UniFi 5G

This seems like a stretch. If your position is that the REAL experts are using Cisco gear instead, I guess fine. But the "HN Crowd" loves using Ubiquiti at home because it is light years better than any consumer brand, (1) in terms of giving people who know what they're doing sufficient control to do so, (2) in terms of performance, and (3) in terms of not being a buggy piece of crap.

Contrast with:

(1) eero has no web UI (ONLY mobile phone!) and almost zero network configurability. You can't set a hostname for instance for DHCP. You can have exactly one main and one guest network. You don't get to configure anything about it though. Etc.

(3) I bought a Linksys replacement for my Eeros to get 6E -- I returned it to the store due to how horrifyingly bad the Web UI was and how bad the "app" was too. AND it also had flaws like inability to have reservation IPs outside the DHCP pool range.

Apple is actually the opposite of Ubiquiti -- they don't want you to be able to configure anything or have any visibility into anything. It either 'just works' or just silently fails or fails with "An error occurred."

Unifi is a bit different than Apple to me.

Ubiquiti is one of the few companies doing prosumer hardware - and doing it extremely well. They give you access to advanced, raw configurations without necessarily having to go "full enterprise" deployment. They also have solutions for just about everything.

That being said, I generally have moved towards other Wifi solutions as I've grown weary of tweaking Ubiquiti all of the time. I found that I could get better top-end performance out of Ubiquiti gear, but really struggled to hammer out poor performance in edge cases. Particularly, with jitter and random latency spikes.

My consumer mesh wifi system gets nowhere near it's advertised performance, with little way for me to tweak it. However, I rarely need "full performance" and it doesn't suffer from the same random glitches.

More like the Sonos of networking gear, in that they were once kinda cool but squandered it with questionable product decisions.

I still like them. I have almost no real complaints about their products. They just work for me. Here is an example: I had a Netgate with pfsense for my home gateway. My primary home internet provider can be a little flaky, so I have a beefy 5G gateway backup. It was way too hard to configure one of the ports to support automatic WAN failover. The, less expensive, unifi product just worked. It was just a simple setting in the gateway's management UI. The information provided in the dashboard is rich and it implements things like constant QoS monitoring that has a nice plot. It adopts and manages my home wifi and makes it super easy to configure channels, analyze congestion, and do all the deeper technical configuration I could ask for.

Another example, I had Frigate set up on a home rolled NAS. Again, it worked alright, but it always stole time from me. It always needed a little maintenance or tweaking or thinking. I bought a UNVR and modern Unifi cameras. Adopted, zero thinking or management from me. I still retain control of my data and it respects my privacy. It isn't perfect, but at the price point it solved meaningful problems I cared about in both cases. Yes they are commercial products and not open source, but they are priced reasonably to my eyes (the UCG ultra was actually cheaper than the netgate). That makes me a happy customer.

I have run their wifi APs for over a decade with no problems. It's not perfect, I know there are still privacy concerns. No company is really perfect, but they are good to me.

For wireless, the prices aren’t much different from products with comparable feature sets/performance. For some niche combinations, they’re the only option that doesn’t force you way upmarket (Meraki, etc.). Most of the money they make is from small business and tiny WISPs, not HN boosters overdoing it on their home WiFi in what must be a bid to get their partner to divorce them.

Their wired stuff is a total scam since Edgerouter fell off, though. The same functionality exists on a $50 netgear managed switch (or wired router, etc.), and the shitty unified configuration interface doesn’t justify the markup at all.

To be fair, they have a nice ecosystem for networking nerds. I got a Dream Router last week for black friday and I'm super happy with it. Setup was like 20 seconds.

I'm looking forward to getting more Unifi gear in the near future.

They have the form-over-function aspect too, in that they decided to keep the external design language consistent across the board no matter what. Which meant they couldn't improve the passive heat dissipation enough to keep up with newer network standards, and had to resort to putting fans in their WiFi APs to keep them from overheating.

I've got some old Unifi gear and there's a couple of things that make them unlike Apple.

