've loved it for
| bridging the gap between my two (10G and 100G, respectively)
| Mikrotik switches. You can have a dozen Gigabit ports, as
| well as up to four true 10G devices on your aggregation
| switch, and neither would be bottlenecked by traffic to and
| from the backside. This has been a massive boon. However,
| when it comes to 2.5G, I struggle to find one good reason to
| use it; such a tiny step-up in bandwidth, and for what?
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| > However, when it comes to 2.5G, I struggle to find one
| good reason to use it; such a tiny step-up in bandwidth,
| and for what?
|
| Portability and heat. You can get a small USB 2.5G adapter
| that produces negligible heat, but a Thunderbolt 10G
| adapter is large and produces a substantial amount of heat.
|
| I use 10G at home, but the adapter I throw into my laptop
| bag is a tiny 2.5G adapter.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| I'm sure it depends on the model, but in my experience if
| you force a 10G copper transceiver to 2.5G the insane
| heat generation goes away. I don't have any Thunderbolt
| 10G adapters, but I'm kind of surprised they're much
| larger. A SFP+ transceiver is the same size as a SFP one.
| JoshTriplett wrote:
| I think a major reason for the size is for heat
| dissipation, because it has to be prepared to handle the
| heat of a full 10G copper connection. Mine runs _hot_.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Most of my cables coming out of the aggregation switch
| are DAC and fiber, but there is no 10G copper because my
| PC came with 10G copper NIC integrated. Anyway, the
| difference in heat between this transceiver is shockingly
| large.
|
| I knew it runs hot before I deployed it, but I wasn't
| aware that you have to wait for it to cooldown before
| unplugging, or you get burnt.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| 40G on Mikrotik is just channel bonding of 4 10G links at
| layer 2. It's not like the vast majority of 100G that does
| layer 1 bonding. I really don't know why they did it other
| than to have a bigger number on the spec sheet - I can't
| imagine they save any money having a weird MAC setup almost
| nobody else uses on a few low-volume models.
| u8080 wrote:
| 1x PCIE 3.0 has 8 Gbps raw speed - for 2.5Gbps duplex
| Ethernet you'll need 6~7 Gbps of raw link to CPU.
|
| For 5Gbps and higher, you'll need another PCIE line - and
| SOHO motherboards are usually already pretty tight on PCIE
| lanes.
|
| 10GbE will require 4x3.0 lanes
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| Are motherboards commonly using PCIe 3.0 for onboard
| peripherals these days? I wouldn't expect it to save them
| much money, but my PCIe knowledge is constrained to the
| application layer - I know next to nothing about the PHY
| or associated costs.
| tucnak wrote:
| This is got to be it!
| fulafel wrote:
| PCIe is full duplex. And there's no requirement for
| ethernet ports to be able to do full tilt. Even with a 1x
| PCIe 3.0, a 10G port will be much much better than a 2.5G
| one.
|
| (But PCIe 3.0 of course is from 2010 and isn't too
| relevant today - 4.0, 5.0, 6.0 and 7.0 have 16/32/64/128
| Gbps per lane respectively)
| 0x457 wrote:
| > 10GbE will require 4x3.0 lanes
|
| 3.0 PCIE is irrelevant today when it comes to devices you
| want on 10G. I'm pretty sure the real reason is that 2.5G
| can comfortably run on cable you used for 1G[1], while
| 10G get silly hot or requires transceiver and user
| understanding of a hundred 2-3 letter acronyms.
|
| Combine it with IPS speeds lagging behind. 2.5G while
| feels odd to some, makes total sense on consumer market.
|
| [1]: at short distances, I had replaced one run with
| shielded cable to get 2.5G, but it had POE, so it might
| contribute to noise?)
| jasoncartwright wrote:
| I think you answered your own question - also the places where
| mmWave is available, there is also often other better internet
| connection options.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| This is a modem, it itself is the client of a cell tower/base
| station. So unless you put it in a faraday cage with the base
| station next to it, 2G is almost certainly enough.
|
| The better reason to put a 10G transceiver in this would be
| that some (cheap, honestly garbage) SFP+ transceivers can't
| negotiate anything between 1G and 10G. But I've only seen that
| on bargain-bin hardware so I don't know that they should be
| designing products around it.
| hedora wrote:
| This device is PoE. I'd guess peak wattage has a lot to do with
| it.
| tecleandor wrote:
| Probably because of the PoE. That discards SFP+, and makes
| difficult PoE over copper, as you'd probably need 802.3bt PoE++
| (that probably most of the Unifi devices aren't compatible
| with), or a very short cable to avoid interference.
|
| 10Gb interfaces also tend to run quite hot and be a bit power
| hungry.
|
| This is a device that needs to be in a location with good 5G
| reception, so it makes sense to be PoE powered so you can put
| it near a window or in the location that gets the best
| reception, and only run a long ethernet cable. And, although I
| don't like it too much, 2.5G or 5G NBASE-T is the nearest thing
| that covers 5G speeds.
|
| The 2Gb downlink speed is the 5G downlink, the max for the
| whole 5G connection, so 2.5Gb ethernet is enough for that.
| amelius wrote:
| These things are nice when they work but when they don't you're
| completely in the dark. Even figuring out how much GB is left on
| your simcard is a nightmare.
| kkapelon wrote:
| Simplest solution is to get an unlimited card. Problem solved.
| amelius wrote:
| Why do limited cards even exist? Turns out there are various
| reasons (no need to go into them here).
| sschueller wrote:
| I am confused, this is just a 5G router right? Like the 5 year
| old Huawei CPE Pro 2 but with wifi7, poe and eSim?
|
| [1] https://consumer.huawei.com/en/routers/5g-cpe-pro-2/
| sz4kerto wrote:
| It's a modem, not a router.
| b-karl wrote:
| There are both, the router is further down the page
| kkapelon wrote:
| Unifi is the Apple of networking gear. When something new is
| released the HN crowd is excited even when the same
| functionality existed already with another company.
| amelius wrote:
| Apple of networking? I suppose no OpenWrt then.
| wrobelda wrote:
| You actually can install Openwrt on bunch of their hardware
| idatum wrote:
| Or OpenBSD, in my case a USG-3P. I would have otherwise
| tossed it but now it's a nice OpenBSD switch.
| OpenBSD 7.7 (GENERIC) #339: Sun Apr 13 17:52:27 MDT 2025
| deraadt@octeon.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/octeon/compi
| le/GENERIC real mem = 536870912 (512MB)
| avail mem = 521142272 (497MB)
|
| Only complaint I have with Unifi is so-so IPv6 support.
| I'd love to see a NAT64/DNS64 option configurable in
| their UI.
| danudey wrote:
| Out of the box, my Unifi Security Gateway runs Debian, as
| did my previous Unifi AC access points.
|
| I just checked and my new Wifi 7 APs don't run Debian
| though, they... admin@BedroomAP:~# cat
| /etc/os-release NAME="OpenWrt"
| VERSION="23.05-SNAPSHOT" ID="openwrt"
| ID_LIKE="lede openwrt" PRETTY_NAME="OpenWrt
| 23.05-SNAPSHOT" VERSION_ID="23.05-snapshot"
| ....
