> A common warning I read when researching Ubiquity products was that they're not for people who aren't tech/networking professionals.

There's still a lot of weirdness in Ubiquiti, even in their UniFi line, that'll throw the average user, but it's definitely a lot more user friendly than the EdgeMax line. I often find UniFi tries to be so friendly that it ends up making things harder. I had an auto-discovery issue that I spent a lot of time troubleshooting, mostly because I can't just tell it "this device with this MAC address is here now", it has to find it for itself.

The UDMP does a really good job just being "the central core of your network you plug stuff into", but it's also confusing because it has the device firmware itself and then the software for each function on it, including the firewall software, which is all very convoluted.

>"It's a shame that there aren't more "pro-sumer" products like this out there"

Mikrotik is another company that has a good pro-sumer to pro ecosystem. Routers, APs, adapters, long-range point-to-point radio stuff. Most of their gear runs on variations of their RouterBOARD hardware and Linux-based RouterOS, and can be collectively managed through CAPsMAN, which can either run on one of their routers or on a desktop PC.

The configuration side is definitely less slick than what you get with Unifi, on the other hand you can configure everything in detail. You get an astounding amount of possibilities for your money, if you can accept the late-90s/early-2000s style web interface or just use the terminal interface instead.

The only thing I've found lacking is that they don't have any 4x4 or 802.11ax access points yet, but if you go modular (separate router, switch and AP), you can upgrade piecemeal when you need to.

> The ER Lite is even worse and doesn't seem to be well suited to modern Internet speeds.

What are you doing to it? Mine ran at 950 down, 450 up just fine. Are you going faster?

I agree that the author seems over the top.

I do think "one logon at a time" might be a good idea, just not for security reasons. I suspect these routers don't do well with concurrent updates.

Changing the admin id would have the benefit of culling out noise. An unsuccessful login attempt to "myuniqueadmin" catches your attention as something meaningful.

I work on a product that allows "one user at a time". It's not a security issue, it's a "don't want to maintain a multi-user database for extremely small benefit" issue. There's no good reason to have multiple folks futzing with this thing's configuration, just like there's no good reason to have multiple folks futzing on your router. Most of the time my product or your router sits in an out-of-the-way place gathering dust, multi-user access is a laughably infrequent use case.

Now why the author calls this out is anyone's guess. Sometimes someone sees a product like what I work on, sees single-user, assumes "aha! Better security!" No, we're just lazy. If there's any additional security, that's gravy and not a design decision.

1 Watt continuous is $1 per year, as a typical USA rule of thumb (at $0.12 per kWh). Places like California are a lot more expensive.

So yeah, it's pretty expensive on an ongoing basis to convert an old desktop to a router.

I must confess, I run an OpenBSD firewall on an old Dell server. Fortunately the Intel CPU doesn't need to do much. So I'm only drawing about 70 W continuous. I keep meaning to replace it with something more power efficient but haven't.

On Ebay you can find Dell R210 ii with Ivy Bridge CPU for 150 USD. These idles at 25watt, and are super quiet and small. I have not tested the R220 with Haswell, but I guess idle watt usage is less than 20watt as Haswell had much improved power efficiency when idling.

I think you can swap "old desktop" for some smaller new power efficient mini desktop, which at idle (for basic home needs lets face it it's pretty close to idle) it's likely to draw way under it's max... but if you are so carbon conscious consider the total environmental cost, buying new shit (new mini desktop or consumer routers) that constantly needs replacing incurs a carbon cost through consumption that people rarely try to quantify because it's not so easy - but it's often still very big. Saving an old PC from the rubbish is free of this cost, it not only saves manufacturing carbon cost but environmental pollution.

I currently have Ubiquiti gear, bought about five years ago, and my APs are already EOL for a couple of years. They don't seem like a great choice for medium-term or long-term installations for this reason. They also don't seem to publish EOL or support timelines, or commit to supporting equipment for any term (as far as I can find - I'd love to see a support schedule if anyone know it).