What is UniFi kit?
A wireless system (very nice) made by Ubiquity.
Ifs a network range of gear made by Ubiqiti, it’s more enterprise gear than domestic but crosses over nicely. Reliable and has a great management system. They have routers, switches, wireless access points Texans security cameras, door entry systems.
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As @Simon_Arnold3 says, it’s a range of gear made by Ubiquiti. The hardware is generally superb, the firmware and software is pretty decent, though it sometimes has a bit of a “beta” feel to it. That said, the user interface is great (night and day compared to a Dell CL/html interface) and is always under development/improvement.
It’s enterprise-grade, but at a fraction of the cost of solutions provided by the likes of Cisco, Dell, Juniper etc.
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I have only 1 such switch. The one with the blue light, right?
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I have a Unifi network also. Fantastic kit for my needs.
My Roon stability since going back to Rock and on EA for Roon and Arc has been rock solid .
Well worth the money.
Still a few niggles but for my use case it’s putting a smile back on my face.
Impossible to say. However, a UniFi system is not very fun without a “Cloud Gateway”, which is their name for the controller. Think of it like Roon’s Core, but for your network.
You can start small by running the controller on a Cloud Key ($199) and a single UniFi switch or Wi-Fi access point. But I’m not sure you can say you are running a UniFi system without something to serve as the controller.
There used to be a way to run the controller as a Java app, but I believe they dropped support for that long ago. Good luck!
No, they didn’t. It’s called the “UniFi Network Application” and available for many operating systems. This option is not as costly in contrast to a Cloud Key, it’s free.
https://community.ui.com/releases/UniFi-Network-Application-7-5-187/408b64c5-a485-4a37-843c-31e87140be64
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Note that most of their offerings nowadays have a built in controller and will not work with an external one.
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It’s against my religion to do cloud stuff. I do on-prem and blockchain stuff. Java and Electron are also way outside my comfort zone.
A “Cloud Key” is the on-premises controller…
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Glad to see that they still have a solution like this. I may need it after the battery swells in my Cloud Key Gen2 Plus.
I don’t believe “Cloud Key” is any more or less “on-premises” than a UDM, UDM Pro, or a Dream Wall. All of them run UniFi OS and whatever subset of the UniFi suite apps you choose to install. All of them can be configured to allow remote access through UniFi’s cloud or that can be disabled rendering them local only.
In other words, the choice of a Cloud Key over a UDM Pro, for example, isn’t based on whether or not you want local only (on-prem). It’s based on whether or not you want the integrated router, switch and drive bay for Protect recording offered by the UDM Pro.
Over the years, I’ve self-hosted the early equivalent of the current Network app on Java, run it in AWS, run it on a 1st gen Cloud Key. I actually really like the UDM Pro as a single, multi-function, rack-mountable device.
Adopters of their WiFi 6 access points may debate the notion that the hardware is superb, though the line between hardware and software is blurry. At this point, I wouldn’t deploy anything else in my home but the caveats are that the catalog of options is very large, you have to be selective about what you purchase, and if you’re doing anything even minimally complex, you have to pay close attention to release notes.
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Another alternative to buying new hardware is to run the controller software on your own gear.
I’ve been running my controller via this docker image:
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That was not what I was implying. It was a response to
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Oh…I see…you weren’t saying that Cloud Key is the only approach to an on-premise only setup. You were clarifying that Cloud Key is a turnkey solution for running Network and can be configure to be on premise only. In that regard, it isn’t different than any of the other approaches (UDM, UDM Pro, Dream Wall). I thought that’s what you were suggesting but it was just misunderstanding.
Thanks for clarifying.
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They’ve made some fairly major interface changes over the years, which can be a bit of a pain. As I rarely have to tinker with the system (big ups for reliability!), when I go back in, I often have to find my feet again.
That said, they are usually pretty good at informing via the GUI when a certain feature is going to be removed/replaced/relocated in a future release.
Maybe at some point in the future, I’ll change to Unifi switches to have a unified management interface. The Dell switches are a little harder to setup, though by default inter-VLAN Comms is blocked. This is a double-edged sword though. If you forget something in the config, you can lose access to all or part of your network. The number of times I’ve had to do a hard reset because I’ve forgotten to VLAN tag a port…
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Not had any issues with my Wifi 6 access points at all, super fast and stable whats the issues with them?
Feels a bit silly to be saying this specifically to you, but please do your research before moving over to UniFi switches. Given that you mention blocking of inter-vlan traffic on a switch, I’ll assume that the Dell switches you’re describing are L3. With UniFi gear, as I think you understand, you need to set up firewall rules to block inter-vlan traffic. You might assume that if you deploy a UniFi managed L3 switch, any inter-vlan rules you’ve set up might be pushed down into the L3 switch. That is not how it works. Their managed L3 switches don’t know about, or reason over, firewall rules. In fact, there is absolutely no GUI-based approach for blocking inter-vlan traffic on a UniFi managed L3 switch. You can, however, SSH into a specific switch and attempt to set up ACLs (not firewall rules) but those are complicated and, from what I understand, problematic.
All of my switches are managed UniFi switches even down to the little PoE powered mini switches. My access points are In-Wall HD and all have small switches in them as well. I like their managed switches because I centrally control things like spanning tree and packet size. They also make it very simple to assign ports to vlans using the centralized UI. But if you have the idea that a UniFi L3 switch would enable you to control traffic between vlans at the switch level, you’d probably be disappointed.
I’m a spectator with respect to the WiFi 6 issues but, from my vantage point, there has been a fairly consistent stream of issues since their introduction. I’m sure you know this site: https://community.ui.com/RELEASES
If you read the release notes in the “Access Point” releases over time, you’ll see many fixes targeted specifically at the WiFi 6 products. Some of them are minor (especially the more recent ones) and related to UI / reporting issues. But there are many issues with kernel crashes and other problems that have showed up over time.
It’s good to hear that yours are stable. Sooner or later I’ll upgrade. I’ve been thinking I’d do it when they introduce a 6E version of the U6 In-Wall. I like these little In-Wall APs though with the quantity of them that I have, it’s a pricey jump to upgrade all of them.
Only the Unifi Cloud Gateways have the Network Application built in. None of the older Unifi routers (or any APs or switches for that matter) have it built in so unless you are running a newer Unifi router you will still need to to deploy a cloud key or your own server/VM/docker with the Unifi Network Application. I’ve always used an Edgerouter with Unifi APs (and now switches) so I still have to deploy the Network App on my own.
I’ve been using that image as well for the better part of 6 years but recently changed to the linuxserver image.