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| For wireless, the prices aren't much different from products
| with comparable feature sets/performance. For some niche
| combinations, they're the only option that doesn't force you
| way upmarket (Meraki, etc.). Most of the money they make is
| from small business and tiny WISPs, not HN boosters overdoing
| it on their home WiFi in what must be a bid to get their
| partner to divorce them.
|
| Their wired stuff is a total scam since Edgerouter fell off,
| though. The same functionality exists on a $50 netgear
| managed switch (or wired router, etc.), and the shitty
| unified configuration interface doesn't justify the markup at
| all.
| amluto wrote:
| To be somewhat fair, the quality of their management tools
| for their switches and routers has increased somewhat, and
| some of their wired routers are actually decent on the
| price/performance spectrum these days.
|
| Meanwhile, the quality of their competitors' tools for
| managing multiple switches without manually configuring
| each one, individually, over SSH or via a graphical tool is
| not necessarily amazing.
|
| For example, it's been a while since I used Ruckus
| Unleashed (the low-end management tool from an very
| upmarket vendor), but I think UniFi Network (the management
| tool) is a good amount better than Unleashed.
|
| I really wish the people who put so much effort into
| software like OpenWRT would put some of that effort into
| managing multiple devices in a nice, unified manner. The
| tooling could be so much better.
| buccal wrote:
| > I really wish the people who put so much effort into
| software like OpenWRT would put some of that effort into
| managing multiple devices in a nice, unified manner. The
| tooling could be so much better.
|
| There is OpenWISP: Leveraging Linux OpenWrt, OpenWISP is
| an open-source solution for efficient IT network
| deployment, monitoring & management.
| seemaze wrote:
| >HN boosters overdoing it on their home WiFi in what must
| be a bid to get their partner to divorce them..
|
| Au contraire!
|
| I got tired of the refrain "are you messing with the
| network again?" in the evenings when the neighbors are all
| streaming Netflix and crowding the airwaves, so I installed
| several low power UI APs around the house and and popped my
| own DNS and devices to a separate VLAN.
|
| No more complaints :)
|
| I do wish Unifi offered more configuration in the ad-
| blocking department, but I'm hesitant to inflict anything
| but the most vanilla deployment on the remainder of the
| household..
| 9x39 wrote:
| Unless UI spins up their own dns business, I have had
| good luck using nextdns.io at home to close that gap.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Netgear 5 port managed switch: $30
| https://www.netgear.com/business/wired/switches/easy-
| smart/g...
|
| Ubiquiti 5 port managed switch: $30
| https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-
| switching/products/u...
|
| Netgear 24 port managed switch: $260 (with a 1 year
| subscription included!)
| https://www.netgear.com/business/wired/switches/smart-
| cloud/...
|
| Ubiquiti 24 port managed switch: $225
| https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/all-
| switching/products/u...
|
| Sorry, but what markup are you referring to?
|
| I'm sure you can find price differences at different
| products & tiers, but quickly glancing around it sure
| doesn't look like Ubiquiti has any particular premium
| markup.
|
| Regardless having a self-hosted, buy-it-and-own-it, non-
| business friendly product line absolutely has value. I
| loved my mikrotik switches when I was just messing around,
| but the single pane of glass, central management is not
| insignificant when time becomes a more precious resource
| and you just need it to work.
| hardolaf wrote:
| The Ubiquiti 5 port switch is actually better than the
| Netgear one because it's POE powered whereas I don't
| think the Netgear one is.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| I have developed a deep dislike for UI overall through
| the years due to their many missteps (see: most of this
| thread), but those little PoE-powered 2.5G switches are
| _amazing_ and I am surprised that while 2.5G is getting
| more and more popular, no one has any real competition
| for this product. No matter, I bought three!
|
| I do wish they were even smaller (I've got one location
| I'd like to mount one inside a wall box, which is
| admittedly pretty niche), and I am never again touching
| UI's configuration software (even 10 years later I feel
| that wound), but, yeah... love these little guys.
| hardolaf wrote:
| I haven't really seen cheaper overall solutions for medium-
| sized home deployments than their gear. I need a layer 3
| switch with 1 SFP+ 10Gbe port, and at least 5 1/2.5/5/10
| Gbe copper ports with POE++ on at least 2 ports. I cannot
| find a cheaper solution that the USW-Pro-XG-8-PoE from any
| vendor. If you know one, please let me know.
|
| Sure some of their hardware is overpriced, but they're
| pushing the limits of what's available in the 10 and 25 Gbe
| areas at relatively reasonable prices.
| a3w wrote:
| Ah, this is a Ubiquity product. That explains it.
|
| Why did AVM or Netgear Orbi not get this treatment for
| "works", though?
| lwkl wrote:
| Because Unifi is more focused on the needs of businesses
| and enthusiasts. AVM and Netgear Orbi are products for the
| consumer market. So they miss a the advanced features Unifi
| supports.
|
| Unifi is used by the tech-savvy homeowner that needs PoE
| for their security cameras and wants to control and
| configure their network without needing a network engineer.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| And also Unifi lets you just buy stuff instead of
| "contact a sales rep". If I go to Netgear and filter
| primary port speed to 2.5g, which is hardly an enterprise
| spec, all 3 options are "contact a rep" which... no
| thanks. Who on earth wants to contact a sales rep for a
| 10 port 2.5gb switch?
|
| There is now also TP-Link's Omada line at least which
| seems like the most comparable alternative.
| hardolaf wrote:
| I tried out Netgear Orbi and I don't know who it's
| actually for. It tried deploying it at my dad's place,
| but had to return it because it just doesn't work.
| Dropped in Ubiquiti gear to replace it and I had the
| entire network up and running within 15 minutes of
| applying power. And it's had zero of the issues that I
| had with Netgear's system.
