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Comment by Poiesis | Hacker News Reader

When this article says "router" it means "combination router and wireless access point". Which is fine—that's how most people think of these products—but they are available separately.

For my home, using Ubiquiti products has worked well. I have the EdgeRouter Lite and UAP-AC-PRO access points which support POE. It's been nice using products designed for professionals, and it's nice to be able to administer and upgrade the router independently from the access point. These products just work, and there's none of this dodgy "reboot the router" nonsense.

I hear a lot of good things about the many mesh networking setups (often combined routers/APs) now on the market but haven't tried any. They're almost certainly a better fit for a consumer who doesn't want to be a network admin. Ubiquiti has one (the "Alien"), and the Eero (now owned by Amazon) is often recommended.

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I recently rebuilt my home network when switching ISPs and fell in love with Ubiquity. It's the first time I have ever been happy to use networking-related hardware. Dealing with Asus/Linksys/Netgear/etc in the past had always been a miserable experience, and I'd cringe every time my internet went out and was forced to deal with them again.

It's a shame that there aren't more "pro-sumer" products like this out there. A common warning I read when researching Ubiquity products was that they're not for people who aren't tech/networking professionals. I don't know where that came from, because setting it all up was a breeze. It was way easier than dealing with Asus's terrible "setup wizard".

> 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.

I have an EdgeRouter ER-8 (acquired secondhand; I do not need 8 router ports for my home network) and have been considering upgrading to an EdgeRouter ER-4 (fewer ports; much better throughput) because the ER-8 is actually a bottleneck on my 600Mbps cable uplink. The ER Lite is even worse and doesn't seem to be well suited to modern Internet speeds.

The EdgeRouter OS is essentially a Debian build and can run openconnect and other VPN software if you need something that is not included in the base install.

I would recommend the ERs to anyone with a bit of networking skill.

> 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've got a UniFi Dream Machine Pro and a UAP-AC-PRO, and it's everything I could ever need or want in a home network. I had an EdgeRouter X before the UDM Pro, which was also very nice but definitely lacked a lot polish and also just couldn't provide the full speed of my Internet connection (600mbps).

My parents have Eero, and it's definitely a really nice system that Just Works. Exactly as you described it, perfect for a consumer that wants quality without having to be a network admin.

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