Hacker News Reader

Comment by dustinmoris | Hacker News Reader

Ubiquiti had a data breach, but what could hackers possibly want to know which we didn't know already? All their customers are overpaid engineers who got sucked into dumb influencer marketing convincing them to buy overpriced industrial grade networking kit for their 50m2 flat. </sarcasm>

View on HN

Ehh they make great products for smb/coliving/coworking spaces, where you need better hardware than the box the ISP gives you but you don’t need the kitchen sink that comes with Cisco. Simple enough that a slight savvy frat bro or small business owner can set it up in an afternoon and have seamless handoff across a large space with several access points and PoE.

Or if you live in a four story house with half a meter of concrete between every floor...

I’m really happy with my UniFi kit..

Ubiquiti is amazing for your home. You can cycle 50km on your Peleton and still get excellent WiFi signal. Which other router can deliver such outstanding performance!

While I would choose a less abrasive way of stating it, I agree with your underlying assessment. At the recommendation of basically every networking forum and subreddit, I bought some Ubiquiti stuff to power networking and wifi for a new place I recently moved into. It cost 3x what a mid to high-end Linksys would have cost, and as far as I can tell provides literally negative benefit for my purpose:

Specifically, rather than a single box and an easy interface, I now have 3 devices that all require their own power bricks, connected via Ethernet cables, and a UI that required reading all sorts of documents and tutorials just to mimic the functionality of my last consumer-grade router. Not to mention the wifi coverage isn't even as good as my old router, even when adjusting a bunch of settings from default based on said tutorials.

I'm not saying that this hardware isn't worth it for some people, but for anyone who uses it for regular streaming and remote working, it's completely not worth the expense, hassle, and inconvenient form factor.

I'm sure their fancier equipment is probably a nightmare of a time sink but the little kits you can buy are dead simple for nontechnical people to set up and use. My parents have plaster walls and the modem lives in the basement so they have huge problems with coverage even though their house isn't very big. This is sort of silly but they connection speed gage on their router is super helpful because they get confused with things like checking internet speed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com