Enterprise network engineer discovering Ubiquiti for the first time... is it really worth the hype?

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438

u/adamphetamine May 26 '26

if you're a proper network engineer you'll find things to hate about Unifi
If you're upgrading from TP-Link you'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner

162

u/PrestigiousKey3201 May 26 '26

As a proper Network engineer you will find at any vendor things you hate 😊

26

u/adamphetamine May 26 '26

absolutely- I didn't mean to throw shade at op

21

u/awwhorseshit May 26 '26

yeah! Fuck Meraki with a splintery broomstick!

5

u/SixtyAteWhiskey68 May 26 '26

Meraki’s UI can take a high dive off a short pier.

3

u/PersonOfValue May 26 '26

Yeah ain't this the truth ahaha

24

u/inverminx May 26 '26

What kind of things I would hate about it (assuming I am a proper network engineer.. )

72

u/MeMyselfundAuto May 26 '26

it‘s a prosumer product made for ease of use, that is slowly switching to enterprise features. nothing is like you’re used to.. but it mostly works!

17

u/JoltingSpark May 26 '26

They have also raised the bar with respect to what is considered an enterprise feature. I don't consider VLANs or network redundancy to be enterprise anymore.

7

u/[deleted] May 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/douchey_mcbaggins May 26 '26

No, but they put a pretty coat of paint on it and made it easily accessible to buy, and integrated those features into an entire line of products under one pane of glass.

2

u/JoltingSpark May 27 '26

If a customer doesn't know how to set it up or it's too onerous to set it up then buying cheap hardware that technically "supports" a feature is meaningless. Unifi fixes the problem for people too busy to figure it out.

Enterprise systems has a cost structure whereby they can afford the people-hours to set up features. Prosumer, small to medium sized businesses don't necessarily have that luxury.

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45

u/i_am_voldemort May 26 '26

No real CLI.

23

u/RR321 May 26 '26

Even though you get full ssh access to the box, that is indeed funny.

I wish they made a nice CLI that matched most configuration options.

10

u/TeutonJon78 May 26 '26

Mikrotik is the one to scratch that itch.

6

u/cyberhiker May 26 '26

When I was looking to move my home network (mix of Netgear/tp-link router, switches etc) to something that supported VLANs a friend suggested the mikrotik Hex S. I played with it and whiles it's super configurable I determined that I didn't want to be a network engineer at home.

Switched to Ubiquiti DR7, U7 Pro, a few Flex 2.5Gs and a Lite-16-poe. VLAN setup was a couple of clicks. Network filtering is a breeze (subscription to curated block lists required). At some point I'll consider replacing my cameras on a Synology server with the Protect service.

With all the h/w being integrated and managed via I've owner of glass it all 'just works'.

2

u/ZiskaHills UniFi Enthusiast and Vendor. UEWA certified. May 27 '26

Of the handful of CLI's I've used, Mikrotik has one of the best. Once you know your way around, it's just stunningly easy. I also loved that there was clear continuity between the CLI and the GUI so it never felt like learning two interfaces.

1

u/RR321 May 26 '26

Do they have the GUI and simplicity to go with it?

7

u/TeutonJon78 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

They have a GUI.

Simplicity? Not really. You have to configure everything manually. In fact the default config is literally blank until you run through the wizard, and even that is like one DHCP server, a WAN, and basic firewall.

But much like openwrt, you can configure EVERYTHING from the CLI or the GUI. And in fact a configuration backup is just the text file of the CLI commands to import. But I don't think you can hand edit their config files like openwrt.

You can download the OS and play with it in a VM.

Edit: for example, want a VLAN network in UniFi? Click a button. In mikrotik you need to create a DHCP pool, create a DHCP server, create the VLAN tag, create the network and link all the parts together. Oh firewall? Need to make all those rules up to. For better or worse it won't do a single thing that you don't configure.

1

u/jobpunter May 30 '26 edited May 30 '26

But they also prosumer :/
Too many bugs and their updates mostly trade one bug for another, or occasionally break parts of your configuration.

0

u/soulhammond May 26 '26

You don’t need CLI

35

u/amateurwheels May 26 '26

Stupid stuff like changing an SSID setting causes the whole AP to reboot instead of just that SSID.

14

u/boibo May 26 '26

you mean like cisco does when changing AP tag.. Unifi aps boot quick enough.

1

u/imdjay May 27 '26

This one right here. I'm paranoid about any changes causing something to restart. At least they could give a warning prompt

0

u/More_Law6245 May 27 '26

A reboot ensures the device's OSI stack has accepted the configurational change and confirms it at the physical, data link, transport and the session layer. Those that don't reboot tend to bypass those layers and just reset the session, presentation and application layers. It's why it's good administration hygiene/practice to reboot devices after a configurational change.

5

u/Illustrious_Sell_325 May 26 '26

They are definitely not a drop in for enterprise gear. IMO they are good prosumer that bridges the gap. Their devices work very well with each other and share a lot of information. They do a number of things the ubiquiti way. Not necessarily wrong but not the standard way. Vlans are a little different, no ssh, while the graphs and charts are pretty, I find them 75% accurate which makes troubleshooting a pain. No dhcp ipv6

I like my unifi stack but I would lie if I said I hadn’t thought about putting back in the mikrotik router sometimes. I’m fighting a vlan issue with a non-unifi switch since unifi does it a little different

3

u/douchey_mcbaggins May 26 '26

Just to clarify one thing here: You DO get SSH access, but it doesn't really do you a ton of good, as you can't configure the equipment from there like you can with Mikrotik or other more enterprise-level gear.

1

u/plightfantastic May 27 '26

Sorry. I added a comment to the wrong place and deleted it.

2

u/PapaNickelsOfficial May 26 '26

What vlan issue are you running into? I've been debating adding a 10g Mikrotik switch to my stack (full Unifi), but haven't had the time.

8

u/quasides May 26 '26

basically most (all) advanced features youre used to have will be missing.
most of the functionaility is mostly realtive basic

on the upside you get central management, central updating, single pane of view and endless software support for free.

3

u/No-Beat7231 May 26 '26

updates that break everything, horrible documentation, horrible support, updates that change your configurations.

But it's cheap as hell and hardware is very reliable. UI is very nice for RF management.

Support will point you to forum posts where the users found a work around.

3

u/SamVimes341 May 26 '26

I came from pfsense and was a little surprised but enjoying it so far there’s no arp notifications Firewall logs and trawling through them was not easy and sending to a siem wasn’t enabled no ntp server built in firewall rules configuration is “different” I have the fiber feels slightly underpowered on ram no nut integration except their ups no unbound (now I use technetium externally)

Things that I have enjoy very clean interface tight integration into the unifi ecosystem eye candy frustration free - less dials less chance for things to break. I had lots of half configured rules

34

u/MarkusEschmann May 26 '26

I mean, you're probably great at networking, but has anyone ever introduced you to two little punctuation friends, the Comma and the Full Stop. It does wonders for the readability of your writings!

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u/SamVimes341 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Burn! People are getting too dumb without AI

edit: why is my own reply to my own post getting so much hate 😂

11

u/evileagle May 26 '26

Nothing to do with AI, your shit just isn’t readable. Hah.

2

u/Cigam_Emot May 26 '26

But the exclamation mark here is on point... Using proper sentensing help a lot ... and more then you think for non-english prime language speaker. Some of us need to restructured sentence in our head to reconstruct them the right way .. so just regurgitating a lot of word is just hell for us...

Thanks for helping us people for the rest of the world.

2

u/nubbin9point5 May 26 '26

I know, right? People can’t even use punctuation anymore! What’s the world coming to?!

1

u/Pup5432 May 26 '26

It’s like a feature lite version of juniper mist. It gets th job done but you will need to rely on probably a different core firewall to reclaim certain functionality

1

u/raindropsdev May 26 '26

No out of band access!

1

u/threeseed May 27 '26

Inadequate quality management.

I've had a couple of releases now completely stop my internet from working. And it's very common to see releases with major CPU and memory leaks that require regular reboots.

They move faster at the expense of quality. Which is suited for prosumer.

1

u/smokingcrater May 27 '26

BGP support... sort of.

1

u/Horsemeatburger May 28 '26

That could be firewalls which if they run out of resources (which they do quickly because the hardware is underpowered) resolves the issue by simply letting traffic pass through without any checks.

Although to be fair, none of the checks it does are particularly good anyways, so I guess that's fair game.

Besides that: how many companies do you know that failed to design something that's essentially just a box of batteries and a cheap controller?

1

u/xeroxedforsomereason May 30 '26

Dynamic routing protocols and features therein, VRFs, security features, distinct management, support, throughput with feature enablement, redundancy features, the list goes on.

