Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UniFi 5G

blog.ui.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 316 posts

Re: UniFi 5G

#261

Post by thesuitonym »

hylaride wrote: post #145
hedora wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around here, it’s Starlink >> Fiber >> Cable because our lines are above ground and outages are frequent. Fiber is less expensive than and more than 10x faster than starlink, in fairness. Our 5g towers seem to run off the fiber lines, so it’s not really a backup (and gets overwhelmed anyway). I’m considering getting fiber in addition to starlink, but I wish they’d just buried the lines. I see telephone trucks repairi…

> Digging a trench would probably pay for itself in a year or two. I know some people running independent community fiber ISPs. Digging trenches can be a nightmare depending on the neighbourhood. You can have property ownership issues, other utilities being present, permit nightmares, different ground/soil types, etc. That ignores the fact that when somebody else digs they can hit your lines and repairing that is a p…

My community did the big dig around 2001. They finished around 2010. It was a huge project that took hundreds if not thousands of man-hours. I'm not sure if anyone ever actually calculated the total cost. And this is for a pretty small town. Now the day-to-day connectivity is much better, and weather almost never knocks us out, but when something does get knocked out, it takes longer to fix.

Overall, it's much nicer. No ugly telephone poles, don't have to worry about weather, just reliable, strong service. But to think it pays for itself in 2 years is laughable.

Re: UniFi 5G

#262

Post by idatum »

wrobelda wrote: post #92
amelius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple of networking? I suppose no OpenWrt then.

You actually can install Openwrt on bunch of their hardware

Or OpenBSD, in my case a USG-3P. I would have otherwise tossed it but now it's a nice OpenBSD switch.

    OpenBSD 7.7 (GENERIC) #339: Sun Apr 13 17:52:27 MDT 2025
        deraadt@octeon.openbsd.org:/usr/src/sys/arch/octeon/compile/GENERIC
    real mem = 536870912 (512MB)
    avail mem = 521142272 (497MB)
Only complaint I have with Unifi is so-so IPv6 support. I'd love to see a NAT64/DNS64 option configurable in their UI.

Re: UniFi 5G

#263

Post by josephh »

harrall wrote: post #180
marcosscriven wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Starlink have a temporary or “pay as you go” option?

Not anymore. You need a $5/mo charge to keep your account hot.

They still give you 500kbps of speed, which is enough for checking emails, voice calls, navigation, music streaming, etc.

Re: UniFi 5G

#264

Post by aynyc »

ugh123 wrote: post #234
aynyc wrote: post #201

My good friend is a network engineer and provider in NYC for decades now, pretty good one at that. Has anyone deployed UniFi in a computer centric professional environment? Just to be more specific a bit, computer centric professional environment means networks and computers are the primary way of getting job done. He hasn't seen any UniFi but his home is all UniFi.

I've seen Cisco meraki AP's on the ceilings at more than a handful of tech companies, if that helps.

Thanks!

Re: UniFi 5G

#265

Post by QuiEgo »

giobox wrote: post #260
QuiEgo wrote: post #215

I really want to want Unifi, but my experience with one of their products (UDM + mesh) was that it was a ton of effort to get something working that ended up being slower and more fiddly than a consumer focused router. When I get home, I don’t want to be an unpaid sysadmin

While Unifi supports wireless backhaul/mesh, the entire system is heavily designed to encourage wired backhaul - all their wireless APs are PoE for a reason. If you are going to invest in the Unifi ecosystem, it makes sense to invest in decent networking - wireless "mesh" is always a compromise for running multiple wireless APs. If you are in a situation you need multiple wireless APs but can't run ethernet to them (…

Yeah this lines up with my experience. Had issues with mesh (I bought an AP with mesh in the product name that covered a wall outlet, no Ethernet in)(edit: it was the “beacon”), essentially was told “you’re holding it wrong.”, and moved on. They seem like lovely products for their intended use case, but my personal experience was not great.

Edit 2: I have eero now. The nodes seem to have some proprietary protocol that sends clients to the best node as you walk around the house. I can’t setup Vlans or do power user stuff, but my WiFi actually “just works” now. I don’t think I’ve touched it once after initial setup.

Re: UniFi 5G

#266

Post by ssl-3 »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #214
SkyPuncher wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unifi is a bit different than Apple to me. Ubiquiti is one of the few companies doing prosumer hardware - and doing it extremely well. They give you access to advanced, raw configurations without necessarily having to go "full enterprise" deployment. They also have solutions for just about everything. That being said, I generally have moved towards other Wifi solutions as I've grown weary of tweaking Ubiquiti all of…

I've moved to buying last gen used Ruckus Unleashed APs (usually R720 as they are cheap and very reliable). Way higher quality but steep learning curve for many functions, although if someone is willing to put in some effort it's not that bad.

Usually, I use Mikrotik wAP ACs for this kind of thing. They're cheap-enough to buy brand new, and they're designed to be able to work outdoors in the weather.

But I might pick up an R720 just to play with -- that's a different echelon of gear.

Thanks for the tip.

Re: UniFi 5G

#267

Post by j45 »

kkapelon wrote: post #61
sschueller wrote: post #31

I am confused, this is just a 5G router right? Like the 5 year old Huawei CPE Pro 2 but with wifi7, poe and eSim? [1] https://consumer.huawei.com/en/routers/5g-cpe-pro-2/

Unifi is the Apple of networking gear. When something new is released the HN crowd is excited even when the same functionality existed already with another company.

Not quite, DIY vs technologies like Unifi make it accessible to the masses where the former is for the few to feel good about themselves, and the latter makes a difference in moving things forward for the many without as much investment in time, because people shouldn't have to be free employees of technology to derive a benefit..

"Just works" means you can enjoy other parts of technology, like what you do with it, instead of just getting and keeping it working.

Re: UniFi 5G

#268

Post by ttul »

matthewfcarlson wrote: post #158
dismalpedigree wrote: post #102

The problem I have seen is when I need it most, due to a rare fiber internet outage, so does everyone else nearby and cellular data becomes saturated and unusable.

I keep an old Starlink in a closet for this exact reason

So I'm not the only guy doing this...

Re: UniFi 5G

#269

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

ssl-3 wrote: post #266
FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've moved to buying last gen used Ruckus Unleashed APs (usually R720 as they are cheap and very reliable). Way higher quality but steep learning curve for many functions, although if someone is willing to put in some effort it's not that bad.

Usually, I use Mikrotik wAP ACs for this kind of thing. They're cheap-enough to buy brand new, and they're designed to be able to work outdoors in the weather. But I might pick up an R720 just to play with -- that's a different echelon of gear. Thanks for the tip.

For outdoor, the model numbers start with "T". I think the T710 is the equivalent of the R720 for outdoor.

Re: UniFi 5G

#270

Post by bmurphy1976 »

Retric wrote: post #205
Analemma_ wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need the entire integrated setup to be outdoor-rated? That just adds tons of cost. If the antennas and modem need to be outside for signal strength reasons, so be it, but as much of your networking gear as possible should be indoors.

Construction projects, festivals, etc. Bad cellular reception is more likely to be an issue far from other infrastructure.

I would think if you are doing projects that big, you would in fact want dedicated devices instead of all-in-ones.
Post reply on HN