Firstly, I can run the network controller easily in Linux (in Docker as it happens, but the image is third party - jacobalberty/unifi). It's happily running on Raspberry Pi.

Secondly, I've got one really old access point that is now unsupported for updates, but apart from that, there's no problem with controlling it along with the supported ones.

Also, I don't need a cloud connection though they do encourage using one.

Not quite, DIY vs technologies like Unifi make it accessible to the masses where the former is for the few to feel good about themselves, and the latter makes a difference in moving things forward for the many without as much investment in time, because people shouldn't have to be free employees of technology to derive a benefit..

"Just works" means you can enjoy other parts of technology, like what you do with it, instead of just getting and keeping it working.

Ah, this is a Ubiquity product. That explains it.

Why did AVM or Netgear Orbi not get this treatment for "works", though?

> Unifi is the Apple of networking gear

They were founded by some people that left Apple.

Apple of networking? I suppose no OpenWrt then.

the founder himself was an Apple hardware designer

I recently bought their cloud fiber gateway and two in wall wifi 7 access points because I'm setting up a network in my new apartment and hear this multiple times.

Honestly they are nothing like Apple - like just look at their mobile apps - how many do they have - 10 ? To interact with the same gateway just for slightly different use-cases. Not to mention that the functionalities are hard to decipher

"It just works" with Teltonika and Glinet as well. In most of the openwrt based routers multi-wan is already enabled. It is also very easy to do with TP-Link Omada (just enable a checkbox).

So, implying that Unifi is the only company that does this in an easy way is misleading marketing.

Comparing against Mikrotik is a very low bar.

Right, but do you know what radio chips they are using inside?

I would guess they are chinese...

If you avoid Chinese-branded devices you should doubly avoid US-branded devices. See National Security Letters and Room 641A as a small subset of why.

There are both, the router is further down the page

You can buy PoE splitters that will take ethernet in and give you ethernet + some power supply out. Looks like you need 12V/2A and a cursory search throws up a few options.

5G does not mean shorter waves/higher frequencies, that's just a common deployment. In Sweden we have 5G on the 700 MHz band, 5900 MHz, and several others in between.

Not everyone has cable/fibre/wifi in their homes, and need to resort to 4/5g cellular services in order to be online.

This product is aimed at those people who want something nicer than the 5g router bundled with their plan.

Back in school, I had a teacher who was in charge of installing 3G, 4G, and 5G antennas for a carrier in France. The answer is that the 4G frequency bands are saturated, and they pushed 5G mainly to relieve congestion on the 4G network. Theoretically, 5G has just as much range (maybe even a little bit more with beamforming) on the 700 MHz and 800 MHz bands.

5G has lower latency again than 4G. There's also more capacity making it possible to use it as a real connection than just backup.

I’ve worked at companies with cellular failover for the most critical services.

5G in my city is 650 Mbps and is honestly cheaper than fiber, but my fiber has better jitter (and can go up to 2 Gbps). For a lot of people, 5G would be more cost effective.

See living near a concert venue. 4G behaves badly in a terrain of 100k phones

Where I live, all the 4G is oversaturated and really slow.

It'd be a good option for failover Internet.

Agreed retail is a good customer for this tech. But even after getting fiber personally, it gets cut a lot by landscaping crews. Most of the time it’s a residential line that takes a day to fix. But a few times it’s been a main line and it takes 3-4 days. Maybe I’m unusual but that’s been my experience

Around here, it’s Starlink >> Fiber >> Cable because our lines are above ground and outages are frequent.

Fiber is less expensive than and more than 10x faster than starlink, in fairness.

Our 5g towers seem to run off the fiber lines, so it’s not really a backup (and gets overwhelmed anyway).

I’m considering getting fiber in addition to starlink, but I wish they’d just buried the lines.

I see telephone trucks repairing downed lines we’d rely on many dozens of times a year. Digging a trench would probably pay for itself in a year or two.

I would normally love this device, except I already have 2.5gbit fiber AND cable. They work for load balancing and failover.