| xp84 wrote:
| Just wanted to drop another data point that Linksys is
| also trash now. So for consumer-targeted gear it seems
| the options are:
|
| 1. Eero - great performance, no web config (only mobile
| app), cloud dependent, half the features paywalled for
| monthly subscription (eyeroll)
|
| 2. Linksys - confirmed piles of crap, a 6E mesh kit I
| tried last year performed worse than my 2018 Eeros so why
| bother. Config is even more limiting than Eero, the web
| UI is a slow disaster that times out constantly, and the
| app is terrible and the features are badly designed.
|
| 3. Netgear - sucks as parent comment explains
|
| 4. TP-Link - reputation is that it's bad but I haven't
| tried
|
| 5. Asus - never tried
|
| 6. Google - no doubt they'll kill and brick these at some
| point
|
| Any others I'm forgetting?
| milliams wrote:
| Small aside, AVM have now formally rebranded as "FRITZ!"
| gorjusborg wrote:
| No experience with AVM, but Ubiquiti gear is at least a
| class above Netgear equipment.
| alphager wrote:
| AVM is great for single-owner use with sub 20 devices.
|
| Unifi is great for small IT companies providing network
| services to tens of costumers. Being able to manage
| everything remotely (and even batch things for all of your
| customers) is great.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| I recently bought their cloud fiber gateway and two in wall
| wifi 7 access points because I'm setting up a network in my
| new apartment and hear this multiple times.
|
| Honestly they are nothing like Apple - like just look at
| their mobile apps - how many do they have - 10 ? To interact
| with the same gateway just for slightly different use-cases.
| Not to mention that the functionalities are hard to decipher
| inopinatus wrote:
| More like the Sonos of networking gear, in that they were
| once kinda cool but squandered it with questionable product
| decisions.
| Nux wrote:
| Hear hear!
| chrisweekly wrote:
| On the Sonos tangent: the hardware is really good! But the
| software is just staggeringly, aggressively, and
| proactively terrible. :(
| greenavocado wrote:
| Can it be reflashed
| chrisweekly wrote:
| there's sadly no community solution AFAICT
| seltzered_ wrote:
| Why cant an android phone with ethernet tethering to a
| router suffice?
|
| I've done this using an android phone, usb-c hub
| w/ethernet nic, and and edgerouter lite before.
|
| The biggest missing piece i see is the option for an
| external antenna.
| greenavocado wrote:
| The antenna is often more important than the receiver
| chrisweekly wrote:
| I don't understand how that fixes the awful Sonos
| software.
| ttyyzz wrote:
| They made some good decisions aswell in the recent past,
| looking at their firewall configuration features (made it
| zone based).. All in all their eco system is worth it imo
| and the hardware is actually affordable. On the other hand
| I had some mikrotik gear in the past which was also really
| good, the user interface is just not as shiny ;-)
| kibwen wrote:
| Ah, so what you're saying is that they're the Apple of
| networking gear.
| gsibble wrote:
| Good one.
| brandensilva wrote:
| They have always been stuck between prosumer, pro business,
| and enterprise.
|
| They have tried to go subscription based licensing but that
| can be conflicting for companies who just want decent
| reliable network gear in all the above market segments.
|
| I fit in the prosumer category and have about $10,000 in
| gear and while it's great for my needs I don't see myself
| ever spending money for network gear subscriptions.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It is nice stuff. I have several UniFi devices in a 2200
| sq foot old house that are wired on Ethernet and the WiFi
| is great everywhere. They also have a line of point-to-
| point modified WiFi radios for long range links and it
| took about 30 minutes to set up a link between my house
| and another house on the property.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| That is fair, though they at least walked back some of
| those, and self-hosting is still very much a thing if you
| prefer not to deal with configuring your system through
| Someone Else's Computer.
| jsheard wrote:
| They have the form-over-function aspect too, in that they
| decided to keep the external design language consistent
| across the board no matter what. Which meant they couldn't
| improve the passive heat dissipation enough to keep up with
| newer network standards, and had to resort to putting fans in
| their WiFi APs to keep them from overheating.
| Normal_gaussian wrote:
| And they make the whole claim of 'minimalism means easy to
| use for power users', which really means 'we'll keep
| messing with how the meshing in your house works so that
| you're unable to pin preferred routes between nodes -
| because without seeing your house we know better'.
| 9x39 wrote:
| Uplink priority doesn't work?
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Which units is that? I have a pair of u7 pros in my house
| and they've never made a peep, though admittedly they don't
| get pushed very hard at all; the TV and two main computers
| are wired, so it's really just iot junk and phones on the
| wifi.
| jsheard wrote:
| The U7 Pros do have a fan, but yeah if you're not pushing
| them very hard it may not be spinning up.
|
| https://youtu.be/IStbaTQTBio?t=117
|
| Aside from noise it's also not ideal for reliability in
| dusty environments.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Interesting, how about that. I did definitely note that
| they were _considerably_ more weighty in the hand than
| the AC-era APs they were replacing.
| beAbU wrote:
| To be fair, they have a nice ecosystem for networking nerds.
| I got a Dream Router last week for black friday and I'm super
| happy with it. Setup was like 20 seconds.
|
| I'm looking forward to getting more Unifi gear in the near
| future.
| synergy20 wrote:
| the founder himself was an Apple hardware designer
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Unifi is a bit different than Apple to me.
|
| Ubiquiti is one of the few companies doing prosumer hardware
| - and doing it extremely well. They give you access to
| advanced, raw configurations without necessarily having to go
| "full enterprise" deployment. They also have solutions for
| just about everything.
|
| That being said, I generally have moved towards other Wifi
| solutions as I've grown weary of tweaking Ubiquiti all of the
| time. I found that I could get better top-end performance out
| of Ubiquiti gear, but really struggled to hammer out poor
| performance in edge cases. Particularly, with jitter and
| random latency spikes.
|
| My consumer mesh wifi system gets nowhere near it's
| advertised performance, with little way for me to tweak it.
| However, I rarely need "full performance" and it doesn't
| suffer from the same random glitches.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| I've moved to buying last gen used Ruckus Unleashed APs
| (usually R720 as they are cheap and very reliable). Way
| higher quality but steep learning curve for many functions,
| although if someone is willing to put in some effort it's
| not that bad.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Usually, I use Mikrotik wAP ACs for this kind of thing.
| They're cheap-enough to buy brand new, and they're
| designed to be able to work outdoors in the weather.
