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Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

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Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#171

Post by simoncion »

protocolture wrote: post #166
mongol wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related: is Mikrotik as bad for wireless as some say? I want to like them, even though their equipment seems complex, I root for a company from the Baltics that have carved out a respectable niche. But they appear to struggle with wireless?

My biggest issue is threat surface. You can design around it, but Mikrotik WAP's do everything a Mikrotik router can do. If they get compromised they can run scripts, create blind proxies etc, and mikrotik has a habit of resurfacing CVEs from memory. My experience is very binary. I had some Mikrotik RF installs that Just Worked, and never needed attention. And some that were just problem children constantly demanding…

> If they get compromised they can run scripts, create blind proxies etc...

How's that different from a Unifi AP? Unless they changed something in the past five, eight years, the software running on the AP is pretty much OpenWRT with the serial numbers hastily filed off. [0] Get a shell, and you get to download whatever to do whatever you need.

[0] Me coming to this realization is what lead me to switch over to OpenWRT. I didn't need any of the fleet management stuff provided by UniFi, and was constantly frustrated that the APs had to totally reboot whenever you changed nearly any setting on them. (I heard that they eventually fixed that particular shortcoming. Good for them, I guess.)

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#172

Post by simoncion »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #42
beala wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the complaints about Ubiquiti in this thread from a few months ago dissuaded me from investing in their gear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44746603 I ended up going with TP-Link Omada and have been happy so far (a managed switch and wifi 6 WAPs). I am a bit concerned about their security track record given how bad their soho products are, so I ended up sticking with my opnsense router at the perimeter as…

The two biggest complaints in that thread (Edgerouter support abandoned, and VLAN issue unacknowledged and unfixed) were both wrong. Overall, it is a great, easy, inexpensive set of products.

> Edgerouter support abandoned...

Well, [0] mentions that they left the ER firmware alone for two years. They also don't sell the ER hardware anymore.

Looking at the changelog in combination with the comments on the news item about the new release, it looks like there are many bugs left unfixed. If this analysis is correct [2], nearly nothing was changed.

That smells an awful lot like abandonment.

> ...VLAN issue unacknowledged and unfixed... were both wrong.

This subthread [3] disagrees with you. As someone who has suffered through multi-quarter "struggle sessions" [4] with UBNT engineering staff about broken basic functionality, I can totally believe a report that UBNT claims something has been fixed when it's very much not fixed.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794857>

[1] https://community.ui.com/releases/EdgeRouter-3-0-0/33ee3852-...>

[2] https://community.ui.com/releases/EdgeRouter-3-0-0/33ee3852-...>

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44756915>

[4] Complete with round after round of them saying "Hey, we fixed it! Try the latest beta!", and me replying "No, you didn't. Did you run my 100% reliable reproducer that I've given you? It sure looks like you haven't because that reproducer still reproduces the problem.".

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#173

Post by weinzierl »

Maxious wrote: post #135
weinzierl wrote: post #130

"The SFP Wizard is a pocket-sized powerhouse that checks the health of any SFP or QSFP module and programs them in just seconds." I never knew you could program them. How smart are they? Are there ones capable of running Linux?

Yes, eg. This one runs a ssh server https://www.glbb.jp/en/hardware/gs3/

Thanks a lot, this is exactly what I have been looking for and it seems not even excessively priced. Only issue is that I did not find a distributor that ships it to Europe yet.

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#174

Post by simoncion »

xyst wrote: post #17
carlgreene wrote: post #3

This is not for me as I'm not a professional network engineer, but I do want to say that Ubiquiti has made home networking SO fun for me. Everything truly "Just Works." My setup is definitely more on the prosumer side, but it's been so build out and inspect my network with their tools.

I don’t know about it "just works." Still have to perform a monthly reboot of equipment otherwise performance kind of drops off. Still 100X better than the competition though. My UDM has worked wonderfully with support for dual IPs and seamless failover

Yeah, my experience with the UAP-AC-LITE and -LR was that it would get wonky if not rebooted every month or so. That (combined with the realization that its software load is pretty much just OpenWRT with the serial numbers filed off) caused me to dump the official firmware and switch to OpenWRT.

I was quite a lot happier after the switch, as I didn't have to hassle with UniFi and my APs stopped needing roughly-monthly reboots.

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#175

Post by simoncion »

xyst wrote: post #18
efitz wrote: post #10

Ubiquiti is awesome, but their IPv6 support leaves something to be desired. I have two ISPs, one with IPv6 (Starlink) and one without (Frontier). I want to use Frontier for all IPv4, with IPv4 failover to Starlink, and I want to use Starlink only for IPv6. UniFi networking won’t let you configure this, and I’m not going to SSH in to my UDM to manually set routes, that will be lost at next boot.