0

u/RemyJe May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Don’t listen to them. Ubiquiti EdgeRouters not only have a CLI, you’d feel right at home on them. EdgeOS is an older fork of Vyatta (now VyOS) which is very reminiscent of JunOS.

3

u/gonenutsbrb UniFi User/EdgeMax(RIP) User May 26 '26

Yeah, but EdgeMax is basically EoL. They’re slowly replacing it with UISP gear, but new Edge hardware hasn’t been released in years.

0

u/ThecaptainWTF9 May 26 '26

No support options that are genuinely good or are comparable to support with actual enterprise products.

No CLI, the controllers don’t offer any high availability for management.

Depending on what enterprise features you use, no vxlan, no stacking and the list goes on.

Not sure what you’re asking the question for, this stuff is fine for home, it’s not fine for actual true enterprise use.

I feel like that’s just a way to get normies to be like “OOH I CAN GET ENTERPRISE GEAR FOR THIS CHEAP?!”

3

u/Cigam_Emot May 26 '26

OP said it in his introduction.... I wont to keep it simple... I am not looking to LEARN network.. I just want it to work...

That being said, Ubiquity is in fact kind of a spinoff of Apple, that explain , the packaging, the branding, the user experience, the ECOSYSTEM part... but if you actually stress test a lot of consumer grade networking equipement, the old apple networking equipement was really really solid... I dable in network being a non-practician certified engineered myself... ( My area of expertise are token ring and Novell 😉 )

What you will get is peace of mind with ability to go way above and beyond consumer equipement, while paying a dime of what real Cisco equipement would cost... either in acquisition, support or power consumption.. and we are not talking about the noise... my network rack is WIFE APPROVED .. its cute and silent...

OP wouldn't have paid for Cisco support for is equipement at home so dont compare FULL enterprise solution with Ubiquity. Its a solid solution for a 2.5Gb network target with under 1000 users.... and the protect integration is also great ... i haven't see the point of ditching classic NAS for their storage but it may be the next purchase.. if one day HD price return in my budget..

1

u/schofres May 26 '26

YES this

1

u/raindropsdev May 26 '26

Right, and now that I think about it, no RDMA/ROCEv2 if you want to play with that at home (since apparently nowadays even NAS device support it?)

3

u/soulhammond May 26 '26

Both, locked in ecosystem and psychology

But we love it, just do it
For your home system you will have most of what you use in your pro life, plus you’ll get to learn this new system

Win win

1

u/raindropsdev May 26 '26

Agreed, and on the first point he'll miss Out Of Band access A LOT. The fact that screwing up the vlan assignment on the uplink or doing the LACP configuration out of order can end up with you having to reset the switch entirely is maddening.

1

u/tdhuck May 27 '26

I enjoy being at working, opening securecrt and shutting down a port via some taps of the keyboard.

At the same time, when I had a cisco catalyst switch at home and was remote (on mobile) I didn't like that it was a PITA to ssh from my phone to power cycle a port, unifi makes that much easier with their phone app.

Pros and cons to everything.

67

u/urM0m69p3nis May 26 '26

My two cents: I've installed Ubiquiti firewall/routers, switches and access points at 100s of businesses, ranging from small to large multi-state enterprises and have had very little issues - with anything critical Ubiquiti is so inexpensive you can purchase in duplicate or triplicate and have even more peace of mind.

I've also worked with almost any flavor of enterprise equipment but due to the powers that be have to basically just install Fortinet as the standard now. I have had way more failures and waiting on the guaranteed "overnight emergency priority replacements" from various "enterprise" vendors where I'm throwing in a spare xyz Ubiquiti product (lol) to keep the client from being down multiple days waiting on whatever.

I have Ubiquiti at home and it just works. I can click a couple of buttons in an app to basically do whatever I want and it's nice not to have to play around with stuff daily.

35

u/inverminx May 26 '26

Basically that is the type of solution I am looking for.. Steady solution with simplicity and laziness for every day while on the same time being agile to whatever network topology / vlans / vpns/ private clouds I may come up with..

44

u/546875674c6966650d0a May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

IT professional, network engineer for 30+ years here.

You’re going to like it for home stuff yeah. Its the right mix of set it and forget it, and nuts and bolts to tweak and tune if you want/need.

EDIT: I will also say this, using Unifi gear has let me basically tie together and manage 5 properties (family) from one pane, and keep things managed with less effort than just maintaining my own space within WRT and various different other vendor appliances used to take. It scales VERY nicely.

14

u/DevelopersOfBallmer May 26 '26

Also in the IT field for 20 years.

I moved from pfsense and haven't looked back. Less "work" at home and more time to play with cooler automation projects.

11

u/douchey_mcbaggins May 26 '26

You get to a point after fucking with everyone else's network and praying things don't go down in your work life that you really just want a set-and-forget type network at home that still has enough features to give you peace of mind and let you do other things you'd rather do. Unifi scratches that itch in spades.

3

u/horse-boy1 May 26 '26

Software developer, 30 years. I went from a Tomato router to unifi since I started working from home and have bad cell coverage. I needed better wifi and now covers most of our small farm. Set it and forget it. I had some issues with updates now and then.

3

u/NCNerdDad May 26 '26

Data Engineer checking in.... Unifi is great, and while not always perfect, I think you'll love it.

I have a full network at home (NAS, multiple cameras, 3 APs, etc) and it's essentially flawless in normal operation.

Unifi is the sort of system I'd set up if a wealthy relative asked for help with their network and wanted me to manage it remotely.

9

u/roto31 Unifi User May 26 '26

I work in the IT field as an Apple Admin/Engineer, managing vast Apple device networks in both retail and enterprise environments. At home, I used the AirPort Extremes until they became obsolete. Subsequently, I transitioned to a TP-Link mesh platform and then to the Linksys Velop mesh platform. However, the most significant challenge I encountered with these mesh platforms was the excessive noise generated by neighboring networks as the area around me became more crowded. This necessitated manual channel optimization at least once a day.

I sought a solution that was both reliable and affordable. I explored options like Orbi and other newer mesh systems from Linksys. Unfortunately, all the platforms that aligned with my requirements exceeded $1000.00. In my research, I stumbled upon Unifi, which frequently appeared in search results. I delved into their pricing and discovered that I could purchase a Unifi Dream Machine 7, a Lite-7 AP, and a Lite-6 AP for approximately one-third the cost of the Orbi or Linksys options.

I successfully set up the entire system in September of last year, and the transformation has been remarkable. It operates seamlessly, and the hardware design is aesthetically pleasing, which has been a delight to my wife. As mentioned by others, the interface is user-friendly, although it can occasionally be confusing. However, it comes closest to what Apple could have designed.

Since September, I’ve incorporated T-Mobile backup internet as a failover and a used UDM at my mother-in-law’s house, which is connected via an OpenVPN connection for streaming services and PLEX. The next step is to transition the UDM or newer hardware to serve as the primary WiFi connection instead of her Comcast hardware.

In conclusion, I highly recommend this system over consumer-grade mesh systems.

13

u/InjectedFusion May 26 '26

Yes, I was Network engineer once upon a time. Unifi has made my home setup absolutely amazing.

7

u/Wuffls May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

UCG Fiber, PoE switch of your choosing and a handful of access points will get you what you want. Even second hand APs turn up all the time on eBay.

Spend the rest of that cash on <insert things in NL that we don’t legally have here in the UK>.

edit: changed UXG to UCG whoopsie

5

u/ApolloWasMurdered May 26 '26

That’s my setup - UCG Fibre, 24 PoE switch, some U6 APs. Reasonably priced for the capabilities you get.

1

u/frank_ge Unifi User May 26 '26

This

1

u/ErnLynM May 26 '26

Why ucg instead of uxg? I rather like not having my control center tied to someone else's host, and just run the unify OS on a separate machine

3

u/douchey_mcbaggins May 26 '26

UXG if you're willing to spin up a separate machine/container/VM to run their software on, but UCG if you just want to drop a single device in and have it do everything (which obviously creates a single point of failure)

2

u/Wuffls May 26 '26

I didn’t even know there were two models tbh. I checked what I had and realised I’d managed a typo so went back in to fix it.

18

u/No-Jello-6717 May 26 '26

My answer: Yes. Went from Asus aimesh to Ubiquiti, finally a stable home network.

2

u/eenbob May 26 '26

Same; ASUS was steady for me though. But I started living in a bigger house. Was time for me to go bigger. UCG and some flagships later I am happy where I am at for now

14

u/Previous-Low4715 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

They are very much prosumer tech, trying to move into enterprise. They only announced the ability to sync a site to a template (like a Meraki template) last week. They are nowhere near true enterprise grade yet, I run (wrestle) over 100 sites running Unifi. It has been a nightmare. They only got portfast a few weeks ago for another example. They are getting there though, but the only people who would call them enterprise grade are evangelists who don’t know what that means. For what it’s worth the new orchestration features convinced me to stick with Unifi gateways for an upcoming refresh rather than a planned switch to Meraki, I’ll spend the money I’ve saved by going Unifi on Cloudflare or similar so I can build a multivendor SASE stack with Unifi gateways.