|
| But I might pick up an R720 just to play with -- that's a
| different echelon of gear.
|
| Thanks for the tip.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| For outdoor, the model numbers start with "T". I think
| the T710 is the equivalent of the R720 for outdoor.
| p_ing wrote:
| Not that everyone needs it, but it doesn't seem like
| Mikrotik has any 6E or 7 WAPs? If they do, I'd love to
| try one
| r1290 wrote:
| What do you recommend as an alternative?
| jonah wrote:
| I was having issues with Wi-Fi stability but, once the
| settings were dialed incorrectly, it's been rock solid over
| a year.
| z3ratul163071 wrote:
| Where they differ also from Apple, and indeed is insanely
| amazing for a network hw company is that I'm still getting
| software updates for my , I don't know, at least 7 years
| old AP. A consumer device.
|
| This is unprecedented and much appreciated.
| encom wrote:
| >7 years of software maintenance is absolutely
| precedented and expected of any serious networking
| vendor.
| tevon wrote:
| He specifically specified that he was happy with ubiquiti
| since it was consumer grade hardware
| int0x2e wrote:
| I used to think the same way, and I loved UBNT. Sadly,
| after 2 different more advanced configs I had caused wild
| stability issues - affecting APs, a USG and the controller
| itself to the point of making them less reliable than a
| random TP-Link router, plus an ERL randomly dying on me
| without warning and never booting again - I decided to pull
| UBNT from anything and anywhere.
|
| I now exclusively use open-source projects with a strong
| history and community - or used high-end enterprise gear
| that I pick up when it reaches EOL so it's dirt cheap.
| Stability has been so much better, even with the most
| advanced configs I ever created.
| bitexploder wrote:
| I still like them. I have almost no real complaints about
| their products. They just work for me. Here is an example: I
| had a Netgate with pfsense for my home gateway. My primary
| home internet provider can be a little flaky, so I have a
| beefy 5G gateway backup. It was way too hard to configure one
| of the ports to support automatic WAN failover. The, less
| expensive, unifi product just worked. It was just a simple
| setting in the gateway's management UI. The information
| provided in the dashboard is rich and it implements things
| like constant QoS monitoring that has a nice plot. It adopts
| and manages my home wifi and makes it super easy to configure
| channels, analyze congestion, and do all the deeper technical
| configuration I could ask for.
|
| Another example, I had Frigate set up on a home rolled NAS.
| Again, it worked alright, but it always stole time from me.
| It always needed a little maintenance or tweaking or
| thinking. I bought a UNVR and modern Unifi cameras. Adopted,
| zero thinking or management from me. I still retain control
| of my data and it respects my privacy. It isn't perfect, but
| at the price point it solved meaningful problems I cared
| about in both cases. Yes they are commercial products and not
| open source, but they are priced reasonably to my eyes (the
| UCG ultra was actually cheaper than the netgate). That makes
| me a happy customer.
|
| I have run their wifi APs for over a decade with no problems.
| It's not perfect, I know there are still privacy concerns. No
| company is really perfect, but they are good to me.
| hardolaf wrote:
| The corollary to them just working is that if they don't,
| they don't just ignore you like Apple. I reported a bug
| between two pieces of their hardware when talking to a
| specific 5Gbe NIC via their support without a support
| contract. They took a week to get back to me with a member
| of their QA department talking directly with me and having
| me validate beta firmware with them. After about a week of
| back-and-forth, they had a fixed version that has been
| deployed globally to everyone.
|
| Meanwhile, Apple still hasn't fixed bugs that I reported to
| them between 2012 and 2014 while working for one of the
| largest universities in North America as a level 2 tech.
| baby_souffle wrote:
| > Unifi is the Apple of networking gear
|
| They were founded by some people that left Apple.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I've got some old Unifi gear and there's a couple of things
| that make them unlike Apple.
|
| Firstly, I can run the network controller easily in Linux (in
| Docker as it happens, but the image is third party -
| jacobalberty/unifi). It's happily running on Raspberry Pi.
|
| Secondly, I've got one really old access point that is now
| unsupported for updates, but apart from that, there's no
| problem with controlling it along with the supported ones.
|
| Also, I don't need a cloud connection though they do
| encourage using one.
| xp84 wrote:
| This seems like a stretch. If your position is that the REAL
| experts are using Cisco gear instead, I guess fine. But the
| "HN Crowd" loves using Ubiquiti at home because it is light
| years better than any consumer brand, (1) in terms of giving
| people who know what they're doing sufficient control to do
| so, (2) in terms of performance, and (3) in terms of not
| being a buggy piece of crap.
|
| Contrast with:
|
| (1) eero has no web UI (ONLY mobile phone!) and almost zero
| network configurability. You can't set a hostname for
| instance for DHCP. You can have exactly one main and one
| guest network. You don't get to configure anything about it
| though. Etc.
|
| (3) I bought a Linksys replacement for my Eeros to get 6E --
| I returned it to the store due to how horrifyingly bad the
| Web UI was and how bad the "app" was too. AND it also had
| flaws like inability to have reservation IPs outside the DHCP
| pool range.
|
| Apple is actually the opposite of Ubiquiti -- they don't want
| you to be able to configure anything or have any visibility
| into anything. It either 'just works' or just silently fails
| or fails with "An error occurred."
| staplers wrote:
| Ubiquiti at home because it is light years better than any
| consumer brand
|
| As someone who simply wanted to isolate different devices
| on my home network, I was looking at nearly thousands of
| dollars of hardware, installing abstract OpenWRT software,
| and arduous VLAN rules to do this. It was shocking how
| immature this space is. I finally caved to the ubiquiti
| setup and am glad I did.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The eero also has a privacy policy that allows them to
| record your DNS traffic (they are owned by Amazon).
|
| https://www.historytools.org/docs/reasons-to-avoid-amazon-
| ee...
| j45 wrote:
| Not quite, DIY vs technologies like Unifi make it accessible
| to the masses where the former is for the few to feel good
| about themselves, and the latter makes a difference in moving
| things forward for the many without as much investment in
| time, because people shouldn't have to be free employees of
| technology to derive a benefit..
|
| "Just works" means you can enjoy other parts of technology,
| like what you do with it, instead of just getting and keeping
| it working.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| Sure, but it's not manufactured in Ch- ah, nevermind.
| mrweasel wrote:
| What it can do, and Ubiquity already had this as a separate
| product, is act as a fallback for you regular internet
| connection.
|
| You can do the same with Mikrotik and a ton of configuration,
| the pitch with Unify is that it "just works".
| kkapelon wrote:
| "It just works" with Teltonika and Glinet as well. In most of
| the openwrt based routers multi-wan is already enabled. It is
| also very easy to do with TP-Link Omada (just enable a
| checkbox).
|
| So, implying that Unifi is the only company that does this in
| an easy way is misleading marketing.
|
| Comparing against Mikrotik is a very low bar.