Should put in feature request, I would happily upvote/support something like this on their community forum.

I'd expect it to go nowhere fast. UBNT being weird and inconsistent about IPv6 has been a thing since before I was using their official software... which was from like 2015 through 2018 or so.

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#176

Post by misnome »

cturner wrote: post #39
runjake wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TAC would more or less laugh at you and hang up if you sought support. This is common belief and even a dire warning when filing TAC tickets. However, unless the third-party SFP is the prime suspect, I have never experienced a TAC from any major networking vendor[1] refuse support, let alone "laugh and hang up," even metaphorically. It's good SOP to keep at least a couple SFPs for each networking manufacturer on th…

Before I comment, a disclaimer about my small scale. I am running probably three hundred SFP+s running and less than five years of experience with optics. I don't have stock tracking for the individual manufacturers, and the failure rate comments here are based on gut-feel only. (there will be other people here used to far larger scales) I bucket it into there being three options: genuine, clone, and good-clone. We h…

We accidentally ordered a load of “Generic brand” 100G QSFP from FS. Everything worked and appeared fine from the perspective of the switch and cards, reported OK status for everything, _except_ the lasers never turned on. Switching to an Extreme switch made the switch end work fine, but not the server.

Turns out Mellanox/NVIDIA hardware are _really_ picky about their cards. We bought a box from FS that reprogrammed the compatibility firmware and they worked instantly (FS also offered to return and reprogram but we needed it fast).

This was a big shock after dealing with nothing but CAT5/6/RJ45 that has been stable and common for decades (?).

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#177

Post by jammo »

mongol wrote: post #50
carlgreene wrote: post #3

This is not for me as I'm not a professional network engineer, but I do want to say that Ubiquiti has made home networking SO fun for me. Everything truly "Just Works." My setup is definitely more on the prosumer side, but it's been so build out and inspect my network with their tools.

Tangentially related: is Mikrotik as bad for wireless as some say? I want to like them, even though their equipment seems complex, I root for a company from the Baltics that have carved out a respectable niche. But they appear to struggle with wireless?

It's particularly a problem with multiple access points, if it's just one and you need 'ok' coverage you're good.

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#178

Post by [deleted] »

misnome wrote: post #176
cturner wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before I comment, a disclaimer about my small scale. I am running probably three hundred SFP+s running and less than five years of experience with optics. I don't have stock tracking for the individual manufacturers, and the failure rate comments here are based on gut-feel only. (there will be other people here used to far larger scales) I bucket it into there being three options: genuine, clone, and good-clone. We h…

We accidentally ordered a load of “Generic brand” 100G QSFP from FS. Everything worked and appeared fine from the perspective of the switch and cards, reported OK status for everything, _except_ the lasers never turned on. Switching to an Extreme switch made the switch end work fine, but not the server. Turns out Mellanox/NVIDIA hardware are _really_ picky about their cards. We bought a box from FS that reprogrammed…

[deleted]

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#179

Post by dfex »

simoncion wrote: post #136
bongodongobob wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have installed 100s of SFP connections and I've never had an issue with compatibility. I've never even heard of this. Is it just for some ultra high end products or something?

Have you never worked with Intel NICs? The two X520s that I have will refuse to work with non-Intel transceivers unless either you're running Linux and have set the 'allow_unsupported_sfp' option, or have edited the card's EEPROM to unset the "shut down unless the transceiver is a Genuine Intel part" bit. It's my understanding that very many Intel NICs are like this. I remember [0] the Juniper switches that I used to…

That might be a misremember - I've been using Juniper for nearly 20 years now and only ever saw a "software bug" in 18.x that broke OEM optics, but that was quickly addressed with a patch shortly after release.

Re: Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

#180

Post by pshirshov »

carlgreene wrote: post #3

This is not for me as I'm not a professional network engineer, but I do want to say that Ubiquiti has made home networking SO fun for me. Everything truly "Just Works." My setup is definitely more on the prosumer side, but it's been so build out and inspect my network with their tools.

> Everything truly "Just Works."

Right. Just like 5Gbit PPPoE uplinks over VLAN. In fact there is no Ubiquiti router which can handle 1.5Gbit+ PPPoE for some reason. So, I have a mikrotik in front of UDMPM just to termiate PPPoE and I had to buy a IPv4 /29 subnet to avoid double not.

Everything just works, sure.

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