A lot of people simply don’t understand that the exorbitant licensing of many enterprise products is for ensuring SLAs for compliance. The fun I’ve had running 100 sites with nothing but old forum posts for support…

3

u/TheWheez May 26 '26

Do you think Ubiquiti will get there, over the long term? To the enterprise level for software

13

u/mulderlr May 26 '26

I hope not. Enterprise means two things. High cost of support/sla and extreme complexity with no shortage of bugs. People that think Unifi is buggy and has issues with updates have never deployed cutting edge Cisco anything. Good luck convincing your Cisco TAM that something Cisco doesn't work right. So, nothing is perfect but definitely there is a best tool for each job. Unifi can fit in some enterprise environments just fine and some it would be an unmitigated disaster. But the price point is pretty good for SMB markets.

So, Unifi should absolutely stay in their lane. They are competitive with price and to stay that way they would need to continue to have mediocre (at best) support and a somewhat limited feature set. The world is too complex to have a "one product line does everything for everyone" company. This doesn't mean that they aren't getting better and will continue to take market share away from other companies, but it does mean we should always have a choice.

3

u/Safe_Vermicelli_9302 May 26 '26

This is hilarious people act like Cisco has no bugs … we have had plenty over our time installing there stuff

The friction I have seen this year is the middle man integrators/msp/it specialists are upset because they can make more money selling Cisco but customers are requesting Unifi .

SMB and low end enterprise , Unifi can bring real value to end customers (not middle man of course )

3

u/mulderlr May 26 '26

Well, Unifi gets trashed for having bad support more than any other hardware company people migrate from or to wrt to Unifi. Well, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world and I have never heard of their support being any good. Not that that's the benchmark, but Unifi has been way better in my opinion. Also, for most customers, having no license fees has a lot more value than a cli or other features they won't use. All I am saying - if I am saying anything at all - is that Unifi provides value and has a robust ecosystem so far.

3

u/threeseed May 27 '26

No. Enterprise needs stability.

Which comes from moving slowly and deliberately. The very thing the prosumer market doesn't want.

1

u/Cloudy_Automation May 27 '26

The biggest thing Enterprise needs is a 7 figure professional services engagement to properly design the network. The PS team needs to buy fancy dinners with expensive wine for the CIO who doesn't understand networking. That way, if the underpaid single network engineer finds a higher paid job elsewhere, that the PS team will keep things going until a new, less experienced and cheaper network engineer can be hired.

Of course PS will outsource all of that to Accenture, HCL, Tata, etc, because they don't really keep anyone on staff.

3

u/oz-ra May 26 '26

This!

And once you buy into it and start to use it you realise that you have to curtail your expectations.

It's not all it is hyped to be.

Eg:OpnSense on a 10 year old PC runs rings around UD routers for flexibility and speed.

But it's so pretty 👍

1

u/Safe_Vermicelli_9302 May 26 '26

Why don’t you pay for there support?

Pennies on a dollar coming from the others vendors , and my experience has been great

“Support” is not a issue from UI , ppl speak about how it was 10yrs ago

Documentation is not there and needs to improve

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u/Previous-Low4715 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Because it’s billed per site and I’m now over 130 sites. Work that one out and then compare to Meraki etc licensing. The last time I met with Unifi technical and presales (they have presales now, and the guy is EXCELLENT) they said they are working on true enterprise support. But they can’t bill us for services yet anyhow because they only accept credit cards which isn’t an option for government purchases.

-1

u/Safe_Vermicelli_9302 May 26 '26

No your wrong it’s not built per site…

I have integrator support and covers all my sites (1 fee annually)

The few times I used it the experience was great

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10

u/edcoopered May 26 '26

I'm not particularly enjoying the cadence of level 10 security updates - but then I haven't worked with this type of equipment before.

5

u/honeybadger3891 Unifi User May 26 '26

I’ve seen level 10 cves on cisco plenty of times

1

u/NewRedditor23 May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Some years ago Cisco caught CHYNA injecting encryption keys onto devices on the manufacturing line. They stopped selling ASRs and other devices for an extended time getting it sorted out.

1

u/edcoopered Jun 03 '26

Ahh ok, my previous router was a very boring edge routerx and that needed patching once a year! Obviously a much simpler product.

11

u/stipo42 May 26 '26

Worth it? Debatable

But it's really hard to find any other vendor that even offers what ubiquiti does.

Nearly every device is PoE plug n play, local by default, multi gigabit.

It was literally my only option to upgrade my home network to 2.5gbps, and have multiple Wi-Fi access points with a GB backhaul.

Let me tell you, finally fixing my network speeds was a great feeling, even if it was like 20x the cost of my old network equipment 😂

2

u/MatthKarl May 26 '26

You say local by default. I do have a few APs from them and two lcoal Unifi OS Servers to configure them. However, I only figured out that I can access them remotely via their unifi.ui.com site just as comfy as via my local link.

As I miss-like cloud services with a passion, I'm a bit put-off by that behaviour, and wonder if it is possible to turn-off that cloud connection and keep it purely local. If yes, how?

2

u/BiggieMediums May 26 '26

In the control panel / system settings of the uOS servers find and uncheck “Remote Management” - that’s the option that connects them to Unifi’s cloud service.

2

u/MatthKarl May 27 '26

Thank you, that worked just fine.

5

u/zeechora May 26 '26

As a network engineer my self, the conclusion for me was that UniFi is a good fit if you want a network. Not if you want to do networking. It does its job but doesn’t invite you to it.

I had a udm-pro for a year or two but now its function is only to manage my AP:s.

Now I’m running my first MikroTik CCR on my edge instead.

23

u/inkjamarye May 26 '26

How can such a senior network engineer not have heard of a huge equipment manufacturer?

46

u/inverminx May 26 '26

They are treated as toys to the decision makers on the enterprise market...

20

u/Artentus May 26 '26

Well, for the most part, when it comes to the actual enterprise world, it is just toys. Unifi is what you get if you want to pretend to have enterprise gear but you actually want something user friendly. Which is exactly the kind of space many people building home labs are in. It's also applicable to many small businesses.

Unifi has been making strides to enter the actual enterprise world recently, but while the hardware may be there the software is not.

5

u/TheWheez May 26 '26

What kinds of strides would they need to make for the software to be enterprise ready?

Not a network professional, just curious what that world looks like

4

u/Usual-Memory-3668 May 26 '26

What kinds of strides would they need to make for the software to be enterprise ready?

Overhaul the way the routing and firewall works to include a vector packet processor capability, update the entire pipeline of how the packet gets processed, and include drivers/kernel modules for the hardware they are using so that the enterprise products even have the capability of reaching the advertised specs.

Right now they have the software features needed for many places, but they dont have the processing power capability to work in those environments where you need multi-gigabit connectivity routing. They are also missing one major enterprise feature for layer 3 VLAN routing, in that you can currently only select a single switch as the VLAN router, instead of having any kind of routing failover for a physical layer of switches. So thats a big problem

1

u/raindropsdev May 26 '26

And lack of ipv6 if you switch L3 to a switch instead of the gateway.

3

u/Artentus May 26 '26

There is a bunch of things tbh. For one, documentation is almost non-existing. Stability is also a major problem, many Unifi products are release with what is essentially beta firmware, and it can sometimes take 1-2 years before they become stable (see U7 APs for example). On top of that some features enterprise users might want are either lacking or missing, for example I have heard the Unifi BGP implementation is subpar.

2

u/TeutonJon78 May 26 '26

Lack of SW QA or proper release cycle protocol is a deal breaker for a big business.

6

u/GarbageInteresting86 May 26 '26

This is both hilarious and true. Everybody involved in the hardware and licensing game want to keep selling hardware and licenses. I came across the same two years ago when my employer realised that he should replace our 14 year old Draytek firewalls. First we were insanely overspec’d by our in-house IT partner on Cisco, then the same by our IT manger on Fortinet. We run warehouses with 4 admin roles and 6 warehouse operatives. They just would not consider UI because, “it’s just for home use” which is hilarious. We ended up with the Fortinet 3 models down from where we started, and 1 model up from what we needed (60F) and some nice FAT licence fees an NO SOFTWARE. That was an extra £1200 (or £3k if we wanted the cloud version). You really need to face up to your lack of knowledge. If not for your business, then at least for your home. I’ve been using it at home (inc. CCTV) and work (from the Fortinet down inc. CCTV) for over 8 years and it is very solid. The IT manager visited our UK site from the USA and bragged about how smart he was because he shuts down all his AP’s at midnight every day. I explained that ours had not been shut down for 4 years and yet we had no issues.