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| You're refuting a point he didn't make.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I have this exact Huawei as my failover internet connection,
| works perfectly except doesn't do PoE so I need to have a
| stupid wall-wart for it.
| mjlee wrote:
| You can buy PoE splitters that will take ethernet in and give
| you ethernet + some power supply out. Looks like you need
| 12V/2A and a cursory search throws up a few options.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Yea, I have my Philips Hue hub powered via Poe and an
| adapter along with a few other devices that use straight up
| USB-C or micro-USB
|
| I need to figure out if the 5G box can be powered like that
| too
| tyteen4a03 wrote:
| This is perfect for me, who want to avoid Chinese-branded
| devices as much as possible.
| alt227 wrote:
| Right, but do you know what radio chips they are using
| inside?
|
| I would guess they are chinese...
| SigmundA wrote:
| Looks like Qualcomm X62
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Why would you guess Chinese? Broadcom, Qualcomm, MediaTek,
| and Realtek are the typical answers for radio chips, no?
| None of whom are Chinese? There certainly are Chinese radio
| chips, such as from Espressif or Huawei, but they aren't
| especially popular in APs or anything
| alt227 wrote:
| Most of those chips are made in TSMC or samsung
| foundries, the majority of which are currently in China
| or South Asia.
| cap11235 wrote:
| Realtek windows drivers literally have taiwnese written
| text. They are as American as Lego
| alt227 wrote:
| I really dont see what your comment means in response to
| the current thread?
| gmanley wrote:
| The majority of their foundries are in Taiwan and South
| Korea which, to avoid politics, is outside what most
| people mean when they worry about tech made in China
| (they think about the PRC).
| jamiek88 wrote:
| None of them are in china. They are in Taiwan and South
| Korea.
| kllrnohj wrote:
| To be strictly accurate TSMC has exactly 2 fabs in China
| (Fab 10 & Fab 16). So it's not "none" in China, but very
| almost none.
| kenmacd wrote:
| If you avoid Chinese-branded devices you should doubly avoid
| US-branded devices. See National Security Letters and Room
| 641A as a small subset of why.
| huijzer wrote:
| The big question is why do we need 5g? My phone doesn't support
| it and my internet is fast enough as long as I have good
| coverage. Coverage problems are only exaggerated by 5G since
| the range for short waves is shorter
| xzjis wrote:
| Back in school, I had a teacher who was in charge of
| installing 3G, 4G, and 5G antennas for a carrier in France.
| The answer is that the 4G frequency bands are saturated, and
| they pushed 5G mainly to relieve congestion on the 4G
| network. Theoretically, 5G has just as much range (maybe even
| a little bit more with beamforming) on the 700 MHz and 800
| MHz bands.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| 5G has lower latency again than 4G. There's also more
| capacity making it possible to use it as a real connection
| than just backup.
| beAbU wrote:
| Not everyone has cable/fibre/wifi in their homes, and need to
| resort to 4/5g cellular services in order to be online.
|
| This product is aimed at those people who want something
| nicer than the 5g router bundled with their plan.
| Arbortheus wrote:
| Where I live, all the 4G is oversaturated and really slow.
| sorenjan wrote:
| 5G does not mean shorter waves/higher frequencies, that's
| just a common deployment. In Sweden we have 5G on the 700 MHz
| band, 5900 MHz, and several others in between.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| It'd be a good option for failover Internet.
| harrall wrote:
| I've worked at companies with cellular failover for the most
| critical services.
|
| 5G in my city is 650 Mbps and is honestly cheaper than fiber,
| but my fiber has better jitter (and can go up to 2 Gbps). For
| a lot of people, 5G would be more cost effective.
| cap11235 wrote:
| See living near a concert venue. 4G behaves badly in a
| terrain of 100k phones
| yapyap wrote:
| I gotta say, I hate it when companies use "xxx bits per second",
| whether its Mega or Giga nobody uses bits per second and for the
| average consumer it's very unclear that this differs from bytes.
|
| Having to explain to relatives and such that "yeah you actually
| have to divide that by 8" is a hassle and I get tricked by it
| subconsciously at times as well.
|
| 2 gbps meaning 250 megabytes per second is a SCAM. A marketing
| sham at it's finest.
|
| "I have 100 mbps download" meaning "I get 12.5 megabytes download
| per second" is ridiculous!!
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| and how do you feel about HDD vendors (and Apple) using
| giga-/tera- for their strictly SI power-of-ten and not power-
| of-two meaning?
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| This ship sailed out of view a long time ago, the only GB
| you'll see that is still base-2 is RAM. And that's only
| because you literally can't address physical RAM in non
| power-of-2 blocks in most architectures.
| kortilla wrote:
| That's not marketing related at all. It's how network speeds
| have been measured long before ISPs were a business.
|
| A byte per second is no more intuitive than a nibble per second
| or a bit per second. You might be used to byte as a power user
| because of storage, but I assure you that to regular people
| "256 gigabytes" is a meaningless number as well.
| johncolanduoni wrote:
| If you really want to piss people off, use Gibibits - 1024 *
| 1024 * 1024 bits. The ratio between those and Gigabytes is
| ~7.451.
| poly2it wrote:
| I honestly feel mibi and gibibytes per second are the easiest
| units to rationalise about. The data I am transferring is
| already known to me in its binary prefix unit. Seconds for
| that data to transfer is a trivial translation.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix
| tuetuopay wrote:
| Networking _only_ uses bits /s. Nobody in the networking world
| talks in bytes/s, and pretty much nobody in the data transfer
| world does.
|
| The only industry that talks in bytes/s is parts of the storage
| space, because they relate to files, that are measured in
| bytes/s. And even them use both: the data link is in bits/s
| (e.g. SATA 6 is 6Gbps, NVMe uses the same bits/s than PCIe (1))
| while the drive is usually in bytes/s (uSD cards, NVMe SSDs,
| etc).
|
| When you look at the industry at large, throughput is virtually
| always measured in bits/s. HDMI is in bits/s. Video codecs
| measures bitrates in bits/s. Audio codecs measures bitrates in
| bits/s. PCIe is in bits/s (1). Ethernet is measured in bits/s.
