UniFi U7 Pro | Hacker News Reader

UniFi U7 Pro

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66 pointsqzervaas95 comments

I’m curious about the 2.5 Gbps interface, which isn’t even half the theoretical max of a single connection (~5.6 Gbps) and far from the theoretical AP Max (~36 Gbps). I guess they don’t have any PoE 10Gbps switches.

Edit: Turns out they do have one. [0]

[0] https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/all-switching/produc...

XG 6 PoE, 4 ports for $600

https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/all-switching/produc...

Ah thanks for that. Somehow missed that one!

2.5 GbE can operate over CAT 5e.

In any normal deployment, you're probably not going to be pushing even a 1.5gbps through these during heavy use. The real benefit of 7E is reduced latency, not bandwidth.

If you need high throughput, they and other vendors sell that.

There are tons of 10gbps PoE switches on the market.

The higher wireless link speed is probably more useful for reducing the amount of radio traffic in time (a set amount of data transmitted will happen in a shorter time)

Managing (somewhat reluctantly) wifi in a multi tenant office building was frustrating because of all of the competing traffic, I’m just guessing that higher speeds means move overall traffic across the spectrum in noncoordinated environments.

Well, given how disappointing the rest of their AP lineup performs in real world scenarios (from my anecdotal experience, ofc), it won't need more than 2.5 GbE. Probably barely exceeds 1 Gbps.

I'm pulling ~600 Mbps with their WiFi 6 offering. Feels like with enough clients on WiFi 7 it shouldn't be that hard to saturate 2.5 GbE.

I'm at 1200 Mbps with my tp-link AX55 wifi 6... $130 on amazon...

Given that that device only has 1gig ethernet, I highly doubt you are seeing 1.2gbps data transfer speeds

You never get close to the theoretical maximum throughput of modern WiFi radios.

Check out the review of one of the fastest 6E radios: https://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wireless/wireless-reviews/li... The highest throughput they can get is still short of 2.5G even when combining all three bands, and that's in controlled laboratory conditions. In the real world you'll get much less.

10G wired ethernet is significantly more expensive and power hungry. The extra heat and expense aren't worth it for something you'll never use in the real world.

While I generally agree that in the real world you never get close to the theoretical max bandwidth, it is worth pointing out that 7 is significantly faster than 6E, so in laboratory condition you will definitely be limited by the 2.5 GbE bottleneck. With a single MIMO stream WiFi 7 provides 2882 Mbit/s (320 MHz or 160+160 MHz channel, 4096-QAM, 5/6 coding) vs WiFi 6 which provides only 1201 Mbit/s (160 MHz channel, 1024-QAM, 5/6 coding). So a single MIMO stream can exceed the 2.5 GbE capacity, and multiple MIMO streams would exceed even further.

Exactly. Really wish the world pushes towards 5Gbps Ethernet instead.

I run a home lab and I rarely see any advantage between 2.5 and 10g. Not to say that there is none, seeing a large file transfer at 1gbps or more is fun, but the time savings vs the cost just isn't quite there for me yet.

My entire file library is only about 10 TB, and most of that is from ripped DVDs & blurays. My opportunities to transmit or receive more than a gig of data in a single transfer is extremely rare, so it makes little difference to me (and my assumption is by proxy, most users) that it could go ~4 times faster.

For actual business work, though, any lab I set up from the future on will be min-spec to 2.5gig and expected to run 10gig on at least any IT machine/vlan/subnet, whatever.

But for the home consumer, 2.5 is probably 10-50x their home internet connection and more than sufficient for normal daily use.

Another thing to think about is that theoretical max is the theoretical max of that collection of channels (thinking MIMO). So while a single AP might only have 2.5Gbit uplink, you might have multiple APs trying to talk somewhat close. The faster a radio can blast out it's packet and get quiet the faster another client can use that channel.

Faster wifi means more people get more data in the same space, even if the individual uplinks are less than the max throughout of the connection. The air is just a single big shared wire.

And then as mentioned this max speed is pretty theoretical of the raw PHY, it's not necessarily the true raw count of bytes you care about being transmitted in your probably less than perfect space.

> and far from the theoretical AP Max (~36 Gbps)

How'd you come to 36 Gbps?

2.4: 688 Mbps 5: 2882 Mbps 6: 5765 Mbps

That only comes to 9.3 Gbps, and if you ever get half that in goodput you're having a hell of a good day. I wouldn't expect higher speed interfaces on such a low end (albeit modern) AP.

Got it from there: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/wirele...

You should be able to get 70% of the 5.6Gbps in an ideal situation. 320Mhz Channel with 6Ghz standing in direct line of sight with no obstacle. Roughly 3.92Gbps.