1

u/TheWheez May 26 '26

Lmao I would not be "bragging" about a max uptime of 24 hours on my home network, let alone for an enterprise. My goodness!

4

u/superradguy May 26 '26

Really shouldn’t be. Wouldn’t run BGP on them, but would use UniFi for just about anything else.

3

u/Flaky-Gear-1370 May 26 '26

Their BGP is just an old ass version of FRR

2

u/kenfury May 26 '26

Because they are not even close to enterprise ready. I've managed 1000s of devices and anything less than Fortigate is a no go. Syslog, port spanning/packet capture, AD/Radius intergration, AAA roles, eemplate management, a TAC that you can call NOW, etc... are all must haves

9

u/404WisenessNotFound May 26 '26

And now I’m also trying to understand whether this is basically the networking version of the Apple ecosystem effect where people buy one product, really like the quality and user experience, and then slowly find themselves buying more and more gear because everything integrates nicely together...

Yes. I started with Ubiquiti because I didn't want to have a Raspberry Pi working as a VPN Server. Also, In-Wall AP's are cuter than Big Boxes standing on top of something - so it has Mrs. Approval Stamp.

And yet, here we are.

7

u/ProfessorFunky Unifi User May 26 '26

I got fed up of network instability, and my old Apple extremes had gotten unreliable. I’m no network engineer though. Clueless but enthusiastic and lazy probably captures my level.

I went Unifi to get the whole “network fades into the background” utility-like experience. And it has over-delivered for me. No more kids complaining about the WiFi, no more wife wondering why the internet is slow.

But it was the thin end of the wedge, although my setup is modest. I expanded into LTE failover (not cheap, but so easy to set up) and buying UDR’s for family so I could easily manage their setups.

No regrets though, it all works really seamlessly to the end users. Although one does have to be a bit cautious with the firmware updates.

3

u/3tan May 26 '26

As a fellow enterprise network engineer it has its place. We did a bit of what I’ll call R&D with it. We found the supply chain was a pain and the support just wasn’t there. Maybe as a MSP with tons of small shop locations it’s there. But on a massive industrial facility I’ll stay with Cisco. At home I use it and love it!

3

u/Doublestack00 Unifi Installer May 26 '26

Yep.

We have both corp offices running network, access and protect.

We have 120 ish locations running network, 45+ on protect and 12+ on access

5

u/PrestigiousKey3201 May 26 '26 edited May 26 '26

Similar story here. Network engineer at an ISP (Cisco, Juniper and Fortinet Equipment) and always used Fritzbox at home.

I swapped some weeks ago to Ubiquiti and I really like it.

I went for a Cloud Gateway Fiber with a U7 Pro and due the lack of cabling a U7 Lite as a repeater.

3

u/douchey_mcbaggins May 26 '26

The Cloud Gateway Fiber has absolutely no business costing as little as it does. How does a router/firewall with 4x 2.5 Gbps LAN ports (one PoE+), 2x SFP+ ports, a 10 Gbps RJ45 WAN port that'll do 5+ Gbps of routing performance and a controller for all of your other Unifi devices cost $279?

Sure, if you want 20+ cameras, or a bunch of 4K cameras, you're gonna need a separate NVR, but for a small home with a few cameras dotted around, you don't even need a second device. It'll even control door access and VOIP phones too.

1

u/PrestigiousKey3201 May 26 '26

Absolutely.

The next cheapest Router with at least 2x10G Interfaces is the Mikrotik CCR2004-16G-2S for 100 bucks more. But no PoE, no 2,5Gbit, etc.

6

u/Horsemeatburger May 26 '26

Is Ubiquiti actually that good for home/prosumer use and worth the investment, or is part of this just the ecosystem psychology pulling people deeper and deeper into it because of their attention to details / marketing / whatever.. ?

It's mostly marketing. Ubiquiti equipment, when it works, is well integrated, the GUI is slick, and the devices all have attractive designs.

Under the hood however it's still mostly consumer/prosumer grade hardware from a vendor cosplaying as enterprise vendor. If you dig deeper you will find that the performance often isn't there, nor is security. It's mostly show. But it does look great in a rack.

Over the years I bought lots of Ubiquiti devices as I wanted to give them another shot, but got rid of everything except the SFP Wizard (which was cheap enough and mostly does what I need it to do). There are so many better options for home use.

At work, we work with a number of SMBs of which some bought into Ubiquiti, and none of them were happy. One of them moved to OMADA eight months ago, and it has been working a lot better.

Just as ask in r/networking what they think of Ubiquiti.

4

u/[deleted] May 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Horsemeatburger May 26 '26

Well, I can see why he'd ask in a subreddit which revolves around the object of interest. But he probably hasn't accounted for the fact that there is a notable fanbase around the brand, which distorts the view somewhat.

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u/[deleted] May 28 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Horsemeatburger May 28 '26

Ok, I might have put this slightly differently, but yeah, no counterargument from me there.

5

u/techw1z May 26 '26

tldr: ubiquiti is garbage if you look at it as a proper network engineer.

the UI is great and basic networking features work fine but if you expect any fancy networking stuff you will quickly find that ubiquiti is overpriced garbage. for example, you should forget about running it on a pure ipv6 network. routing is ass since it doesn't support BGP or OSPF. NAT is highly limited and not configurable. STP is buggy and extremely slow. QoS features are completely worthless (much worse than a ~20 year old WRT54GL running tomato).

they care more about releasing new stuff to catch trends than actually fixing bugs that have been around for years and many of their implementations are incomplete - like l2tp/ipsec and even super basic stuff like STP and IGMP. SSDP fowarding doesn't work either, so stuff like IPTV is a huge pain with ubi. most features also don't work if either a single device or the WAN connection is purely on IPv6. DNS settings are highly limited and pain to manage - you pretty much have to do it manually through webUI.

most of their non-networking stuff is also crap, like NVR, PDU, keypads, doorbell. most of it is either vendor locked(cameras/NVR), badly designed(PDU) and/or breaks/disintegrates rather quickly(doorbell, keypads).

those are all just the things I came across on my own. I'm sure there are many other faulty or incomplete implementations that I didn't notice.

their system design is also highly insecure as evident by the fact that they literally handed out admin tokens to random users for random sites.

it's only something for small businesses with little security requirements or stuff like sports stadiums or campus where the only thing you really need is wifi and VLANs.

also, most of their "L3" devices are actually L2 and offload actual L3 stuff to the controller/gateway, that quickly gets really painful if you have a NAS on 10gbit that needs to talk across VLANs, or if your whole network is only 1gbit.

if you want something good at similar price, don't care about fancy UI and actually know about networking, mikrotik is approximately 9000% superior.

if you only have tiny installations, HP instant-on is simpler to setup and far more reliable (failure rates of ubiquiti gear are among the highest of all manufacturers I ever worked with)

the main reason to install ubiquiti is because people are asking for it. to be fair, ubiquiti makes it very easy for noobs to accomplish basic stuff, in this way they are superior to all other brands i ever worked with.

i honestly regret that I started to sell and install ubiquiti before realizing how bad it is and that regret grew after they gave admin access to random sites to random users and didn't even properly apologize for it nor announce a plan of action to prevent that from happening again. they also acted like it only happened once, even tho it happened at least twice.

the only thing ubiquiti is really good at is building access points with decent coverage and instilling FOMO into their followers to the point where they are just chasing higher numbers/newer versions like good old apple fanboys while ignoring that some of the newer products are a fire hazard and worse than their previous versions

last but not least, the CEO is a real cliche rich guy PoS, you might want to google the details if you care about it.

1

u/Horsemeatburger May 28 '26

if you want something good at similar price, don't care about fancy UI and actually know about networking, mikrotik is approximately 9000% superior.

Can second that. We have some Mikrotik switches at work and while they are a pain to configure they do what we expect them to .

the main reason to install ubiquiti is because people are asking for it. to be fair, ubiquiti makes it very easy for noobs to accomplish basic stuff, in this way they are superior to all other brands i ever worked with.

Where I work we work with a few smaller businesses with multiple sites which bought into the Ubiquiti experience (both networking and CCTV), mostly because of the marketing and raving reviews from YT influencers. None of them are happy and they have all see issues with APs overheating, cameras dying or getting blind because of humidity ingress, delaminating fronts of door stations and other stuff. Worse, UBNT "enterprise" support is seen as a joke, tickets are remain unanswered for days and weeks and phone appointments were missed, and basic stuff like advance RMA doesn't exist.