| Wifi is measured in bits/s. You get the picture.
|
| The good thing about keeping it consistent is that values are
| _relatable_. Streaming services naturally talk in bitrate for
| the video quality, and your ISP also talks in bits /s. You can
| compare the two numbers. Bytes/s is only really useful for on
| the spot jobs that you do once, like transferring photos from
| an SD card to your computer. Otherwise, it's just a unit.
|
| (1): ackhstually pcie measures speeds in transfers/s because
| they include the 8b10b/64b66b encoding overhead and TLP
| overhead but I digress.
| sgarland wrote:
| Wait until you find out about network endianness.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I wish website designers would remember that not everyone can see
| great. This text is so fine and light and they've also disabled
| screen reader
| nake89 wrote:
| Firefox reader view gives me better contrast. Also the text to
| speech mode works in reader view.
| quantummagic wrote:
| Have you tried Firefox Reader View? It allows you to set
| whatever text size and font is best for you.
| szszrk wrote:
| oh, I didn't noticed that at first, but you are right.
|
| What I did noticed is so many fast videos right next to text. I
| didn't even bother to read it (without firefox read mode)
| because it makes me a bit dizzy.
| Orygin wrote:
| Even if my vision is okay, it still feels like a slap to the
| face. Can't take some time to make sure the most important part
| of the page is readable by all.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I specifically have issues with strong back lighting (genetic
| cataracts suck - I'm only in my 40s) so bright white page and
| light writing is super frustrating. Dark mode is my best
| friend.
| Semaphor wrote:
| OT: Does anyone know of a setting or extension for Firefox to
| stop those autoplaying videos? I have gifs disabled, prefers-
| reduced-motion on, and those videos in that article both
| autoplay, and start again after pausing them manually. I have no
| idea what the article is about (except what the title says)
| because I kept getting distracted by the annoying videos.
| uallo wrote:
| Settings => Search for "Autoplay" => Click "Settings..." => For
| "Default for all websites" select "Block Audio and Video".
| Semaphor wrote:
| Thank you, I could have sworn I had that active, but for some
| reason it was "audio only".
| styanax wrote:
| The about:config settings which you can look up:
| media.autoplay.blocking_policy
| media.autoplay.default
|
| I have mine set to 2 and 5 respectively.
| slumberlust wrote:
| Thanks, I also noticed they allowlisted the FF about
| page...which is a bit cheeky.
| Asmod4n wrote:
| I've got their unifi mobile router 4g and am quite happy with it
| in conjunction with one of their routers which got two lan ports
| you can either run in primary/primary mode where it does load
| balancing or primary/secondary one where the latter only gets
| used when the main one has issues.
|
| I just kinda wish multipath TCP or something similar would be
| more in use so you wouldn't notice a swap in connection mid air.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| So Ubiquity is trustworthy again?
|
| After the 2.4GHz wifi issues with UDM I swore I will never buy
| them again.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| I've been running a base UDM for a long time without any 2.4GHz
| issues -- is there something specific that was broken?
| daft_pink wrote:
| Do you know if we can use the T-Mobile home Internet? I think
| they require their own modem, but I'm not sure.
| syntaxing wrote:
| You can if it supports IMEI spoofing (which I doubt). You
| definitely can use GL inet 5G routers if you want an
| alternative
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| The problem I have seen is when I need it most, due to a rare
| fiber internet outage, so does everyone else nearby and cellular
| data becomes saturated and unusable.
| turnsout wrote:
| In locations where fiber is not available (like my place),
| cable is the next best option, and cable has a lot more
| unexpected downtime. I could see this being a good backup,
| especially for small businesses like retail shops that couldn't
| afford to have their POS go down for half a day.
| hedora wrote:
| Around here, it's Starlink >> Fiber >> Cable because our
| lines are above ground and outages are frequent.
|
| Fiber is less expensive than and more than 10x faster than
| starlink, in fairness.
|
| Our 5g towers seem to run off the fiber lines, so it's not
| really a backup (and gets overwhelmed anyway).
|
| I'm considering getting fiber in addition to starlink, but I
| wish they'd just buried the lines.
|
| I see telephone trucks repairing downed lines we'd rely on
| many dozens of times a year. Digging a trench would probably
| pay for itself in a year or two.
| hylaride wrote:
| > Digging a trench would probably pay for itself in a year
| or two.
|
| I know some people running independent community fiber
| ISPs. Digging trenches can be a nightmare depending on the
| neighbourhood. You can have property ownership issues,
| other utilities being present, permit nightmares, different
| ground/soil types, etc. That ignores the fact that when
| somebody else digs they can hit your lines and repairing
| that is a pain.
|
| Digging is better, though. But it's not necessarily as easy
| as one may think.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| Definitely a nightmare.
|
| Where I work just acquired new property and are deploying
| a new site. It took 9 months, from date of first contact,
| before the ISP could come out, bore under the road, and
| run fiber to our building from two poles away. And that's
| just a short ~500 feet underground run.
|
| I couldn't imagine the amount of permitting and logistics
| involved in trying to bury an entire run across town.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| My community did the big dig around 2001. They finished
| around 2010. It was a huge project that took hundreds if
| not thousands of man-hours. I'm not sure if anyone ever
| actually calculated the total cost. And this is for a
| pretty small town. Now the day-to-day connectivity is
| much better, and weather almost never knocks us out, but
| when something does get knocked out, it takes longer to
| fix.
|
| Overall, it's much nicer. No ugly telephone poles, don't
| have to worry about weather, just reliable, strong
| service. But to think it pays for itself in 2 years is
| laughable.
| gsibble wrote:
| I would normally love this device, except I already have
| 2.5gbit fiber AND cable. They work for load balancing and
| failover.
|
| Now I can't decide if I need a 3rd WAN.....