Now I can't decide if I need a 3rd WAN.....

Does Starlink have a temporary or “pay as you go” option?

So I'm not the only guy doing this...

but that one isn't outdoor rated.

> Those do exist, they’re called cell signal boosters.

No, those are different. They are describing a femtocell. I still have one site with a T-Mobile one. It basically VPN’s to T-Mobile’s network core through the cable ISP, uses GPS to check its location for licensed spectrum, and then broadcasts its own LTE signal. It does not boost/repeat the signal of a nearby tower, it runs its own.

Do they work for 5G? I think just amplifying the signal (like 2g signal boosters did) would mess with a lot with all the fancy RF tricks that make 5G fast, stable, low-latency and quite low on package loss (5G has impressively low package loss on the IP layer).

For most use cases WiFi should be the better solution. VoWiFi works well for calls. Should be enough for home and office use.

FWIW, MMS and SMS are still left in the dust in this situation, as I have this exact issue.

With what backhaul? WiFi?

Hey, another person running VyOS!

How are you handling updates? Do you update on a fixed cadence, or do you build your own LTS? Or do you just take a random nightly and stick to it?

> after 2 days both the cable internet and cell towers went down, so even 5G would not have helped.

I discovered the same thing the hard way myself recently (in Norway); turns out that cell towers only has enough battery for ~24-36 hours (if you're lucky).

However, someone messing with the fibre to my house is a bigger possibility than power outage, so I'll probably end up with this 5G product. :)

I’ve made the second WAN a 10gb uplink.

I wish there were cheaper 10gb switch from Ubiquiti. The link Agg is good, but still pricey.

Starlink has a specific backup plan too don't they?

Assuming you're talking about running like a UI router and doing multi-WAN uplinks from it, you can.

They support load balancing (e.g. 95% WAN1, 5% WAN2) and SLA monitoring (ping/packet loss/jitter) with some voting options on what triggers a swap.

I think pfsense has similar options for WAN balancing if you don't like UI for routing.

Yep, that's one of the main reasons people are excited for this. Instead of a dedicated ISP modem with 5G, you can just use this, plug it into a gateway WAN port set up as the secondary failover connection, and you'll have a backup if you get knocked offline.

https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360052548713-WAN-Failo...

The 5G unit itself also has its own failover with support for two 5G SIMs.

"All are equipped with dual SIM slots, with one SIM replaceable by eSIM, and are fully unlocked: any major carrier, any type of deployment, with one piece of hardware."

You can also see the excitement in the subreddit where people are already in the Unifi ecosystem: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1pe5xh4/explore_p....

OTD500 is antenna + router in a single box. There is nothing else needed. I just put it outdoors with a POE cable. Originally, I used it as a backup, but now I have an unlimited SIM, so I use it as a second internet connection.

If you mean the standard routers (like the Rutx50), Teltonika itself sells external enclosures with antennas. https://www.teltonika-networks.com/products/accessories/ante...

What kinda of small businesses? My friend does consulting and most of his business is on small (100-250 employees) size and sometimes small start up, typically in the office construction phase where he comes in and set up network infrastructure. He never seems anyone asking for UniFi, but again, might just because the cost? He feels UniFi is price competitive at that scale but no one wants it for some reason.

When he was with a larger company, cisco and juniper were the only options.

Thanks!

I specifically have issues with strong back lighting (genetic cataracts suck - I’m only in my 40s) so bright white page and light writing is super frustrating. Dark mode is my best friend.

Yeah this lines up with my experience. Had issues with mesh (I bought an AP with mesh in the product name that covered a wall outlet, no Ethernet in)(edit: it was the “beacon”), essentially was told “you’re holding it wrong.”, and moved on. They seem like lovely products for their intended use case, but my personal experience was not great.

Edit 2: I have eero now. The nodes seem to have some proprietary protocol that sends clients to the best node as you walk around the house. I can’t setup Vlans or do power user stuff, but my WiFi actually “just works” now. I don’t think I’ve touched it once after initial setup.

Thank you, I could have sworn I had that active, but for some reason it was "audio only".