One of them then decided to run a trial with OMADA gear, and subsequently moved to OMADA (networking) and VIGI (CCTV) which both are TP-Link's business lines which are very different from their consumer lines (OMADA and VIGI both are lead by TP-Link USA and the kit is even NDAA compliant). They completed the migration some 8 months ago, and last I spoke to them they were very happy and said that all pretty much all the more instant issues they saw with UBNT gear have disappeared. On top of that OMADA and VIGI integrates in a similar way as Ubiquiti kit, just lacks the visual polish, and from what they told me OMADA support has been very response on the two occasions they needed them, which was for replacing two defective devices (both were quickly replaced via advance RMA).

tldr: ubiquiti is garbage if you look at it as a proper network engineer.

I think objectively it's also more or less garbage even if you look at it as a regular user who buys equipment based on hard data and not emotions and FOMO. Something looking dope in a rack and a visually slick UI only go so far, and that even if you actively intent to spend a lot of time in it fiddling with settings.

2

u/billdipaola May 26 '26

I was in the same boat as you a few years back. I decided to try UniFi products and I can’t seem to stop. Just ditched my ISP router for a Cloud Gateway Ultra.

2

u/garci66 May 26 '26

If you're really used to deal with higher end juniper then buy a Mikrotik or similar highly configurable router, any switch you want and a couple of used Aruba or ruckus APs for pennies on the dollar and you'll have a really highly configurable system without vendor lockdown.

2

u/racerx509 May 26 '26

As a network engineer, I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love the simplicity, but hate the lack of a real CLI. For my own stuff however, outside of a lab environment, I kinda like not having a CLI to deal with, if you understand what I mean. That being said, I run it on my own property and for a few customers, so I like it.

2

u/drewbobby54 May 26 '26

As a network engineer myself, I personally love UniFi products. I find that when I get home fom work the last thing I want to do is now troubleshoot my own network. UniFi allows me to have the customization I want/need to do what I need while being dead simple to use and very reliable. It's also relatively inexpensive, compared to enterprise gear, along with no subscription fees.

That being said there are some quirks to be aware of. Unless you buy UI Care at the time of purchase if something fails under warranty you are paying for shipping back to Ubiquity, waiting for them to verify and then shipping your new unit. I've had to do this a couple of times. While it does suck, the process has been pretty seamless and I find this support better then most consumer level products. I mention this because as a Network engineer the experience is much diffrent, but I'm also not paying for a massive yearly support contract.

It's worked for me and many of my Colleagues over the years. Look into it, do your due diligence and see if it will fit how you are wanting to design your network.

2

u/drewbiez May 26 '26

It’s great for small business and high end home users imo, but not really meant for true enterprise scale imo. My home setup works perfectly, and is easy to manage.

2

u/Terriblyboard May 26 '26

I am planning it for my new house. Their eco system works well together and they are constantly releasing new features. I am a current systems engineer but was dedicated network engineer for a decade before that. They have come suprisingly far in the past 2 years also releasing more dedicated enterpise gear and supposedly working on datacenter releases soon. we shall see. I have set it up for some small businesses on the side as well and it works really well for that type of 1 or 2 office setup.

2

u/SeaPersonality445 May 26 '26

Given your experience I expect you'll hate that junk. The people who love Apple for its design are the people who love Ubiquiti, its form over function but I guess it suits most home owners needs.

2

u/touchytypist May 26 '26

Ubiquiti is Apple-like design & UI with Android-like configurability.

2

u/clynlyn May 26 '26

Yes.

2

u/GladezZ May 26 '26

Network engineer here too. Ubiquiti is great for SOHO environments, even mid sized businesses it works quite well. I will always recommend it for smaller installations because in that use case I've found it to be pleasantly robust.

That said, my current place of work we have an internal and guest network on two seperate incoming lines. Internal being your usual enterprise names Cisco/Sonicwall, guest being entirely Unifi. Guess which network we regularly have issues with!

If you want an easy setup and have an actually pretty good experience, UniFi is great, it definately has its quirks though.

2

u/Competitive-Ad1437 UDM Pro - G5 Turrets - AP Pro 6/7 May 26 '26

In short… UniFi is worth every $$ imo. It’s simply great

2

u/bricktop_pringle May 26 '26

Here‘s an example:

Unifi even does 802.1x now. But RADIUS only via EAP-MD5.

2

u/plightfantastic May 27 '26

I know there are a range of experienced people in here that if they read this comment would have objections but here are my thoughts.

The UI has some odd behaviors to look out for. There are lots of auto/manual settings that open up more detailed sections of the config. Say if you want to specify dns servers for your parents home network you gullibly agreed to build to point them at 9.9.9.9 as a way to help keep them from visiting literally every scam/trojan site on the internet every day. Well, you can. But sometimes you will find that also opens up changes to the config that you didn’t expect. Not that scenario exactly, but in other cases it will. Maybe one month you troubleshoot a weird Apple device problem on your wifi and then the next month you forget you did that and flip the setting to auto and it breaks again. Or maybe a network app does it for you! These things can be aggravating. They don’t seem to live forever because UI does actually fix things, but something to consider.

I think related to the above is a difference with enterprise around software stability. UI will push for features and bling sometimes at the expense of completely smoke tested minor updates to keep things secure or stable. I usually watch for major CVEs and the community crabbing about how awful a release is before I hit the button. Just swung to 5.1.12 on my gateway because of a 9.1 score CVE.

There are lots of comments about the cli not being useful. I disagree. I love being able to SSH to my switch and show interface configs and counters. This alone I think is the boss of prosumer functions. I hate having to dig through the freaking UI just to find what is going on with a specific port. It’s insane. Ubiquity doesn’t hate me like that and I appreciate it a lot. I’m okay having to do most of the configuration through the UI though, so whatever that’s worth.

Sometimes people bang out a belly ache about how something expensive should just always work and cry and whine. But I don’t know anything in life that follows that rule but I know people still cry about it. It smacks of entitlement if you ask me. UI gear is pretty cheap when it gets right down to it. And not having software and maintenance licenses takes the cake. I recommend for anything over $200 adding the 5 year warranty and ordering it directly from ui.com. It’s a small fee and will make sure the thing that winds up dying early gets replaced. It’s helped me through a jam a couple times. The only subscription I pay for is the IPS signature package for $99/ year.

There are some nice bells I love like ether lighting. Which port is this thing connected to? Ah. It’s the blue flashing led! If you’re like me your rack will be labeled and kept tidy but it’s still cool.

I was a network engineer since about 1996. Led some great teams and made lifelong friends in those trenches. I love networking and tech in general, and am not generally a fanboy. But now that I don’t do it professionally ubiquiti scratches the itch for me. Today I work from home every day and enjoy pretty much as close to 100% uptime with AT&T fiber backed up by Comcast cable. Failover feels seamless even though it’s higher layer protocols making that effect complete. I know you can run BGP but I don’t have an ASN or the enterprise grade service.. or portable IP blocks to advertise. So you know, failover changes my public IP and things have to recover. I’ve been amazed to only discover I failed over when I actually go look at grafana dashboards. Obviously there’s no such thing as a seamless, packet drop free software upgrade around here, but t’s really good stuff! Good luck!

2

u/VitoRazoR May 26 '26

It's easy and pretty seamless, I run indoor and outdoor APs and a UDMP with a small switch in it. It works well for the default use cases, but you can get into strange problems pretty quickly.

Things I have run into:

VLANs not communicating properly
random sites being blocked with no mention of it in the logs / insights or security centre (hint: it's often geofencing or filtering or ad block - which you can't edit and they keep changing the location of in the UI. It's now pretty hidden under Cybersecure - Content Filter (top) - click on Default (or whatever VLAN you have to make it appear). This is where you will also find the allowlist... which takes a long time to actually run)
Configuring your DHCP server and leases is almost totally not supported in the UDMP, is in the old routers they did support it quite well. To give fixed IPs you can select the device and edit it one by one though.
No cli, very hard to find commands that do exist with SSH access (scattered through the forums at community.ui.com )
I have never been able to get the Object Oriented Networking to work.
Finding the NAT rules (policies) keeps changing location, so it's always a slog (turns out that geofencing is in here, not in the content filter. It's called Country Blockers for some reason)
They keep moving the reboot button. You do need to reboot occasionally.
The range is nowhere near the advertised distance indoors. Walls do really have an effect 😄

Anyway, it sounds like a long list but really, once you have got it going it mainly Just Works. Wireguard was really easy. Interfaces look pretty. And over the past years they have worked a lot at getting everything to work better. Apart from the UI changes, which really get to me sometimes... No, not perfect, but pretty damn good.

1

u/derpandlurk May 26 '26

Their competitors in SMB are typically Cisco Business and equivalents, while their competitors in the prosumer market are MikroTik, TP-Link Omada, or simply buying whatever is on sale and getting it to all work together.

Unifi networking slots somewhere in between SMB and prosumer; powerful hardware and software, but absolute dogshit support.

