I have been having a lot of trouble with my current network as of late and think my router might be on the fritz. I’m thinking about replacing it with a wifi mesh network and just wanted to get anyone’s advice about this. I have a pretty large list of items that connect to my network both wifi and wired. Worth noting I am using att u-verse fiber so I am sadly stuck with their junk modem/router combo which I have set up for ip-pass through to a night hawk r7000. It has worked pretty well for a couple of years now but just recently I have been getting a lot of dropped connections and as of the last two days can’t keep wi-fi up for more then 10 minutes at a time before I need to restart the nighthawk. I did not add any new devices or update firmware when the problems started here. Tried updating and changing firmware since to see if that helps the issue but sadly nothing. Tonight my last ditch effort before trying to replace the router will be to do a full factory reset on the router. If that fails looks like I will be in the market for a new router and redesign of my network so any advice would be great!
For something “semi-pro” some people here have been happy with the Unifi products and security gateway,
Agree. I run orbi netgear for a while and it was very good until I passed the 50 clients mark.
Now I run ubiquity and it’s very reliable
Very interesting actually this may be a great way to go my current home has a ubiquiti ap installed from the builder but I have not had use for it as when I moved in I already had my nighthawk and extender. @juan11perez what products are you running at this point from ubiquity? And having used them any recommends? I am pushing now about 40 connected items at this point and its rapidly expanding.
I have these
UniFi Security Gateway 3P
UniFi Switch 8 POE-150W
2 x UniFi AP-AC-LR
I really recommend them. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but the product is very, very good.
As I said I had before Orbi, and it was good, but this is just so much better.
You wont regret it.
What is the advantage of their security gateway instead of using a home router with Unifi APs?
My past has shown me rule #1:
No matter how convenient it appears… do NOT use wifi for cameras. Hardwire the suckers and 90% of your network issues will disappear.
Integrated management mostly.
Whyat sort of management?
I work daily with enterprise APs that require a central controller. With Unifi that appears to be optional.
@anon34565116 whilst unifi don’t require a physical controller they still use a software one. As opposed to being configured directly from the the devices Web UI.
@josephkiser04 o I think unifi is probably the easiest product to setup and get going from a home user point of view the learning curve isn’t too high compared to other solutions on the market. The UI is well presented and they are the number one sold wireless devices in the world so community support is huge.
Awesome thank you all for the advice here. I think I am sold after doing some research I will probably pick up the Security Gateway here and start playing around with everything. Evenutally I will want to replace my netgear dumb switches but the gateway and access point should do well for now.
Does anyone know if the Unifi Gateway comes with a built-in OpenVPN server capability like the Asus routers do?
The USG can act as a RADIUS server, so you can use it to create a normal L2TP (or PPTP) VPN.
thanks for the info.
i’ve never used a L2TP VPN but I just did a bit of googling and it looks fairly straight forward. I really only ever use it to connect my mobile devices to HA and my Blue Iris server when away from the home network so I need to set up my devices to use it. But it looks doable.
or just always use remote ui for HA and be done with it. But I like having a backup plan tho.
Yeah, it’s easy to set up on the USG side, and simple using the default VPN settings on android or windows (no extra apps or programs needed).
You can, but not from the UI. OpenVPN is actually installed and needs some config file on the Controller software to get it to work.
Is anyone using the USG for dual WAN failover/fallback?
At the time I set up my network this feature was (apparently) quite buggy. So I went with an ERX instead.
While this has been working fine, I like the UniFi integrated LAN IP management and stats available from the USG.
I suppose I could install one after the ERX.
Thanks!
i’m really having a harder and harder time try to not justify the cost to move to the Ubiquiti gear. My Asus routers are just becoming way to unstable.
What really sucks is that I just bought both of these in the last year (at a significant cost) to allow me to set up a mesh system to try to help my already spotty wifi from my cheapo linksys stuff. I now realize I could have had the Ubiquiti gear already with what I paid for the ASUS mesh stuff.
I think I may have the WAF on an upgrade tho since she’s tired of the crappy reliability of the connection between my DLNA server and clients.
Have a look at the second hand price on eBay for your models. You might be surprised at how much you can recover.
I’ll check it out. Thanks for the tip.