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| Agreed retail is a good customer for this tech. But even
| after getting fiber personally, it gets cut a lot by
| landscaping crews. Most of the time it's a residential line
| that takes a day to fix. But a few times it's been a main
| line and it takes 3-4 days. Maybe I'm unusual but that's been
| my experience
| metadat wrote:
| Why are landscaping crews cutting wires on poles in the
| sky?
| 9x39 wrote:
| Poles are common, but so are existing buried conduits and
| vaults which are often used if they exist.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I keep an old Starlink in a closet for this exact reason
| marcosscriven wrote:
| Does Starlink have a temporary or "pay as you go" option?
| harrall wrote:
| Not anymore. You need a $5/mo charge to keep your account
| hot.
| tedd4u wrote:
| That's pretty reasonable.
| josephh wrote:
| They still give you 500kbps of speed, which is enough for
| checking emails, voice calls, navigation, music
| streaming, etc.
| slipheen wrote:
| Historically Starlink roam let you pause/suspend the
| service and restart it when you need-
|
| In August they changed their plans so you'd need to cancel
| and re-subscribe.
| ttul wrote:
| So I'm not the only guy doing this...
| syntaxing wrote:
| Would be useful for 5G home internet if they had IMEI spoofing
| but I would doubt it. It sucks how the gateway from these
| services do not have external antenna support.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah; California's network neutrality laws include a provision
| banning discrimination based on device type.
|
| I've never heard of it being enforced, and blatant violations
| of it are the norm.
| zekyl314 wrote:
| I was hoping this was a mini 5G cell tower that connected to the
| network, so you could have good 5G service inside.
| powvans wrote:
| I need a portable mini 5G cell tower in a backpack form factor
| so that I can have 5G service indoors no matter where I am.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| With what backhaul? WiFi?
| macNchz wrote:
| Those do exist, they're called cell signal boosters. Once upon
| a time, I believe, some American cell providers would give you
| one for free if you had bad signal at home, which mattered a
| lot more before phones all had wifi calling.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > Those do exist, they're called cell signal boosters.
|
| No, those are different. They are describing a femtocell. I
| still have one site with a T-Mobile one. It basically VPN's
| to T-Mobile's network core through the cable ISP, uses GPS to
| check its location for licensed spectrum, and then broadcasts
| its own LTE signal. It does not boost/repeat the signal of a
| nearby tower, it runs its own.
| andix wrote:
| Do they work for 5G? I think just amplifying the signal (like
| 2g signal boosters did) would mess with a lot with all the
| fancy RF tricks that make 5G fast, stable, low-latency and
| quite low on package loss (5G has impressively low package
| loss on the IP layer).
|
| For most use cases WiFi should be the better solution. VoWiFi
| works well for calls. Should be enough for home and office
| use.
| superxpro12 wrote:
| FWIW, MMS and SMS are still left in the dust in this
| situation, as I have this exact issue.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| That shouldn't be the case. There's an extension to VoWiFi
| to support SMS over IP. With 2G and 3G going away it's not
| like your carrier has a choice anyway.
| andix wrote:
| I think in the US there are even public 5G frequencies that can
| be used. In most of Europe you would need to buy an expensive
| license to do that.
|
| Private 5G networks usually need internal eSIM cards, you can't
| just let public devices roam into the private 5G net.
|
| Benefits of 5G over WiFi: much better roaming between APs,
| higher distances, and better congestion management if there are
| hundreds of devices connected to a cell.
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| US Verizon SIM support?
| stego-tech wrote:
| I think Verizon is an eSIM option on the modem; dunno about the
| Router version, but I'd want to assume it's the same?
|
| Either way, having modems that are fully unlocked for Stateside
| usage for once is a nice touch. Their LTE line was essentially
| AT&T-locked, or unlocked but only supporting AT&T in the US, so
| this is a nice improvement.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I'm glad it has a physical SIM still. I always use regular
| prepaid phone plans for my 4/5G backup but the providers don't
| like these being used with modems. So they have more options to
| block them with eSIM.
| xiconfjs wrote:
| FAQ: "Can the UniFi 5G Max Outdoor work as a standalone device?"
| -> No. The UniFi 5G Max Outdoor must be adopted by a UniFi Cloud
| Gateway or UniFi Gateway and cannot function independently as a
| router or modem.
|
| :(
| grayhatter wrote:
| Yeah, exactly how I feel! This is disappointing. I remember,
| and miss the days when UniFi wasn't as user hostile as they
| have become.
| happyopossum wrote:
| They literally list the standalone version further down the
| page:
|
| * Dream Router 5G Max: The Fully Integrated UniFi Experience *
| kllrnohj wrote:
| but that one isn't outdoor rated.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| Why do you need the entire integrated setup to be outdoor-
| rated? That just adds tons of cost. If the antennas and
| modem need to be outside for signal strength reasons, so be
| it, but as much of your networking gear as possible should
| be indoors.
| Retric wrote:
| Construction projects, festivals, etc. Bad cellular
| reception is more likely to be an issue far from other
| infrastructure.
| amluto wrote:
| There are plenty of outdoor plastic enclosures, mostly
| RF-transparent, that are intended to hold network
| equipment.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| There are brands specifically for those markets though.
| Complaining about Ubiquiti not making a product for that
| specific use case feels like complaining about a Honda
| Civic not being an offroad-capable Jeep.
| Retric wrote:
| "The UniFi 5G Max lineup was created with a clear goal in
| mind: deliver a sleek, versatile, and exceptionally
| powerful 5G internet experience _that works effortlessly
| in any environment."_
|
| If it's fine if you want to build a golf cart, just don't
| pretend it's an ATV.
| Guvante wrote:
| Put it in a wooden box with a generator outside of it and
| you are good to go.
| Retric wrote:
| That's got its own set of issues, but more importantly
| would you call that working effortlessly?
| wsces wrote:
| It's LTE only, not 5G but this might be what you're
| looking for
|
| https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/internet-
| solutions/colle...
| bmurphy1976 wrote:
| I would think if you are doing projects that big, you
| would in fact want dedicated devices instead of all-in-
| ones.
| seneca wrote:
| The DreamRouter 5G Max is the stand alone device.
| conception wrote:
| You can just download the software to configure/manage it. It's
| not the best situation but you don't have to buy anything.
| gsibble wrote:
| This device came out just after I already got Fios 2GB and
| Comcast 2GB for load balancing / failover.
|
| If both of them go down, I doubt 5G will matter much. Not like I
| have a big UPS in the house anyways.
| roflchoppa wrote:
| 2Gbps?! I was testing out tmobile 5G service with their router
| and it's only ~330Mbps down ~180Mbps up...
|
| Can it really be that much faster?
| harrall wrote:
| I get 650 Mbps with T-mobile in my city.
| jmb99 wrote:
| I've seen 900Mbps with Bell in low-congestion areas at off-peak
| times, with an iPhone 13 Pro 5 years ago.
| cap11235 wrote:
| I have tmobile and a local provider for fiber. 5G Tmobile caps
| out around 912, similar to my fiber.