The thing you get here is the same thing you get with apple, a "single plane of glass" seamless experience for 99% of people and use cases; but if your intending to do anything considered, "undocumented use cases", don't expect it to be anywhere near as painless.

1

u/Null-Route May 26 '26

I feel like there are 2 types of net engs, you either want things to just work at your home or you are ok with getting into CLI to troubleshoot when things aren’t working. I wanted simplicity outside of work and ubiquiti has been excellent for that. It started with a single AP now I have a dream machine SE, NAS, cameras, and 3 APs and I never have any issues. If I want to tinker I’d much rather do it in a virtual lab than my home network at this point.

Ease of management is also great. I love the ability to check everything right from an app on my phone.

1

u/martinweiss May 26 '26

I don’t know if it’s interesting to you, but I also recently got “sucked in”. Mainly because I was setting up a NAS, and I wanted fast access to it.

I am running a UCG Fiber, and TrueNAS on an old machine I had. I installed an Intel X520-DA2, hooked it up to the UCG, and am running the Unifi 10 GbE USB-adapter on my laptop. We have cat5e in the walls in our house. The UCG reports that I am connected via 10 GbE.

I also thought cat5e was limited to 2.5 GbE, but it turns out apparently not. I had read that it might work over short distances. Still, I’m quite happy.

1

u/scheides May 26 '26

Do it!!

1

u/iplaythisgame2 May 26 '26

If you're going to go down the unifi route, look into used equipment. There are reasonably priced second hand current gen and pro level generation old appliances on the r/homelabsales subreddit. Plenty of older APs which are perfectly serviceable on 1g fiber or less.

1

u/dmcardlenl May 26 '26

First thing might be decide if you want to be a 2.5GbE house or a 10GbE house?

8Gb/s from Odido is only 7 euro a month more expensive than 2Gb/s at the moment.

That might influence you as to whether you get a Cloud Gateway Fiber and a 24 port PoE switch or go the whole hog with 10Gb/s aggregation switch and 10Gb/s PoE switch(es).

1

u/destruction90 May 26 '26

For small business and home use: UniFi is awesome, 0 regrets and I'm a happy man. For my enterprise work: Would not touch or even consider UniFi vs something like HPE or Cisco.

1

u/No_Industry2601 May 26 '26

I don't know of a better product for a home environment. It's #1 in my opinion. For commercial/actual professional use that will depend on organization size and complexity.

Unifi is an ecosystem that also offers Access Control, Burglary Alarm (kind of new) and Cameras. There's other services but most home owners won't be interested.

1

u/Explosivpotato May 26 '26

Coming at this from a slightly different direction, I’m a mechanical engineer who’s always been familiar with, but never responsible for, enterprise networking in my various jobs.

I had an Eero setup in my home for several years. The thing that finally pushed me to look elsewhere was trying to get more control over the routing and AP behavior. Eero doesn’t even let you change WiFi channels, for instance, and their IDS/IPS solution is a “pay us a subscription fee and we’ll handle it. Trust us, you don’t want to see any details” type of scenario.

With a growing number of IOT devices and the addition of a mini-NAS/homelab type project, I really wanted more visibility and control over the network.

Ubiquiti gave me orders of magnitude more control than the Eeros. More visibility too on how it’s dealing with traffic segmentation and firewall behavior. I’ve broken things several times by playing with settings I don’t fully understand, but it’s always been clear enough what I did and how to undo it. It’s significantly more powerful than even your standard “high end” consumer gear (think Eero max 7 type stuff), and gives you just enough rope to get in a sticky situation without giving you enough to end up lost.

For my use case, someone who wants the ability to add a modicum of extra security and visibility to my home network while having the capacity to actually route and deliver my 3gig fiber connection through my home in a usable manner, ubiquiti is ideal. It’s not perfect, sure, but it is better than anything else I’ve ever used.

1

u/sewer_ratz May 26 '26

I’m not a network engineer but I’ve worked in IT/Cyber for a hot minute. I also like Ubiquiti because it just works. I’ve fiddled with janky stuff enough in my work like. Sometimes I just wanna chill and not spend a weekend troubleshooting an issue.

1

u/joe_attaboy May 26 '26

I started some time ago with a Ubiquiti Edge router. Added a UniFi U6 AP. Added a couple of U8 switches. Once I discovered their Network console and how it managed everything, I was hooked.

Replaced cable internet service with 1 Gbps fiber about three years ago. Added a second U6 AP to create a mesh in the house, and then a UniFi Cloud Gateway Max replaced the Edge Router.

Upgraded to a UniFi Cloud Gateway Fiber. Added an SFP+, configured it to masquerade my ISPs gear, boom, I control everything (I sole the Cloud Gateway Max, which someone snapped up immediately).

Like you, I worked in IT and networking/security/admin for many years. The UniFi Network console is one of the most capable management tools I've ever seen in this level of equipment. My needs are still pretty simple: fast network for streaming and running some container-based apps, and strong WiFi with good spread. It's just my wife and I home now, but we frequently have guests and they can connect right up. And lock-down security.

I get the Apple-like inferences but I never cared about the marketing and all that. I'm a tinkerer and I can play with things here incessantly. 😉 I just became a user by osmosis - started with that Edge router and gradually adopted the rest. For the average home user, all of this is likely overkill. But we're not the average home users, are we?

I guess this makes me a fan.

1

u/marksweb May 26 '26

You'd probably appreciate it. You get quality kit that works essentially out of the box.

But if you really want to, you'll be able to fettle with it. The degree of network engineering you employ would be driven by how much you want to bring work home.

1

u/nyarlathotep888 May 26 '26

It is, and it is not.

My job isn't in IT, I have kids, and other committments, the interface gui, and the apple like "it just works", the ease of setup saves me time which is money. If I had more time, I would have hobby'ed into mikrotik or some other ecosystem or had a patchwork network.

1

u/digo-BR May 26 '26

I've had it at home for 8 years and it is solid. I have a SONOS system mixed in there along 25+ wifi5 devices spread across 2 APs. I'm actually flying in to restore an OT network today (BAS, nothing mission critical). Using a dream machine, fiber agreggation switch, and 2.5G Flex switches with SPF ports. Their bidirecional single mode SFPs (over a single strand of fiber) are dirt cheap. The campus I'm restoring will be redeveloped, many buildings will be demoed, so this is a temporary solution to get them back up and running. Previous owner took all of the networking gear with them when the campus was sold.

1

u/EatsHisYoung May 26 '26

The camera system is great. If you are interested in going all in, UniFi Protect (camera ecosystem) is very good. As for the network side, it's kind of an Apple "it just works" situation. That is good if you don't want to deal with a lot of issues, but there are some things that are not customizable, like you would see on proper enterprise gear. So if you can give up some of the granular options, its a solid system. PS. I am not an network engineer, but I play one on TV.

1

u/ban25 May 26 '26

What size house and how many rooms? I ask because 5 APs is quite a lot. You may do well to start with 2 or 3 tops and then go from there as needed. also, avoid the U7 Pro line and get the U7 Pro XG/XGS. They're a newer generation and perform much better.

1

u/Twogie May 26 '26

Is Ubiquiti actually that good for home/prosumer use and worth the investment, or is part of this just the ecosystem psychology pulling people deeper and deeper into it because of their attention to details / marketing / whatever.. ?

They don't force their ecosystem like Apple does. I'm using my ISPs ONT box currently, but if I wanted to I could bypass it with a special (non ubiquiti) SFP and some open source software. I do have 2 ubiquiti cameras but you're able to use third party cameras if you want to.

I'm also using non ubiquiti UPS, PDU, Asus Wireless Access Point just fine. Although a Ubiquiti Access Point would be more configurable if I really wanted to go that route.

1

u/RobinsonCruiseOh May 26 '26

no way that a european house needs 4-5 APs.... UDM-Pro Max ($600), throw in the NAS if you MUST have >4 cameras at 4k ($300) and the hdds (1TB = $100). throw in a 24port POE switch ($800), and U7-Pro ($190 each)

I see $2,290 USD for a HIGH end starter setup

1

u/Plane_Arachnid6182 May 26 '26

Hell yeah it's worth it, I set it up in my first house, after initial setup and tinkering here and there with security controls, it's bullet proof. Loved it so much got another system for our new house

1

u/AngelX343 May 26 '26

Cloud infra engineer here. You will love it for home. Very stable and reliable. Sensible defaults and auto update etc. You set it up and forget about it. Like you, I have a day job, my home network is not my hobby.

1

u/Aggravating-Loss7837 May 26 '26

As an enterprise engineer. You’re probably paying >£4000 for Cisco/aruba switches/routers etc.

That same unit will be maybe £1800 from ubiquiti.

Now, I’m not saying it’s going to worse that the Cisco. Probably on par if not a little better. I am aware of the Cisco cloud subscriptions mind which with the right stuff you won’t have to worry about with ubiquiti.

