Ubiquity

[blunden]

I bought my first (and only) Ubiquiti device almost a decade ago, they've improved in some ways (the controller software doesn't require a Windows VM to run a Java application just to configure a single AP,) but also added a bunch of cloud stuff with proven questionable security, plus the setup we have at the office just flakes out randomly and requires one or more hard reboots of every Ubiquiti device in order to get the wifi working again. I would argue they've had lots of time and haven't made any net progress, if anything their products are getting worse.

The controller never required Windows for anything as far as I know. Linux has always been the best way to run it, and remains so to this day. There is standalone mode in the mobile app for home users, yes. It provides a much more limited feature set though, and I'd argue it's mostly for home users.

The cloud stuff is completely optional. I disable it on my controller at home that is managing two different sites. If we're thinking about the same cloud compromise, it turned out to be a disgruntled employee who used his own credentials to steal data in order to extort them. I still keep it disabled though as it doesn't provide any benefit for my use case.

We have a UniFi WiFi setup at the office and I haven't had any problems there with lots of people constantly having Teams meetings and similar. Something is clearly broken in the setup you have at your office. Not sure what though, but it's not a normal thing. I've had good experiences with the two AC generations and the U7 generation. The U7 series certainly had some firmware issues initially (and still clearly do for some), but I was thankfully not affected by them.

I should be said that I haven't used their switches or routers/gateways at home so I haven't used that part of the management interface.

 

[nexox]

The controller never required Windows for anything as far as I know. Linux has always been the best way to run it, and remains so to this day.

When I got mine the controller did technically support Ubuntu, but the package versions available in the apt repos had updated to the point where the controller wouldn't run, and I couldn't find any documentation about what versions of which packages were required, so after several hours of messing around with Java and various dependencies I gave up and built a Windows VM. The reviews back then definitely hand-waved the annoyance of the missing basic configuration web UI that every other AP had.

Something is clearly broken in the setup you have at your office.

Could be, but I imagine the reason we have the system in the first place is that it doesn't require (well, is advertised as not requiring) an experienced admin to configure, so there's nobody around to figure out how it's broken (the sysadmin mentioned was at a prior employer.) It might also be that the system is designed for doing video calls and other regular home/office stuff and that's not our main usage pattern.

I will say my AC LR performed very well after I got the controller running, until it met an untimely demise due to a burst pipe that spiked the humidity so high that condensation dripped off the AP, can't blame it for failing to survive that.

 

[blunden]

When I got mine the controller did technically support Ubuntu, but the package versions available in the apt repos had updated to the point where the controller wouldn't run, and I couldn't find any documentation about what versions of which packages were required, so after several hours of messing around with Java and various dependencies I gave up and built a Windows VM. The reviews back then definitely hand-waved the annoyance of the missing basic configuration web UI that every other AP had.

Was it MongoDB perhaps? But yes, that was an issue for a while but they have listed the supported versions of MongoDB at the bottom of the release threads for each controller update for years. At this point, it's pretty painless where you just have to update the openjdk package from your distro repo and then the MongoDB package from the MongoDB repo (due to the license change that caused most repos to stay on 3.6).

There has been a install script that handles everything for you on the forum for a long time, but I've never felt the need to use it.

Could be, but I imagine the reason we have the system in the first place is that it doesn't require (well, is advertised as not requiring) an experienced admin to configure, so there's nobody around to figure out how it's broken (the sysadmin mentioned was at a prior employer.) It might also be that the system is designed for doing video calls and other regular home/office stuff and that's not our main usage pattern.

Having someone with the ability to troubleshoot any issues that might arise is always going to be needed, regardless of brand. Properly tuning a setup is also going to require some expertise when initially setting it up. That shouldn't cause issues that require hard reboots though.

I have not had issues pushing a bunch of traffic over them either. What's your main use case?

I will say my AC LR performed very well after I got the controller running, until it met an untimely demise due to a burst pipe that spiked the humidity so high that condensation dripped off the AP, can't blame it for failing to survive that.

That's the experience a lot of us have have too with later generations of APs. Forum threads will naturally skew more negative than the real overall sentiment among customers.

Are they perfect? Of course not.

 

[nexox]

Was it MongoDB perhaps?

I'm not sure it even used Mongo that long ago, but I never got past the JDK mess so I couldn't hit that particular issue, the forums weren't useful, except for the people suggesting a Windows VM, I guess.

What's your main use case?