So while I agree with a lot of other comment you will highly unlikely push the 2.5Gbps Ethernet in real world scenario. I would still have love to see it come with 5Gbps Ethernet. Which to be fair still hasn't gotten enough attention.

The AC Pro was Wifi 5 with a theoretical max bandwidth of 1300mbps on a 1gbps connector.

I'm assuming that this speed is its ability to transfer between 2 wifi connected devices in optimal conditions and not transferring files from a NAS to a wifi receiver.

As a Unifi home user, they don't even have a reasonable WIFI 6E product, so there's little chance I'm going to early adopt anything like WIFI 7 from them.

What’s the issue with their 6E offerings?

Their only WIFI 6E product is their "Enterprise" product, which is overpriced for home use. Everything else is WIFI 6

What's wrong with U6 Enterprise? It supports 6E just fine AFAIK.

$279 and can connect up to 600 devices, I only have ~40 devices. I don't need an enterprise version.

At the time I looked I couldn't find a Wifi 6E Access Point significantly cheaper than $279. Have you?

Totolink X5000R. 50-70€. OpenWRT support. Wifi 6e on 2.4 & 5 GHz Bands.

I think this one is only Wifi 6, not 6e (i.e.: the 6 GHz band)

Right. Always forget about that. 6GHz licensing in Europe is bad / late. So we didn't get to enjoy the 6e fun here :-/

But I can highly recommend to get Wifi 6 on the 2.4 GHz Band, too. I've finally gotten usable 2.4GHz again as that band was stuck on Wifi 4 (Wifi 5 (ac) was a 5Ghz improvement only).

But WiFi 6E is approved in Europe? I'm in Sweden and my U6-Enterprise is perfectly happy broadcasting in the 6GHz bands without any region hacks.

There is a nice world map. Yes, the lower part of the 6GHz spectrum is enbaled. So only parts if it.

No outdoor use unless power is capped massively

Ah, didn't know that. Is there a plan to enable more of it or has the EU already allocated 6 GHz to some other use?

Wifi.org says it's under consideration. But I wouldn't wait for it to happen.

Due to all of that I mostly ignored the 6GHz wifi stuff.... So interesting to hear it's working for you. That's the first time I hear someone from Europe say it's working for them.

There's plenty that are around the $130 level, like Google Nest Wifi. Plus, the U6 Enterprise is only an Access Point, it's not the full router. It only connect your wifi to your Unifi network.

Sure, it's just an AP, it connects wifi to you network. But there's no requirement to use unifi for the rest of your network. Personally I'm happy to trust ubiquiti with my AP, but not with my router.

More than fine, the U6-Enterprise is an amazing device, but it's pretty expensive, the U7-Pro is actually cheaper (but has 3x 2x2 radios compared to the Enterprise which has 2x2/4x4/4x4 radios, 2.4/5/6 GHz respectively).

The U7-Pro should be a better choice for most home users.

If someone has the latest MacBook Pro as the only client on their AP (https://support.apple.com/en-euro/guide/deployment/dep2ac3e3...), is the U7 Pro going to use the same channel configuration in 6 GHz as the U6 Enterprise? Does that 4x4 kick in for a single device?

The terminology is confusing because there is both the number of streams and their width

As another Unifi home user I've seen little reason to move beyond the 802.11n offerings.

What kind of performance do you get? I have little reason to move to 6/6E from Wifi 5/ac Wave 2 but surely N is a little long in the tooth?

My work computer and the PS4/firetv/etc are all wired anyway. So it's basically just a few phones and lightly-used laptops, none of which are doing anything particularly intense— at most pulling a 1080p Netflix stream. When my partner was doing Twitch, she was also wired.

At the end of the day my home internet is only 100/30, so it just seems silly to upgrade everything for slightly more bandwidth and maybe a bit better stability/recovery/utilization.

It's not even shipping with mlo support, which is a main feature of wifi7 - it's how aggregation works across different bands.

Instead it will be released in a future update.

Typical ubiquiti.

I'm sure the date won't slip and the software won't be buggy or declared beta to dodge complaints for 100 years.

On the bright side they are listing that as a February release feature, not a long wait to see what they actually end up doing.

I think there are a few WiFI 7 shipping without MLO. Probably more to do with Qualcomm ( drivers ) than anything else?

Are these ceiling mounted APs suitable for a home environment where they would not be ceiling mounted? Like can I put it on a desk like I do my ancient Apple AirPort Time Capsule AP? PS the time capsule is sitting on a desk in our main floor living room and it covers basement, main floor, and all upstairs except 1 corner bedroom. It’s connected via Ethernet to a EdgeMax 4 router which has been mostly great though interface is kludgy. Some day the time capsule will give up the ghost though and then what?

Yes, I've had one on the top of my shelves in my office for years. Only recommendation is use a shielded cable between the PoE injector and the unit -- keeps it safe during t-storms.