| andix wrote:
| I thought it would create a private 5G network to extend the
| unify WiFis. But it's just a fancy 5G modem, right?
| varispeed wrote:
| I live near 5G relay and I was surprised that I could get
| symmetrical 1gbps connection, without any cables. Still
| remembering 56k modem, it feels like magic.
| aynyc wrote:
| My good friend is a network engineer and provider in NYC for
| decades now, pretty good one at that. Has anyone deployed UniFi
| in a computer centric professional environment? Just to be more
| specific a bit, computer centric professional environment means
| networks and computers are the primary way of getting job done.
| He hasn't seen any UniFi but his home is all UniFi.
| ugh123 wrote:
| I've seen Cisco meraki AP's on the ceilings at more than a
| handful of tech companies, if that helps.
| aynyc wrote:
| Thanks!
| 9x39 wrote:
| Small businesses? Sure. I've seen Unifi networks with a few
| hundred MACs often enough.
|
| Enterprises? Thousands, tens of thousands of employees?
| Generally cost isn't prohibitive at the scale so bigger
| ecosystems with more support make way more sense. Even their
| enterprise switches aren't really equivalent to Cisco, Arista,
| Juniper, etc enterprise offerings. They're inching forward,
| though.
| aynyc wrote:
| What kinda of small businesses? My friend does consulting and
| most of his business is on small (100-250 employees) size and
| sometimes small start up, typically in the office
| construction phase where he comes in and set up network
| infrastructure. He never seems anyone asking for UniFi, but
| again, might just because the cost? He feels UniFi is price
| competitive at that scale but no one wants it for some
| reason.
|
| When he was with a larger company, cisco and juniper were the
| only options.
| 9x39 wrote:
| Upmarket electrical trade, engineering offices, MSPs
| commonly, smallish healthcare, an equine event center, a
| bank.
|
| I see tons of small businesses (mom & pop, restaurants)
| with a UI AP or two, of course, but that's not what you
| meant, I don't think.
|
| The places that COULD use UI often just don't care, and
| want the cheap toilet paper (netgear, ebay whatever) since
| cost discipline can be critical. I think there's a niche of
| biz with enough margin that networking/cameras get sold
| together and they don't insist on lowest price. My guess
| would also be the MSP that is quoting the job also heavily
| influences whether UI is used, plenty of dinosaurs out
| there.
|
| Bigger places want routing, network virtualization, etc
| from the big players you mentioned. UI doesn't want to mess
| with BGP, spine-leaf, sd access/wan, etc. There's also like
| the 24/7 support options they want, and access to the
| partner/VAR/contractor networks so you have tons of
| options. The sales deals and dinners unfortunately factor
| into this too...
| aynyc wrote:
| Thank you! He recently did a job on a newly constructed
| venue hall for about 300-400 people. He originally quoted
| full UI which has everything the company is looking for,
| from network to security camera. The company didn't want
| that, I think he ended do a combination of Cisco and some
| odd security system.
| cmpxchg8b wrote:
| How does this differ from Invisagig?
| QuiEgo wrote:
| I really want to want Unifi, but my experience with one of their
| products (UDM + mesh) was that it was a ton of effort to get
| something working that ended up being slower and more fiddly than
| a consumer focused router. When I get home, I don't want to be an
| unpaid sysadmin
| kidfiji wrote:
| Check out Firewalla if your interest roots in tinkering :)
| giobox wrote:
| While Unifi supports wireless backhaul/mesh, the entire system
| is heavily designed to encourage wired backhaul - all their
| wireless APs are PoE for a reason. If you are going to invest
| in the Unifi ecosystem, it makes sense to invest in decent
| networking - wireless "mesh" is always a compromise for running
| multiple wireless APs.
|
| If you are in a situation you need multiple wireless APs but
| can't run ethernet to them (like renting etc), I'd probably
| pass on a Unifi system personally.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| Yeah this lines up with my experience. Had issues with mesh
| (I bought an AP with mesh in the product name that covered a
| wall outlet, no Ethernet in)(edit: it was the "beacon"),
| essentially was told "you're holding it wrong.", and moved
| on. They seem like lovely products for their intended use
| case, but my personal experience was not great.
|
| Edit 2: I have eero now. The nodes seem to have some
| proprietary protocol that sends clients to the best node as
| you walk around the house. I can't setup Vlans or do power
| user stuff, but my WiFi actually "just works" now. I don't
| think I've touched it once after initial setup.
| Etheryte wrote:
| What I really want to know is how much they paid to acquire
| ui.com and whether that investment is paying off in any
| measurable kind of way.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| I wonder if this works any better than their Unifi LTE Backup.
| That was so bad I gave up on it after about a month. The biggest
| problem was the weird way the router handled routes meant that
| with the LTE on the network, even when it wasn't being used a
| bunch of router features were impaired. Like static routes.
|
| Ubiquiti makes some good hardware but their software is full of
| terrible bugs.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Why are people paying what seems obscene prices for UniFi stuff?
| You probably all have spare hardware lying around that can be
| repurposed as a router; it does not need to be modern. I use a
| Ryzen 5 as a general purpose home server/router/firewall running
| Linux and no ISP plastic box or expensive "prosumer" gear can't
| touch its performance. I can push 25Gbps through it (saturating
| my SFP28 LAN), or north of 4Gbps through Wireguard. For access
| points in a home setting, TP-Link boxes flashed with OpenWrt are
| also considerably better value and far more "free" (i.e.,
| unclouded) than any UniFi stuff constantly phoning home for
| "updates."
| npunt wrote:
| Perhaps you missed the product positioning: "Simple setup and
| clean design"
|
| Not everyone wants to fix old hardware and configure linux on
| their weekends
| drnick1 wrote:
| > Not everyone wants to fix old hardware and configure linux
| on their weekends
|
| I thought this was Hacker News.
| asib wrote:
| UniFi customers =/= Hacker News.
| 30minAdayHN wrote:
| I'm a Hacker News reader and relate with the community. At
| the same time, it's not like I've same interest and energy
| in every niche. For example, I might have interest in
| custom building my keyboards, but may not be in restoring
| an old router. It's not like HN users exclusively use Linux
| desktops and many of us prefer simplicity.
|
| The point I'm trying make is that there is more nuance than
| a simple HN user stereotype.
| dawnerd wrote:
| I know I pay more for my unifi gear. I want stuff that works
| without having to hack around with it. I do enough of that in
| my day job. Their ecosystem works without needing to tinker. I
| love it.
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