I suspect that the usage which chokes the system is a fair number of devices (though not so many that one AP isn't rated to handle them) moving between APs and going on and offline constantly, or maybe it's just the large number of other APs in the area. Either way it will get stuck in a degraded state every 10-15 days and the guy with the admin password says there's nothing useful reported or logged during the service disruptions.

 

[blunden]

I'm not sure it even used Mongo that long ago, but I never got past the JDK mess so I couldn't hit that particular issue, the forums weren't useful, except for the people suggesting a Windows VM, I guess.

How long ago was this? They've been using MongoDB for as long as I can remember. I found references to it as far back as UniFi Controller 3.1.1 beta from 13 years ago, but I believe they've used it from the beginning.

https://community.ui.com/releases/UniFi-3-1-1-beta-is-Released-3-1-1-beta/096772c5-59c3-4b47-92c0-56701cf58bb5

At some point it might've required Java JDK 8.x, but I don't remember exactly. It's been years since that was a problem and modern controller versions keep fairly up to date with Java versions, to the point where it isn't a problem. Current versions run on Java 21.

I suspect that the usage which chokes the system is a fair number of devices (though not so many that one AP isn't rated to handle them) moving between APs and going on and offline constantly, or maybe it's just the large number of other APs in the area. Either way it will get stuck in a degraded state every 10-15 days and the guy with the admin password says there's nothing useful reported or logged during the service disruptions.

I see. While they presumably are supposed to handle that use case too, it might be some particular combination of device behavior, RF environment and configuration that they haven't tested adequately and/or properly.

Did he enable extended logging to either the controller or a separate syslog server?

It sounds like it would be worth reaching out to Ubiquiti about it.

 

[mtg]

The cloud stuff is completely optional. I disable it on my controller at home that is managing two different sites. If we're thinking about the same cloud compromise, it turned out to be a disgruntled employee who used his own credentials to steal data in order to extort them. I still keep it disabled though as it doesn't provide any benefit for my use case.

They should have directly sued krebs for libel

https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/x2gylt I got rid of all my unifi gear at that time due to that story, which was totally false. The replacement devices all were much worse, netgear/asus wifi routers all had much worse bugs and needed to be restarted often.

Unifi gear is not bug or frustration free but it does work and is certainly deployed at large scales, like at the university of washington…

Was reaching out to the STH legal contact instead of the reviewer a very bad look for them. Definitely!

I disagree, given that there’s a pretty anti-ubiquiti segment still around (as we can see here). They are tired of blogs and news sites getting things wrong. Also, based on my reading of the note, ubiquiti reached out to Patrick, asking for corrections. The ubiquiti contact then included a ubiquiti lawyer in the email chain that Patrick had already talked to.

Honestly I don’t think we are getting the entire story here. Why not ignore the request if it was so out of pocket? No company has ever asked for a change in an article before? IDK. The drama around ubiquity is apple-esque at times.

 

[shor0814]

I have used Ubiquiti at home since 2016, certainly not the longest time, and I have never been a network guy, but, it works if you keep limitations in mind.

Would I use it for a true enterprise where compute and network were the backbone for profit? Not a chance. Pay a good sysadmin and support contracts with well known vendors.

Small to medium business with someone to support it on contract, sure. Home lab, 100%. Small enterprise with dedicated support and lab environment, sure.

I am befuddled by the complaints about rolling back new releases, why are you not testing before release? Auto updating? Early release channels? If you are doing either of those, and not usig a test system then that's on you. Plenty of opportunity to let those with test systems post on the Ubiquiti forums and update when the release is re-issued.

All vendors have release issues, some more than others. If I pay Cisco, Arista, Juniper dollars I fully expect significantly fewer issues. If I pay Ubiquiti dollars, I can live with more issues. In fact I can buy a duplicate of just about everything for a lab environment and still not touch the big vendor prices.

The marketing might say enterprise, but we all know it is more of a small to mid size business system with some edge enterprise use cases.

 

[gregsachs]

One other area where unifi is great is support for family-I have unifi at my parents' house, and I have VPN between the sites and simple management of things at their house/some ability to diagnose. That is really nice to have.

 

[986box]

@shor0814 Right on point there. Been using since AC Pro was released. Currently using U7 Pro,U6 Lite and Unifi16 POE with vlans configured. Never had issues or need to rollback updates.

Usually at least 2-3 releases behind. At work, new patches are not deployed until release notes are reviewed and tested in lower environments.

If you can’t afford downtime, make sure you have plans to either properly tests or switch out equipment.

 

[blunden]

They should have directly sued krebs for libel

I'm not sure I agree. Suing journalists doesn't make a company look particularly good when it could reasonably be considered an honest mistake, not actual malice. Brian could have been faster in posting a retraction though.

