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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

#261

Post by mrbill »

esaym wrote: post #62
baobrien wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UniFi stuff isn't stand alone, but it doesn't need to 'phone home' to Ubiquiti. There's a little management server with a web config interface you need to set up to run everything. It runs on your local network and doesn't call Ubiquiti or open up anything without you setting that up. They do have what they call the 'cloud key' that runs an instance of the Unifi management server. That thing does phone home, IIRC…

I see. And is this "management server" the "java" thing everyone keeps referring to? (and complaining about)

If you've only got one AP, or a small number of them, you don't even need the Java-based management controller.

Ubiquiti now has an iOS/Android app that can be used to do basic setup of the APs, and once they're configured, they "just work".

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

#262

Post by trome »

danudey wrote: post #254
trome wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the yearly licensing is brutal, but it does encourage you to forklift it after a few years & upgrade.

I'm not sure how artificial barriers to keeping the same hardware makes sense, and selling hardware that also requires licensing is a lot harder than selling e.g. Ubiquiti stuff.

It only makes sense for Cisco, ultimately it is just a moneygrab.

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

#263

Post by uean »

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…

Appreciate this comment and did want to follow up that we are not a Ubiquiti shop but instead have taken over other deployments of it. My deployment experience with Ubiquiti is none, so it's great to hear the actual implementation of Zero Handoff is a hack... nasty, and that should explain the problems we've seen for sure.

We're still in the process of tuning one client with a significant investment in UniFi. ZHO is not enabled in that case and am going down the routes you've described re RSSI tuning and RF mapping, but still see blatant performance issues, and will readily admit that being forced to resort to forums for support and outdated setup articles isn't exactly confidence inspiring and helps fuel my distaste for the product. We're stuck with it though.

Anyway, just wanted to post back to say thanks.

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

#264

Post by windexh8er »

ubercore wrote: post #235
crest wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Today most, if not all, enterprise grade AP have settings for minimum RSSI values. Think of it this way - having one client on your WLAN that has a weak connection will introduce errors and retransmission impacting every client to a certain extent (it's a shared medium). In a deployment wherin you have multiple AP working together (on different channels) there's going to be overlap so you have a continuation of service. You may move around and be connected to WAP-B with an RSSI of -70 but be closer to WAP-A with an RSSI of -50. Your OS will try to hang on to that connection as long as it can by default since it's not scanning in the background for something better on a differing BSSID (the BSSID is the MAC, generally in a multi-AP environment you'll have a singular SSID and each AP has a unique BSSID).

With minimum RSSI implementations the AP will kick (deauth) clients that no longer meet the minimum RSSI level. This will force them to reconnect to and will go with the stronger BSSID being advertised with the same SSID. Still rudimentary but works rather well. I don't even notice roaming in my home anymore after tuning. It's very evident when you're on a network that has defaulted to auto and all of the channel selection and power output is up for grabs.

If you're looking at doing this with Ubiquiti they have docu and even point out the warts with simple RSSI tuning. Trolling the forums before doing a deployment is something you should do as this equipment isn't really something that will autoconfigure itself very well. I mean, it works - but clearly you can see in this thread that people who just expect it to work have bad things to say about it's effectiveness. What they don't understand is that a lot of those problems are self-inflicted.

Here's a link to the Ubiquiti RSSI guide: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/221321728-UniFi-Unde...

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

#265

Post by rb2k_ »

feistypharit wrote: post #179
rb2k_ wrote: post #17

The only thing I'm slightly sad about with my ubiquiti setup is that the Edge Router PoE doesn't integrate with the controller. It's basically the same hardware as the security gateway, but no way to manage it :(

Truth is once you set it up, I stopped running the Java controller. I got the edge router because it's half the price. One thing I really dislike is it doesn't do DNS name injection for statically configured hosts. You can use Dnsmasq instead and make it work, but then you can't see the leases! I ended up using a raspberry pi to run pihole and do DNS. This video had a good overview: https://youtu.be/XvWOx3PvYFM The e…

> One annoying thing is there's no idiot protection... You can lock yourself out of the admin interface and only way to recover is restore factory defaults.

Been there, done that :)

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

#266

Post by ichilton »

I really like the Unifi - i've run it for a while and not had a single problem.

I do have a big gripe though - it has a hard wired limit of 4x SSIDs for each access point.

I run a number of VLANs, each with their own SSID - and it means I can only have the Unifi provide my main ones and have to run an old Netgear router on different wifi channels to provide the rest :(

I've never quite understood why my cheap routers running OpenWRT can seemingly have unlimited (or at least a lot of) SSIDs, where an expensive Unifi will only provide 4.

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

#267

Post by noja »

mitchty wrote: post #252
noja wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you try enabling band steering?

I tried logging in but the java app is giving me the middle finger. I seem to recall turning it on, but will have to set that all back up again tonight. I couldn't logon to the AP via their web app but ssh worked. So I just reset it to factory defaults and I'll try again tonight after setting it back up.

I've never had problems with the java app, so that surprises me.

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

#268

Post by no_wizard »

I know I'm a little late to the party, but the Linksys routers he did buy originally are completely openWRT compatible (and here i'm gonna plug it, www.openwrt.org), so i have to ask, why not put openwrt on these guys? I have the exact same routers, and they were terrible with the linksys stock firmware, but once I install openwrt it was actually quite nice. Had to upgrade the antennas on one though, beyond that, it was pretty good. Not that I'm knocking ubiquiti, cause they're amazing, btw.

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

#269

Post by soylentcola »

no_wizard wrote: post #268

I know I'm a little late to the party, but the Linksys routers he did buy originally are completely openWRT compatible (and here i'm gonna plug it, www.openwrt.org), so i have to ask, why not put openwrt on these guys? I have the exact same routers, and they were terrible with the linksys stock firmware, but once I install openwrt it was actually quite nice. Had to upgrade the antennas on one though, beyond that, it…

At least according to the article, he didn't like the option.

> After venting on Twitter, I got a variety of responses including that I should install the open source dd-wrt firmware or that I should buy a power adaptor that can automatically cycle the power every night. No, no, a hundred times no to both - if I buy a product then I expect it to work as advertised and not need to implement hacks to keep it alive.

It's his prerogative of course but I'd definitely have tried a quick software fix like this before going out and buying $2k worth of all new gear. Maybe it would've solved the issues and maybe it wouldn't but in terms of time and money sunk into it, I think trying out the improved firmware would've been the logical step before moving on to new hardware.

But then again everyone has a different level of aversion to different things so maybe his aversion to messing with open firmware was as strong as my aversion to buying more stuff. In the end, the blog post was about his solution and it's still good info to have.

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

#270

Post by kwindla »

sargun wrote: post #29
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/

So are the following: -Tesla -Eero -Pluot

Do you have Pluot? Happy to send you firmware source.
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