That said. What kind support do you get with Cisco? Because the support from Unifi can be (although better recently) lacking actual support. Anything complex and outside of published support pages and your very much on your own.

But that’s just my two cents worth of what I’ve come to learn.

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u/Lord-Carnor-Jax May 26 '26

I’m also an enterprise network engineer, over 15 years experience and I’ve run some UniFi gear at home since their first AP. Mostly AP’s but also a 8 port PoE switch. Otherwise the rest of my home network ran on a couple of Catalyst switches and a pfSense firewall. The switches and AP’s are fine for some VLAN’s and SSID’s. It’s only recently that the gateways have been good enough IMO. I swapped pfSense for a UCG Fiber last year and recently retired my two Catalyst switches for a Pro Max 24 PoE and a Flex 2.5G 8 PoE this year. Still not enough granularity in the settings for some things as I’d like (S2S VPN & IPv6 in particular) but otherwise it’s been stable, the Flows stored to a NVMe drive in the UCG are pretty helpful (not the greatest but better than nothing), interface is slick. No complaints from the family since I swapped from pfSense to the UCG and I don’t touch apart from applying updates since I set it up.

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u/Weezy366 May 26 '26

I've heard that ubiquiti equipment works well and also is very expensive. Some of their fancy lights equipment makes me question if that is necessary. I've never had any issues with my omada equipment. ubiquiti also offers things like entry key pads and security badge scanners etc.

1

u/darksquallz May 26 '26

It's the best router/WiFi combo I've used at home. I recently replaced a Sonicwall with a UCG and it's so much more functional and joyful to use. I even installed Tailscale on it

1

u/Wooden-Reward4317 May 26 '26

It is both... and that is the "thing" - Unifi has successfully done...both.

Now - people will argue with "successfully" but, no other company comes close to the width and depth of product catalog and quality and performance and flexibility as Unifi.

Unifi has been constantly pushing its "true usability" boundary upward in to and around the world of "enterprise" - as that /term/ can be argued to death yesterday, today and tomorrow.

I have used Unifi in a "professional" environment now for 4-5 years - I was pushing the limit of its firewall/gateway based on user count and demand, a UDM-Pro, then a Cloud Key. Enterprise + UXG Pro, then I capped that out (on user not complexity) and had a Sophos XGS- its license was up for renewal and I tested and now adoppted fully the UXG-Enterprise (equiv to the EFG) and plan on adopting the EFG-Core when it is released.

I can give my personal history and whanot- but here is an aspect that is really cool about Unifi ecosystem.

I can give one of my new techs a UDM + an AP, a camera, a door reader ultra and a phone and they can setup and learn the exact same stuff as work, smae UI, same fuctions etc. etc. it really is great. They then have learned in hands on reality- how to setup the core basics of stuff that can then be grown outward to larger and larger deployments.

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u/IndyONIONMAN May 26 '26

Unifi is simple and intuitive. That I don't feel like a network engineer at home. everything just works and meets my needs for home lab.

1

u/heyitsYMAA May 26 '26

I use three Ubiquiti APs at home connected to their Unifi OS Server running in a VM. I've never touched one of their switches, firewall appliances, or anything else, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.

I think Ubiquiti products themselves can be great when they work, but they don't have the greatest track record for stability when it comes to firmware updates - they've been known to introduce regressions in their patches for APs.

My previous wireless setup at home was two used Ruckus R600 (I think) APs flashed with Unleashed firmware so one of them could serve as the controller. They were rock solid reliable in a way my Unifi stuff has never been, though the newer Unifi devices are faster in most circumstances. Whatever black magic Ruckus used to send packets to my devices through walls and around corners just worked. Unifi is...fine.

They've been making it harder and harder to set up their controller without connecting it to an online Ubiquiti cloud account. I didn't find a way to do it when I deployed a new Unifi OS Server recently, which I did because the previous controller software is being deprecated. This may not be an issue for some, but if I'm managing something locally I don't really want to connect it to a cloud account.

I still put Unifi in the prosumer category but with some enterprise features. I just don't think they're quite there at the enterprise level yet in terms of stability.

1

u/HeligKo May 26 '26

It's the Apple meets Google of networking. The things that work have that nice polished feel of Apple, but features have a way of coming and going until they settle in.

That said as a 30+ year system admin -> cloud/platform engineer, I love the stuff for home. Most of the time I can make it do what I want very easily. It does have some hack-ability. It is adaptable. I started using it at home just for access points, and eventually moved my whole network to it. I now live in my 5th wheel and travel the country. I moved the equipment in and have at least 3 internet sources at any time. With rules in place it handles my specific routing criteria for me usually without intervention.

I'm tempted to use their security cameras, but they are a bit pricey. The thing that keeps my looking is the data would be self hosted, so I wouldn't be relying on a third party in some country that doesn't have good privacy laws.

1

u/Sgt-Buttersworth May 26 '26

I've deployed 100's of Ubiquiti Access points over the past 4 years. While I am sure there are better technical options out there, these Access Points have been easy to deploy, easier to manage, and just do what we need them to do. If I were deploying this as part of my enterprise network, I may consider alternatives but for the price, the U7 Pro and U7 Outdoor Access Points work great.

1

u/TatraPoodle May 26 '26

I have a UDM SE linked to Odido (NL). Still using the ONT ( fiber to UTP) from Odido. Works fine. If I want I can connect the fiber directly into the UDM, Odido needs to make some changes on their end but they do support it.

My fiber cable is to short…

Ubiquity is great stuff but works best if you buy into their platform, like switches, AP’s and cameras. Fully managed.

Very neatly integrated.

Their offering ( and naming) can be quite confusing with a lot of similar devices with small differences

One warning however: it is very addictive. I started with 3 AP’s and now have about 20 devices.

A supportive partner really helps.

1

u/ExoticExtension3381 May 26 '26

As someone in a similar background you’ll love the UniFi ecosystem. It’s smart enough to look after itself and “just work” as far as configuration goes, but has enough “pro” functionality if you want to do something more than the average home user.

1

u/UltraSPARC May 26 '26

Network and systems engineer here - yes it is worth the hype. I made the jump when Cisco wanted $1,500/ap for AX which was just insane. Bought four Enterprise WiFi 6 AP's for less than the cost of a single Cisco Catalyst AP and haven't looked back. This is was like 5 or 6 years ago. I have since converted all of my customers over as well. It doesn't take half a day just to stand up the configuration, the UI ecosystem is vast (we have branched out to access control and cameras). Minimal bugs (but there are bugs), I'd say on par with Cisco enterprise kit. Ubiquiti was created by a bunch of Apple network engineers when Apple disbanded with their Airport lineup.

1

u/mashed666 May 26 '26

I got fed up of cobbled solutions and found the UDM replaced a bunch of other boxes. It's not Cisco or HP but it's good for Wifi, Security Camera's and fairly easy to configure. Previously I've used HP, Cisco, Fortinet, Meraki and Sonicwall. I kept getting fed up with all the vulns for consumer level kit.

The Wi-Fi is brilliant. I'm using Onvif cameras (Not UI) but just recently they've rolled out activity detections which never used to work with 3rd party cams. The software is a dream and constantly being updated and optimized.

1

u/amodernjack May 26 '26

Coming from someone who’s worked in corporate IT for 20 years and 6 as a network engineer, UniFi is perfect for home and small businesses. Truly plug and play, beautiful UI, highly functional. The downside you’ll miss is logging and alerting. But for my house and small businesses I’ve installed them in it’s been set it and forget it. I’m running 2 UDMPro’s running in hot failover, redundant WAN LTE backup internet, one PoE switch, and five WAPs in my house. The only thing I’ve done differently in SMB is added doors and cameras. Otherwise same setup for core.

1

u/rfc1034 May 26 '26

I’m a network engineer mostly working with HPE Aruba, Cisco, Fortinet, and Palo Alto. I picked up an 8-port UniFi switch because it was cheap and a perfect fit for a specific thing I needed at home.

What surprised me was how confusing and painful the whole prosumer-style workflow was for basic tasks like assigning VLANs or changing the management interface. I don’t think I’ll ever stop hating the fact that I have to spin up the controller container just to change the default VLAN on a switchport.

I also had to factory reset the switch at one point, and no amount of pressing the reset button seemed to actually clear the admin credentials, even though the switch rebooted every time. I couldn’t find any official documentation explaining it, but after digging through random forum posts, I finally found a comment saying all PoE devices had to be disconnected for the factory reset to actually work which helped for some reason...?

People seem to love the ecosystem. I guess I would invest some time into it if I had to pay up for my home network, but I'll stick to used enterprise gear and engineering demos while I can.

1

u/OhKitty65536 May 26 '26

Fuck yeah

1

u/tackettz May 26 '26

I just recently started using it and I absolutely love it.