Thanks, I also noticed they allowlisted the FF about page...which is a bit cheeky.

Of course it's faster!

The Mikrotik LTE6 device is a Cat.6 LTE device, so up to 300/50Mbits, and since some time ago, all iPhones are Cat.20 and 5G and all that stuff.

But that's not the only important thing. The frequency band support for the modem is very important. Not all networks nor even cell phone antennas work on the same frequencies, so even when connecting to antennas of the same company, depending on the antenna you connect, it'll have different bands enabled depending on the hardware or the connectivity they have there.

You have to check the specs for you modem [0][1] and see what bands are supported, what bands are supported in the antenna your connecting to [2]... Depending on the category of your device [3], and the channels that are allowed to be used at the same time, the congestion, the interference, and... it can happen than a consumer phone downloads faster than a dedicated industrial modem, if the available frequencies aren't the most favorable.

--

  0: https://mikrotik.com/product/lhg_lte6_kit#product_specification
  1: https://www.apple.com/iphone/cellular/
  2: https://www.cellmapper.net
  3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-UTRA#User_Equipment_(UE)_categories

This is my experience as well. Unless you actually need a directional antenna, an iPhone will be faster and more reliable than dedicated hardware.

There is this now https://mikrotik.com/product/atl_5g_r16

In their promotional video they call out mobile applications and they showing a car driving with it on top of it.

Did you read through the press release?

They clearly mention mobile use and show it on the animation as well. Which is why I am surprised.

Interesting, thanks!

A few years ago I was running my UDM. Wifi on 2,4GHz and 5GHz was working fine. Then after an upgrade some of my devices start losing connectivity after a while, happened multiple times a week or day. Only restart helped.

I was going mad until I discovered that only the 2,4GHz ones are losing connectivity. Then I started researching and found out that it was not just me, it was just bad code in firmware that was not fixed in any of the versions that came out before I had enough, sold the device and swore off this garbage.

> Not everyone wants to fix old hardware and configure linux on their weekends

I thought this was Hacker News.

They said the same thing about 40G but hey, I've loved it for bridging the gap between my two (10G and 100G, respectively) Mikrotik switches. You can have a dozen Gigabit ports, as well as up to four true 10G devices on your aggregation switch, and neither would be bottlenecked by traffic to and from the backside. This has been a massive boon. However, when it comes to 2.5G, I struggle to find one good reason to use it; such a tiny step-up in bandwidth, and for what?

Why do limited cards even exist? Turns out there are various reasons (no need to go into them here).

I'm using an U6+ with OpenWRT on it, flashed straight after unboxing and it's the only thing serving wireless in my household

It's alright except for some shenanigans with DHCP trying to compete with the router, I fixed that by just disabling DHCP on the AP if I recall correctly.

Speeds are pretty much as advertised on the box, the main thing using wireless is the TV as it has a 100mbit LAN port and it it's always smooth sailing. VLAN-separated SSIDs work great as well.

I don't recall their latest hardware is supported, but why would you want that anyway if you're not looking to go all in on their controller stack?

In their video, it looks like it Supports T-Mobile

I have a mobile 4g router from them and it supports physical esim. I even managed to get their suggested card for cheap. They have some support in their firmware to set it up, so you can do that fully on the router.

I have read that people managed to get an eSIM installed on it, but I think there are also physical eSIM options. See https://www.gl-inet.com/solutions/esim/

Edit: The SIMPoYo eSIM Physical Card (see https://www.gl-inet.com/campaign/simpoyo-cards/ ) seems really cool, may even be nice for a phone.

I honestly feel mibi and gibibytes per second are the easiest units to rationalise about. The data I am transferring is already known to me in its binary prefix unit. Seconds for that data to transfer is a trivial translation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix

This ship sailed out of view a long time ago, the only GB you’ll see that is still base-2 is RAM. And that’s only because you literally can’t address physical RAM in non power-of-2 blocks in most architectures.

And for most of the people here, buying any 5G mmWave modem is a questionable investment.