I got rid of all my unifi gear at that time due to that story, which was totally false. The replacement devices all were much worse, netgear/asus wifi routers all had much worse bugs and needed to be restarted often.

Unifi gear is not bug or frustration free but it does work and is certainly deployed at large scales, like at the university of washington…

Why would you do that? Not using the optional cloud functionality would've been enough even if the article had been true. Sure, you might've wanted to make a different choice for future upgrades if it had been true but no need to sell off existing gear.

I disagree, given that there’s a pretty anti-ubiquiti segment still around (as we can see here). They are tired of blogs and news sites getting things wrong. Also, based on my reading of the note, ubiquiti reached out to Patrick, asking for corrections. The ubiquiti contact then included a ubiquiti lawyer in the email chain that Patrick had already talked to.

What people in the forum think isn't really the reviewer's concern.

Regarding the quoted part, you can see that I actually misread that segment the first time. I thought they reached out directly to STH legal, which I see wasn't the case at all when I read it again. It refers to a person in Ubiquiti's legal department who Patrick had already been in discussions with regarding the wording of the "Influencer NDA". That makes it much better, yes.

I'll just edit that part out of my previous post to avoid further confusion.

Honestly I don’t think we are getting the entire story here. Why not ignore the request if it was so out of pocket? No company has ever asked for a change in an article before? IDK. The drama around ubiquity is apple-esque at times.

I think it makes sense to mention the "influencer Testing NDA" if Patrick has been previously told that everyone signs it. He also explained why they decided to change that part.

 

[emb531]

I recently migrated from a pfSense router (running on an HP Prodesk) to a UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber. No complaints here, there are new updates pretty often, the connectivity options are great (2x SFP+, 1x 10G RJ45, 4x 2.5 Gbps with one POE+) and I really like the console. You can run it completely independent or connect it to the cloud for remote access. The one thing I wish it could do is be a Certificate Authority, but that is not a deal breaker.

 

[piranha32]

I always enjoy reading threads about Ubiquiti, because they always turn into pretty entertaining flamewars, with most of the naysayers' arguments following the same template of "${enterprise_brand} equipment is sooo much better, because of ${reasons}".
And I admit, most of them are 100% right, and most of the the ${reasons} are often perfectly valid. With one exception: Ubiquiti doesn't make enterprise-class gear. They are a SOHO brand. And the requirements for these two segments are completely different.

Although I never worked as a network admin, most of the time the network admin was sitting a couple of desks away, and from time to time I also had get my hands dirty doing some netadmin stuff affecting a few hundred or thousands of users.
The biggest difference between enterprise and SOHO deployments, which separates UI from the Big Name equipment is, that most of the time, big scale deployments of enterprise gear require supporting infrastructure, which in case of SOHO installation probably would dwarf the networking gear itself. Config servers, custom scripts automating operations on 100s of devices, etc are a small fraction of costs associated with running a big network. For a small networks with a switch or two and a few access points, it would be completely overwhelming. Not to say that it would have to be maintained by some with quite a bit of experience.

So, even though I'm not afraid of typing cryptic commands on iOS CLI, I went with UI gear in my home network. I want to click one button, and have all the changes automagically updated on all devices. I could add a few wifi-connected cameras (there was a time when Instants were just $30 a pop), and save the footage on a single the disk in UDMP with almost no effort. Is this something I'd recommend for a commercial deployment? Hell no. But it's "good enough" for me.

 

[tgl]

I always enjoy reading threads about Ubiquiti, because they always turn into a pretty entertaining flamewars, with most of the naysayers' arguments following the same template of "${enterprise_brand} equipment is sooo much better, because of ${reasons}".
And I admit, most of them are 100% right, and most of the the ${reasons} are often perfectly valid. With one exception: Ubiquiti doesn't make enterprise-class gear. They are a SOHO brand. And the requirements for these two segments are completely different.

Fair enough. I think UniFi's ceiling is a bit higher than you give it credit for, but I agree it might not be a great choice if you're running the network for a large corporate division, major university, etc. UI would like to be in the running for such deployments, but they're not there yet.

 

[piranha32]

Fair enough. I think UniFi's ceiling is a bit higher than you give it credit for, but I agree it might not be a great choice if you're running the network for a large corporate division, major university, etc. UI would like to be in the running for such deployments, but they're not there yet.

Oh yes, I'm familiar with their marketing brochures. And I also know that I'd be very careful which components from their lineup I'd like to use in a deployment bigger than 20-30 devices.