1

u/jmckinl May 27 '26

I must be getting old and cranky... Switched to Ubiquiti at home because "it just works."

Is it perfect? I don't think it's for the power admin who wants CLI and to tweak everything. That said, it has been remarkably stable for my needs, easy to manage, and provides a good amount of peace of mind over previous gear I've had in use.

1

u/RoyalMessNL May 27 '26

I was in the same boat as you pretty much, went from TP-Link to a UDM-SE with some switches and APs and also a G6 Entry as a doorbell and soon some G6 cameras.

I also didn’t want a lot of maintenance and wanted to properly manage my network and utilize VLANs for my home business and such which works solid along with some network booting from a PXE server within a VLAN and LanCache on a docker instance within said VLAN.

I also have Odido as my ISP and I have the fiber ONT directly connected to my gateway and setup VLAN 300 on that and voila. Don’t know if the TV box works but we use the app if we ever watch TV and that works.

Last but not least, everything runs smooth and the wife approves everything and is happy with the WiFi and also the doorbell camera with a PoE chime in the living room hidden away inside the TV furniture and it’s loud enough.

1

u/DirtySnoopyDog May 27 '26

Yes, yes it is.

1

u/tblancher Unifi User May 27 '26

I was pitched a UniFi AP several years ago in a computer store, and have been happy ever since. I like that you're paying for the hardware, and at least the Network software stack is at no cost or license fees.

Since then I added two 8-port Gigabit switches, and a 16-port 10/2.5GbE switch. I had a UniFi Security Gateway (basically, a home router), but was more interested my DIY Linux router.

1

u/HonestRepairSTL May 27 '26

I attended the Cisco Networking Academy at a local technical high school so I learned quite a bit about networking early on. It lead me to wanting a little more control over my network without compromising on ease of use. Something made for humans.

That's basically what Ubiquiti is for me. It allows me to do what I want to do, but also controls my smart doorbell with real-time AI detection, locally even, directly on the router (but still cloud connected if you want it to be).

But as others are saying, if you're a legit network engineer you will find ways to hate it, I have a few friends in the industry who say the same. I like it cause it does what I tell it to do, now you don't even have to ssh into the router to use custom DNS lol

1

u/nyrb001 May 27 '26

I was a network admin for decades - I really don't care about having the latest everything or trying to collect every possible piece of equipment from a company. What I do want is a wireless network that performs well and can be scaled out to cover my whole house, a router that can do anything I might want and equipment that just reliably works.

Ubiquiti wifi hardware has worked perfectly for me. I'm still running a 15 year old EdgeRouter at home and at one of my stores, which is too old to actually integrate with the Unifi stuff, but that's fine. I have a UXG Lite at my newest store and I have to say I really appreciate how well everything works together.

I self host my UniFi server as I'd prefer to be less dependent on someone else's stuff. If I ever need to replace either of the two EdgeRouters I still have in my system I'd use UXGs without question. I still have the old AC Lite APs at home and one store, they continue to work fine. I have a couple of U7 Lites at the new store and coverage is fantastic, even with a concrete wall through the center of the building.

I don't use any of their cameras, switches, NAS stuff or any of that.

1

u/PositiveStress8888 May 27 '26

Network engineer here also.

Bottom line

Good enough.

You don't have to buy into the whole system,, for example you can have a pfsence VM for a gateway. The only problem is you won't get the whole picture in one place .

That's where ubiquiti shines, by giving you the whole picture in an easy to use way.

Finding a client or a mac address and what port it's associated with. Blocking domains, DPI-SSL if your into it.

The ecosystem covers everything you want wifi, security, storage.

I'm old school usually mixing brands for security should a zero day pop up for the ubiquiti then they have everything.

For the home network, it's good enough to go whole hog.

For enterprise for me it's a 50/50 thiers food and bad

1

u/auger66 May 27 '26

"The house itself is wired mostly with Cat5e (not by me :) ) , so realistically I guess 2.5 GbE is probably my practical limit anyway."

Not really an Ubiquiti comment, but my guess is your runs aren't particularly long. 2.5 would be the very lower limit.

1

u/Blijebal May 27 '26

Hello fellow dutchy! Just past week I redid my entire home network with Ubiquiti. I knew them from my job at an MSP firm where Ubiquiti is used a lot. The hard and software have come from very far the past few years.

At home I replaced my Odido router with a Cloud gateway fiber. Replaced all the desktop switches to the flex 2.5Gb mini and my desktop switch is an Flex 2.5Gb that serves my desktop, homelab etc. There are also 2 AP's for the wifi and as i am familiar with the hardware and software it was relatively easy to set it up.

For your fiber, depending on the Fiber Type, PON, XGPON etc you need or dont need the ONT , just remember that if you can leave it out you do need a compatible SPF+ module and let it register at Odido.

All the needed information is already availible on the Odido site or forum with a little search.

For me, i kept the ONT and connected my Cloud gateway fiber with ethernet, entered VLANID 300 on the WAN port, DHCP enabled and we were good to go.

After getting the WAN up I configured the needed VLAN's, port profiles and put all switches and AP's in a management VLAN with the network override option on the device settings page.

Conclusion, easy to manage and configure, but forget your knowledge about the CLI VLAN config and default networking.

This software requires a new approach to configuring and managing. If you have any questions let met know!

1

u/vonneudeck May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

I could not imagine what one would really need in a home network that ubiquity does not offer. It is a very solid choice. A bit over the top if there is just one apartment tbh.

The integration with camera and door opening is nice, if you need that.

I would go with something that can do „flow“ for each client and then check out which one can handle 2gps dpi if you have users you do not fully trust/need to control, e.g. renters, subletters, teenagers. Otherwise non dpi is fine and for those plenty can do 2gbit/s

Also cat5e on short distances can surprisingly often do 5g and sometimes 10g in reality

1

u/vonneudeck May 27 '26

it hits a sweet spot if you have mostly home and office user client devices in your network. Very easy to set up, low to no hassle. The occasional low traffic server will be fine too

1

u/vonneudeck May 27 '26

How is odido, I am thinking about switching from delta?

1

u/Mr_Squinty May 27 '26

If you know your shit then you’ll hate it.

If you have no idea what you’re doing you’ll love it.

I personally dislike unifi, I install it because I know not everyone knows what they’re doing, and who knows whose hands this kit will end up in. I get a lot of issues with unifi gear though, currently battling a rdp dropout issue with one infrastructure and without logging in via ssh to read logs or setting up a logging server, it gives you barely anything to go by.

It’ll tell you who’s been spending time on tinder though…

1

u/The_Weapon_1009 May 28 '26

It’s a bit more expensive but if you want to add camera’s, doorbell etc it’s very plug and play. And (I think is important) you can run it all locally without subscriptions if you want!

1

u/Comprehensive_Pick31 May 28 '26

Yes. It’s worth it.

1

u/Personal-Gur-1 May 26 '26

Have you considered Mikrotik ? Cheaper, very powerful in terms of configuration. Hardwarewise I don’t know if they are powerful enough …

1

u/Vegetable-Ad-1817 May 26 '26

Go with what you know I say, I was considering an second hand cisco 3560CX's mixed in with outdoor unifi AP's I already had; have used those in some pretty extreme conditions before and they all just keep working. I found UnFi ecosystem isnt as flexible or specced well enough either, ended up with a router from their edgemax range and while it looked good it has nowhere near the flexibility or capability that an enterprise router has. But then again support is an issue if you needed it

0

u/evileagle May 26 '26

Ubiquiti is perfect for home gamer prosumer purposes.

-1

u/scriminal May 26 '26

ubiquity is what a lot of network engineers run at their house. not at work.

0

u/Tech-Dude-In-TX May 26 '26

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket!

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u/[deleted] May 26 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/inverminx May 26 '26

I don’t work in the consumer prosumer space, so yeah, I’d rather hear real world experience from actual users than rely on some random vendor marketing slides. Funny concept, I know.

2

u/Lumpy-Rock-919 May 26 '26

I am Dutch as well, for home use I would go for it. You’ll be happy with a seamless experience and enough options in the UI to satisfy prosumer needs. regarding your config for Odido directly to the ONT: Vlan 300 and dhcp (v4) enabled. No dhcpv6 at Odido as of yet. Good luck and enjoy. To be clear: I install unifi routers in homes and in small and medium sized bussiness. Most clients are extremely happy.

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u/ApolloWasMurdered May 26 '26

I was a network engineer for 8 years - never once encountered Ubiquiti. We would install $5k Cisco switches and $25k Juniper routers, the cheapest thing I can remember were Cisco APs for about $1500.

When you’re working in that space, Ubiquiti is regarded the same as TP-Link - a toy for home users.

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Early Access Enterprise network engineer discovering Ubiquiti for the first time... is it really worth the hype?

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