I also have an ER4 the old UI a bit kludgey but they did revamp it a few years ago. I rarely connect to it and instead use UNMS to manage/monitor it (along with some other sites/devices).

These days, I just go with the UDM-Pro SE's and if I need more than 8 PoE ports, I add on a Unifi switch via SFP. You can do pretty much everything these days in Unifi, no need for EdgeMax (well, VLANs is about as exotic as my installs get).

Yes, you can place them facing up on a flat surface instead of on the ceiling.

Wait, we're at WiFi 7 already? I missed the WiFi 6 boat then =)

Still running a 5+ year old UAP AC Pro and haven't found it limiting in the least. Do people really need insane WiFi speeds?

In my environment, it's not the insane WiFi speeds that have been impactful, it's managing density more easily. MU-MIMO and OFDMA have been game changers in that respect.

I use Ubiquiti throughout my 90+ year old home, with multiple AC Pros. During the heart of the pandemic I had four people in my house, all Zoom'ing or streaming video at the same time, all on WiFi, with no issues.

I don't really know why I would need anything newer.

I have a local streaming server with ripped bluerays and such and a truenas fileserver and I do ML things (downloaded a 32 GB model yesterday), so more speed is always helpful, especially in a crowded wifi apartment building.

Literally, the default router from the operator and it works flawlessly at home. It has several years that model, it works with HFC and literally has WiFi6. To me it looks the same model as 10 years ago. Why should i change it? I'm with you.

There are other uses for WiFi than a home. Office buildings, stadiums, theaters, stores, etc. all often have WiFi available and more people using it. Newer/better WiFi versions are targeted for those kinds of uses.

I'm curious about this. I need faster Wi-Fi for wireless VR, but I don't know would average home user need more speed. For crowded space, more capacity is needed.

I wish they would get their shit together and have software that isn't buggy / riddled with security issues. Their march to a cloud dependent offering is so disappointing.

Their system is not particularly dependent on the cloud right now. I do wish they had a modern cloud key that didn’t run as absurdly hot at the gen 2.

RPI is a popular solution for unifi controller hosting. I’ve run a box with unifi+pihole continuously for about 2 years on PoE, never crashes or gives any maintenance headaches, if I do need to reboot everything always comes right up without any fuss.

Make sure that you're running a 64-bit OS. They use MongoDB for the unifi controller, and it simply disables the write ahead log on 32-bit Linux. This means it'll corrupt itself on crash.

I’ve had two die and then I read using an SSD helps a lot with the heat issue. Replaced the HDD with an SSD and temp is a cool 45C now down from high 50’s with HDD. YMMV but figured I’d add my anecdotal experience.

I am going to need to do that then. Mine runs hot. I have it perched up to try to get it some cooling airflow.

This one works great: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078211KBB

You can run the software yourself pretty much anywhere, mine is running in a freebsd jail on a truenas box.

Funny thing, I complained and complained and complained and they quietly rolled out full-offline zero cloud required UniFi and Protect IOS direct connection support starting about three months ago. I doubt my complaining helped specifically, but there were many people on the same threads so maybe they got the hint?

I gave up on their controller software and rolled out OpenWRT to the Unifi AP AC lites at my previous job. I didn't try managing them centrally (there were only 5 of them) so I don't know if there are any good options for that.

The difference was night and day. The guest networks actually worked. They had uptimes of over a year without issue.

Sadly only _some_ Unifi AP models are supported by OpenWRT. Check before you buy. I use GL.inet stuff where possible now.

It's kind of strange for me that the most secure out of the box wifi router I could find was made in China by a Hong Kong based company. The new one comes with 2 2.5 slots fwiw.

How in the world do you know it’s secure?

Yeah I don't trust the firmware they come with. It's some customised variant of OpenWRT, but I replace it with vanilla immediately. At least this is very easy (simply upload the new firmware in the web interface, no serial port or TFTP shenanigans necessary).

FWIW I don't trust the OEM firmware of any router. They're all a mix of crap, some intentional, some not.

I simply use imagebuilder and bake custom scripts in. Then whenever I can I flash the new configs.

That's my way to manage a few openwrt devices

They also need to get it together with their hardware. Their main camera products were out of stock for so long due to the supply chain that they "redesigned" them with cheaper/worse parts and released the G5 series and did a bunch of marketing to try and mask it.

I've been hearing this more and more… what's the best bet when it comes to APs for tech-savvy people in 2024?

Pretty hard after the bulk of their talented engineers purportedly bailed.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639363

https://old.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/scqlg3/what_happe...

Ubiquity and Synology both give me the same feels when it comes to security. They focus on usability to be sure. Perhaps related, their new lighting system on the pro level routers is really slick and I wish I had it 20 years ago when I found myself in data centers on the regular.

