Hacker News Reader

Comment by dsl | Hacker News Reader

How is this different from or any better than Ubiquiti's Cloud Controller hosting?

Also based on your pricing it is cheaper to buy a Cloud Key if you plan to use your devices longer than 10 months.

You're assuming that there is just one location, and if so, it is cheaper to buy a Cloud Key than use a service like this or https://hostifi.net

The benefit comes in when you have many locations, and can replace a bunch of Cloud Keys with a single server, and have someone else manage updates for you and help with support questions.

At HostiFi 90% of my customers are IT service providers who use the service to replace a ton of Cloud Keys with the single server.

Ubiquiti's cloud offering is very expensive ($299/year base fee + $199/year for each +10 devices), and from customers who have told me about it before they switched to HostiFi, the support is not good, they don't keep the servers updated, and you can't get access to use a custom domain name/modify some of the stuff under the hood.

Instead of having to configure potentially tens of different site-to-site VPN connections to connect every site to your head office where you controller is located, you're hosting it on the internet which makes implementation easier.

I would never ever trust a Ubiquiti product being open on the internet though - especially their software products. Too many issues with their firmware on their "carrier"-classed radios, as well as buggy integration with UNMS makes me a bit wary.

> Instead of having to configure potentially tens of different site-to-site VPN connections to connect every site to your head office where you controller is located, you're hosting it on the internet which makes implementation easier.

Unifi offers a cloud controller as hosted service, see https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/360006288413.

Central control of multiple sites without having to mess with VPNs.

Why would you need any vpns?

Especially if the vpns are setup from the controller you create a delicate chicken-and-egg problem. How are you to provision it the first time?

You also open up yourself to the problem of accidentally locking sites out and having to reconfigure each site from within.

You are overthinking this. If you have a VM running the controller, or a cloud key, on your internal network, you would need to VPN in to manage them remotely.

No? If you have any remote sites you need it to be directly accessable from the internet anyway. Or am I missing something?

Now you might not like that, but realize that this service is exactly that.

You might be comforted by the fact that a breach of the controller doesn't affect your internal networks.

...until you realize that having control over the controller means root access on all of your sites. So it shouldn't be that comforting.

I'm not advocating that any enterprise use this service. I run a WAN with 4 local sites (on a MetroE MPLS network) and a remote office via a VPN tunnel. So this is not my first rodeo.

I would never use a cloud-based WiFi controller for the very reasons you specify, and that means that if I need to remotely manage Wifi while I'm out of the office, I'm using a VPN.

A lot of companies don't have the same security concerns. That's all I'm saying. And some for those who, say, manage wifi access intended for the public at multiple sites, like a Hotel or coffeeshop chain for example, this might be just the ticket. They don't have to setup and maintain a bunch of individual controllers, and can centralize everything in one console, and let someone else maintain the server it runs on.

I agree, but the more or less equivalent alternative isn't setting up a bunch of controllers.

It's buying one cloud key, opening one port in the firewall and ensuring you have a dyndns or something to the site with the cloud key.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com