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Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

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Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#111

Post by growse »

zackelan wrote: post #68
Godel_unicode wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Icymi, there are several dockerfiles you can use to install unifi on a Linux box. From earlier today: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13158468

Yes, but the problem with Dockerizing the Ubiquiti controllers (or at least the Unifi one - I haven't attempted with the others) is that the Java app requires MongoDB, and chooses to spin it up as a child process and treat it as an embedded database. Unless you're careful with volume mounting, restarting the Docker container will lose all your wireless connection info, forcing you to reset the AP to defaults or resto…

This is generically true of all docker containers that need to persist storage. The docker hub page is pretty explicit about which volumes are exposed and therefore probably contain persistent data.

Not quite sure what's special about unifi here.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#112

Post by realityking »

uean wrote: post #87
mrb wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you have been dealing with older gear. Zero handoff is a deprecated feature which is no longer supported in current products. Nowadays Ubiquiti simply recommends roaming: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-What...

Yes - probably, though our most recent takeover was in August and I didn't see that link. Just knew it was broken and sounds like they're admitting their implementation of an 802.11 standard is broken to me :) The particular link is another gripe I have with Ubiquiti - most of their articles are left up with referral links to new documentation. Here's an example - up until Dec 3rd (from at least October) Ubiquiti mar…

Just to be clear, Ubiquiti's implementation of Zero Handoff (and all similar solutions) are not 802.11 standard. They are creative hacks that create one big virtual APs out of many APs.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#113

Post by alkonaut »

colanderman wrote: post #54

For the rest of us with budgets of less than a month's rent, I'd recommend Mikrotik. Just as reliable as an Ubiquiti (as in, never needs a reboot), yet is still a single box you can set in the corner and forget about if you wish. Or set up a mesh of their $20 units to blanket your three-story house if you're so lucky. (Nothing against Ubiquiti which I'm sure is great, but I've been a very happy Mikrotik user for year…

Have I just been lucky that never need to reboot my consumer gear? I run a normal N600 (Wndr3400) netgear thing that has quite heavy load, and it basically only stops during the annual blackout...

I wish I had sketchy consumer gear so I could feel good about upgrading to this prosumer stuff, but that N600 just blankets my 2 storey house with wireless with ease, and never fails it seems :/ First world problems.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#114

Post by csmajorfive »

Johnny555 wrote: post #106
csmajorfive wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I need as much bandwidth as I can get over a pretty short distance -- let's say 30 feet. I'm bridging two closets at opposite ends of a hallway. One closet has the WAN connection. The other closet has a bunch of hard wire gear (NAS, home theater, etc).

You could use a pair of airfiber stations to get over 1 Gbit/sec. But they are not cheap. You'd probably be better off finding a way to run fiber (or even cat5) to get 10 gigabit.

Well my current solution works fine. I have an AC87 in each closet. The one with the gear runs in "wireless bridge" mode. I'm attracted to the prosumer Unifi stuff but there doesn't seem to be a simple solution to bridging. The airFiber units in our hallway is a little too much. And there's no easy way to run cat5.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#117

Post by rhizome »

noja wrote: post #86
duopixel wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP made no moral claim, just stated unreferenced facts.

Nothing is so black and white. If you point out that others are engaging in bad behaviour, then it makes that bad behaviour look less bad.

That depends entirely on the ethics of the looker, but are you really saying that people would engage in fewer acts of bad behavior if other people didn't point them out when they did?

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#118

Post by alkonaut »

baobrien wrote: post #67
Cieplak wrote: post #22

Does anyone know how to tell if a wifi device uses beam-forming versus omnidirectional microwave emissions? I imagine that beam-forming devices expose people to less microwave radiation (2.4 and 5 GHz). Somewhat alarmist but an interesting perspective: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F0NEaPTu9oI

That talk is entirely baseless fear mongering. Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity is entirely unsupported by the science.

Well, to be fair it IS a proper diagnosis and an active area of research even at "good" universities. Of course this research takes place in the department of psychology, not the department of antennas...

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#119

Post by b3lvedere »

Great story. Unfortunately i do not have the luxury to spend $2200 on the network infrastructure in my humble home.

I do however have a lot of 2nd hand hardware and am able to invest some time into optimizing them for my family's internet needs. It may not be perfect, but it works 90% of the time and i learn a lot about connecting lots of different devices and (virtual) machines.

Re: Ubiquiti all the things: How I fixed my dodgy Wi-Fi

#120

Post by trymas »

finnn wrote: post #7

Since we're all saying nice things about Ubiquiti, I feel obliged to point out that they are actively violating the GPL: http://libertybsd.net/ubiquiti/

> And ultimately, the relevant team never responded, hoping that I would simply forget about it or give up.

> However, if we want the GPL to retain its power, this is precisely what we cannot do.

One of the most important things.

IANAL and not an expert on licenses, but what's the point of GPL if it does not protect itself and the code it's applied to?

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