I think my biggest compliant is their IPv6 support is pretty limited (compared to pfSense I've used in the past) but otherwise I have rock solid networking that only goes out due to ISP issues. I still think they're the best prosumer solution.

I just need a WiFi 7 Access Point. I don't need the rest of Ubiquiti's stack. Fortunately, Ubiquiti supports (basic) standalone operation for access points: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/12594679474071-Standal...

No buggy software required.

I don't see any reason to believe this new access point won't support standalone, so I just ordered one to replace an older access point (an Amplifi Alien that was in Bridge Mode).

The access point should do nothing except convert between wired and wireless, which is all I ask. I have a separate, wired-only router.

Just to report back on this in case anyone finds this comment in the future... standalone mode almost worked.

On the UniFi U7 Pro, standalone mode was limited to 40MHz channel width on 5GHz and 160MHz channel width on 6GHz, which was a dealbreaker for me. The hardware is capable of 240MHz on 5GHz and 320MHz on 6GHz. So, I installed the controller on a local server and used that to configure the hardware to its fullest potential.

What's with their software being riddled with security issues? The only security issue I know about UI is one with that rogue employee leaking their secrets?

Very recent. Users being given access to other users systems.

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ubiquiti-user...

Wow, the amount of incompetence to pull that off must be staggering.

At 5:20 in this video https://youtu.be/7JNXghzzaZc?t=320 they show it offers a 240 MHz wide channel option in the 5 GHz space. What a mess. I'd say that kinda makes sense for a AP<->AP bridge use case out in the middle of nowhere but you'd be better off using a 320 MHz channel in the 6 GHz space with this AP or an AP with more than 2x2.

Did I understand the video correctly, or is the U7 product page wrong? The video says the U7 doesn't do 6e, but the U7 product page says it does 6GHz, which implies that it does.

The video doesn't say the U7 doesn't do 6e it just poorly explains if you want a device that only does 6e there were 2 other models and then mentions the U6-Pro only did Wi-Fi 6.

So their Wifi Pro 2.5GbE product requires an Enterprise Switch to be able to get 2.5 GbE https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/switching-utility/pr...

I hope they upgrade their Pro switch line-up so they are aligned.

I don't have any Ubiquity stuff, and I'm not sure I want any, but I have an open mind. Can anyone here answer some of my questions?

1) Is the "Cloud Gateway" required?

2) It seems that the required UnFi Network software uses a subscription pricing model. Are there other options?

3) The 2.5GbE POE ports would seem to be a bottleneck. Will they be adopting the (older) 10GbE POE standard anytime soon?

1. No but you do need to run the controller somewhere. It doesn't need to be run 24/7. I used to run it from a windows machine occasionally but its more convenient to have it running all the time on raspberrypi or something. 2. There is no subscription that I'm aware of 3. Good question its a question many have been asking of the U-6Pro and U-6E. Their switching hardware also has limited support for 10GbE RJ-45.

Ubiquity equipment always looks impressive, except that the heavy push towards cloud-based and/or app-based management is extremely offputting.

I'd much rather have something I can always manage via a local web UI from any web browser, without any cloud subscription.

Just in case anyone reads the parent and the takeaway is you can’t: you can still operate UniFi that way if you want to. The cloud connection and apps are optional.

Interesting. Did that change at some point in the past? I'd seen reports from folks suggesting that you were stuck either using the cloud management bits or using their app, and that a plain local web connection didn't work. Does Ubiquity equipment work entirely with a local web connection now, with no app or cloud, for all their functionality (except, obviously, cloud management functionality)?

The answer depends on which piece of equipment, usually by product family. More and more is getting the cloud push over time though.

Ah. That kind of variability is the kind of thing that makes me want to avoid the entire brand.

Any recommendations for comparable equipment that doesn't have any kind of push towards cloud or app?

I'm happy with the performance of the UniFi APs, but their software updates constantly break, leaving me to ssh in and run update commands manually or even clear out log files. This has happened numerous times to me.

Seems like an easy upgrade path from our current U6-Pros.

We have experienced issues where some Windows WiFi chips doesn't seem to integrate that well, and have bad performance.

Is this just using HN for marketing? Prove me wrong.

You can buy a $30 used Ruckus AP from eBay made 10 years ago and it will handily outperform anything that Unifi has ever produced.

I realize this may sound like an exaggeration, but it really isn't.

2x2 MIMO? The U6 pro and LR have 4x4.

really hope Macbook Air M3 supports 6E at least

Apple loves their curveballs but the base MacBook Pro with the M3 no-adjectives does, so it seems safe to expect https://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/

Yeah, they usually trickle some of the Pro features down in their next generation.

I just can't justify a Pro when all I do is web browsing and remoting into servers. The Air is more than capable of light development work.

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