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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

#231

Post by sargun »

madeofpalk wrote: post #141
samcrawford wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you provide a reference to how eero is violating the GPL? A quick search did not reveal anything, and they have a page on their website that suggests they meet their obligations under it.

Just for reference's sake, here's their page https://eero.com/legal/open with the money quote You may also request a copy of the source by e-mailing legal@eero.com with "Source for eero device" in the subject line. Note, GPL doesn't mandate code be put up on GitHub. It only requires that its reasonably available.

I contacted them, and they failed to provide source code in a timely manner -- or you know, respond.

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

#232

Post by legulere »

sheraz wrote: post #221
legulere wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's certainly also a moral argument to be made (as you say that I'm moralizing), but I was more alluding to the introductory sentence: "I'm increasingly of the view that both my time and my sanity are worth more and more as the years progress". For me reducing the house size seems like a more effective way of restoring sanity and reducing time needed than installing professional grade equipment, which is kind of…

I'm not sure how a big house makes anything a matter of morals.

A big house is more than what is sufficient and thus a waste of resources (space, heating/cooling, building materials, wifi routers, ...). Using up resources has negative outcomes (environmental impact, scarcity, bad work conditions like child work, ...) which are to be avoided.

I guess that it's not that questionable that waste is bad, so the real question is what is sufficient or still allowable. For that I used European norms of house sizes, where 500 square meters is considered ridiculous.

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

#233

Post by colanderman »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #99
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…

I have a Mikrotik HAP AClite. It's a great OS, I love the techy admin and shell access; it's great as a router, and rock solid (haven't needed to reboot it since I bought it last year). But as much as I admire it, I can't recommend it as a wifi access point. It doesn't have an external antenna, and its performance compared to consumer routers is pretty mediocre. I have it running in my office, and in my living room (…

I agree the consumer models tend to be underpowered. My first Mikrotik was the RB951-2n, which maxed out at 15 dBm (32 mW) and dropped to 9 dBm (8 mW) at max speed (150 Mbps). The hAP ac lite you own is thankfully around ~6 dBm more powerful, but that's still a little weak for thick walls.

I've since upgraded to the hAP ac, which ranges from 29 dBm (800 mW) down to 25 dBm (320 mW). That extra ~15 dBm does make a huge difference penetrating walls. (The RB951*-2HnD models are similarly high-powered if you only care about 2.4 GHz.)

A couple tricks I've used to increase link reliability through walls are to disable short guard interval (to protect better against reflections), and to disable higher bitrates (to avoid excessive failed retries). Those have made my WDS link through 4 walls pretty stable.

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

#234

Post by pythonaut_16 »

mahyarm wrote: post #98

I don't understand why he needed the expensive PoE switches although. He could of used cat 6, consumer non-PoE switches & standard $15 PoE injectors close to the switches themselves. He wouldn't get the fancy interface for the switches, but he would of had similar wireless and wifi performance. Or does Ubiquity require you to use their switches for anything to work properly?

I have a Unifi AC Lite and I just use the power injector that came with it. I think for the non-pros they use a non-standard POE, but I'm pretty sure the Pro's can use either Ubiquiti or standard PoE equipment

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

#235

Post by ubercore »

crest wrote: post #167
cdsx wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know a good way to implement wireless roaming around a large home? I had Ubiquity's Zero-Handoff on my list of things to check out, but seems they don't use it anymore, and as above it was a hack anyway. I have been for years using (and recommending to others) multiple access points (of any brand) wired together and just set them up with the same SSID and passwords. Usually works mostly OK, although VoIP…

Have the APs limit the RSSI and let the client roam.

Can you expand on what you mean by having the AP limit RSSI? I thought that would be a client-side thing?

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

#236

Post by Icedcool »

> I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware... No, no, a hundred times no...

Author didn't want to try a new OS on his device, and instead opted to spend an additional 2.1k on enterprise level devices.

While this did 'fix' it, he wasn't really innovative or creative. Just was willing to spend more money.

A similar example might be, "How I fixed my car" - Bought a new one.

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

#237

Post by sheraz »

legulere wrote: post #232
sheraz wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how a big house makes anything a matter of morals.

A big house is more than what is sufficient and thus a waste of resources (space, heating/cooling, building materials, wifi routers, ...). Using up resources has negative outcomes (environmental impact, scarcity, bad work conditions like child work, ...) which are to be avoided. I guess that it's not that questionable that waste is bad, so the real question is what is sufficient or still allowable. For that I used Eu…

...and here comes the environment argument. This is a very, very, slippery slope.

By this rationale we should just shut down all datacenters, stop driving, stop eating meat, tell gamers to power off, and go back to hang-drying our hand-washed laundry (even in cold wet places like Sweden). At what point does it stop?

It seems that you believe that you are different from this guy -- having achieved some moral superiority by virtue of "European-ness." But you are not. You are here on HN. You go to work. You take hot showers. You might even eat meat. You take holidays to Thailand or Dominican Republic or other poor countries as many "Europeans" are apt to do. Tell me, what is the social, environmental, political, and blah blah blah cost of that?

Who cares? Enjoy yourself, and try not to kill anyone on your way into the grocery store.

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

#238

Post by casey_lang »

windexh8er wrote: post #194
crest wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have the APs limit the RSSI and let the client roam.

This. If the OP of this thread would take a few minutes and read through Ubiquiti forums they'd know that there have been 10's of conversations wherein someone from Ubiquiti or a power use has explained why you shouldn't be using the old ZHO hacks. I said this yesterday in another Ubiquiti focused comment, but 1) ZHO forces all AP into the same L2 network and 2) ZHO puts all AP on the same channel and SSID. The last…

> ... and plan and deploy it correctly.

This will likely be one of those things requiring experience but as I'm hoping to install a Ubiquiti focused system in my house over the next few weeks, do you have any suggested resources? Particularly on the subjects of spectrum usage, DFS, and channel selection? I'm not in an apartment but still of the opinion that neighboring network boxes are causing congestion on my local system. We're all on Google Fiber with the provided network boxes, which seem to automatically select the same channel. Simply selecting a different channel hasn't seem to improve the situation (and has potentially made things worse).

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

#239

Post by wcfields »

PaulHoule wrote: post #218
r1ch wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to agree. Ubiquiti have some great marketing and slick looking UIs on their gear, but the hardware is not enterprise grade. They use standard Qualcomm/Atheros chips that almost every wireless router uses (Source: https://nl.hardware.info/reviews/5592/4/ubiquiti-unifi-acces... ) so you are basically paying for software with a flashy UI and proprietary cloud configuration.

Ruckus hardware is better but 10x as expensive.

The Ruckus R600's are my go-to. I've done several offices and retail installations with those.

A close second is Xirrus, their APs are a bit bigger is size and look like oversized smoke detectors though. Though, if you work in events they are perfect: Controller built into the unit, and they have weird configurations of radios so you can deploy 16 directional radios on one device. Great for conferences where you can setup 2 of those in the corners, turn off the radios not pointing at the guests and have total airspace supremacy.

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

#240

Post by vels »

Just a note for anyone who wants to try this, without spending $2k, you can just purchase the UAP AC PRO access points c. $100-150 each and connect them to your existing switch / router (dosnt have to be Ubiquity kit, have even done basic installs using an ISP provided router.
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