Done with Consumer WiFi solutions...

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Josh

Yep, I work in the industry. Seen it too many times where unifi customers swap out their gear within two years for something from a reputable vendor.

It's downright criminal that in the US that E-rate funds are spent on that garbage in schools. The buyers remorse is almost instant.....

I'm not in the industry so I don't know the details like you would, but I was saying that Unifi/AmpliFi was adapted enterprise stuff (ie: Pro-sumer). I wasn't thinking it was true enterprise grade stuff for huge applications. I think it's good someone in the know like yourself is clarifying that it shouldn't be deployed in anything more than as a premium option in smaller applications.

I wouldn't doubt you for a second if you said that Unifi/AmpliFi stuff didn't hold a candle to true enterprise grade stuff. I'm basically saying that Unifi and AmpliFi is closer to enterprise grade stuff than consumer grade stuff in household deployments. It's also designed to be used by someone who kinda understands networking and mucks around with it, but not a full on network IT consultant calibre level understanding.

I feel like your comment about Unifi vs (true) Enterprise grade is the same one I have for Unifi/AmpliFi vs consumer grade.

[Josh]

Understood, there's just an annoying youtube/reddit cult following when it comes to unifi who think that its suitable for any environment.

Proper enterprise grade gear actually doesn't work great in houses when it comes to wireless as they have a smaller coverage area for larger deployments, to both reduce co-channel interference and be able properly handle all wireless devices on the network (design for capacity). A unifi AP will actually have more coverage, again good for homes, not so much for a business.

Unifi also under sizes their processors in their AP, to get the maximum speeds, they need to have some of their options turned off (deep packet inspection etc). They also don't follow standards (their AP's aren't wifi alliance certified) and their passive POE switches were known to catastrophically fail and fry all of your downstream equipment (servers/storage/camera's).

Again, fine for a home as they tend not to have complex networks nor require much segmentation. I'll give it to them that they have a nice dashboard.

[EldrickOnIce]

Maybe someone here can explain to me
Comcast customer until they doubled my monthly cost, when promo expired. Through my hardwired mesh setup I got 1 GB wired speeds and 750+ wireless speeds throughout the home. Switched back to T-Mobile 5g home internet and bought a Waveform 4x4 mimo antenna to boost signal speeds. I am getting a strong 750+ Mbps over mesh wifi but only ~150 Mbps over wired connection. This makes no sense to me. This is using exactly the same cabling as previous.

TLDR: Why would I have low hardwired speeds on mesh but good wireless speeds?

[ken0042]

150 is a bit of an odd number. I've seen it before when you get speeds just under 100 and that ends up being due to something failing over from GB to 100MB speeds. The 16 port switch I have in my house for some reason had a number of ports fail over to 100.

[indes]

I just finished drywalling my basement and only ran 1 cat 6 from my UDM SE to the office down there. Everything else will be wifi supplied by a U6 LR, hopefully I didn't #### myself over but since I went unifi my network has been rock solid and the wifi speeds are ~800mbs all around my house. We'll see if I have any regrets once its completely finished.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by EldrickOnIce

Maybe someone here can explain to me
Comcast customer until they doubled my monthly cost, when promo expired. Through my hardwired mesh setup I got 1 GB wired speeds and 750+ wireless speeds throughout the home. Switched back to T-Mobile 5g home internet and bought a Waveform 4x4 mimo antenna to boost signal speeds. I am getting a strong 750+ Mbps over mesh wifi but only ~150 Mbps over wired connection. This makes no sense to me. This is using exactly the same cabling as previous.

TLDR: Why would I have low hardwired speeds on mesh but good wireless speeds?

I'd check to see if a wire got crimped. If wifi is good, then it's wired card/wired transmission, termination of wires and damaged wires that I'd investigate.

[Shazam]

Also make sure you didn't QoS something.

[bossy22]

My Orbi mesh system has been acting up. It's constantly disconnecting now. I was wondering if anyone has tried MoCA adapters to use the coax in the house as network cable? We don't have cat5 installed, but we have a lot of coax we don't use.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by bossy22

My Orbi mesh system has been acting up. It's constantly disconnecting now. I was wondering if anyone has tried MoCA adapters to use the coax in the house as network cable? We don't have cat5 installed, but we have a lot of coax we don't use.

I haven't used MoCA, but I've used powerline. Both basically have a half-duplex operation to work. A mesh node that is doing wireless back haul in theory can suffer slow downs similar to half-duplex operation. Half duplex operation means that the unit can only send or receive and not both send and receive at the same time like Ethernet which is considered "full duplex". This is why it's recommended to do wired ethernet back haul for best performance. IMO MoCA and powerline should be considered last resorts for when it's not practical/possible to pull ethernet lines.

MoCA 2.0 for instance says 1 Gbps. But the nature of how MoCA or Power line works as half duplex means the listed speed is not the same 1Gbps as ethernet at full duplex. Instead, it basically is halved. I believe you'd need MoCA 2.5 at 2.5 Gbps to emulate an approximate 1 Gbps ethernet speed.

It's around $150+ for a pair of Moca 2.5 adapters at a functional speed of around 1 Gbps. It's around $40-60 for a 200 ft Cat6 ethernet cable that can go up to 10 Gbps.

[Fuzz]

The reality is most people don't need anything near those speeds though. Depends what you are doing of course. But just watching online videos and internet stuff is fine with far lower speeds. Netflix only recommends 15Mbps or higher for 4k. Apple says 25Mbps. As long as it's a stable connection you really don't need to go overboard.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

The reality is most people don't need anything near those speeds though. Depends what you are doing of course. But just watching online videos and internet stuff is fine with far lower speeds. Netflix only recommends 15Mbps or higher for 4k. Apple says 25Mbps. As long as it's a stable connection you really don't need to go overboard.

I think that's the key though... stable connection. For many people, when the speed test shows <50 Mbps, it often is heavily due to interference, instability, hardware heating or other issues or something that makes even loading websites a crappy experience. I remember being in my old home and speed test showing 20-60 Mbps, but websites wouldn't load for 20-30 seconds. The connection isn't stable.

I'm also saying that depending on the situation, I don't know if it makes sense to spend $100-150 for a single MoCA pair vs buying a super long cable with similar performance for a fraction of the price at $20-50 a 100-200ft cable. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

The benefits to a MoCA cable is that it's easily reversible and tidy without the effort of fishing/hiding cables. If the units overheat like I experienced with power line adapters, they can become unstable and drop connection too. Then you're out money buying another pair. Comparatively to ethernet, it can be pricey and has limitations compared to untidy ethernet cables. Pros and cons.

[Fuzz]

Ya, it's definitely going to depend on situation.

[Meelapo]

Hey folks. I think this is the appropriate thread and my question is fairly inline with the OP…

We’re moving into a new build house and I’m wanting to move away from our TPLink setup. We’re a young family so we don’t need super crazy networking. Really something that gives us wifi throughout the house (basement, main floor, second floor) and the backyard. We’ll have our Telus fibre (1.5 Gbps).

I have my cart loaded with two Ubiquiti UniFi Express 7 - one acting as a primary router located in the basement and the second acting as an AP located on the second floor. I’ll add a Ubiquiti Switch Lite 8 PoE to power the four hard wire Cat6 drops we have and another port for my Reolink NVR for my cameras.

Any feedback? Is this a reasonable setup? Am I missing something or not thinking about anything? Critical feedback is welcome!

[indes]

Originally Posted by Meelapo

Hey folks. I think this is the appropriate thread and my question is fairly inline with the OP…

We’re moving into a new build house and I’m wanting to move away from our TPLink setup. We’re a young family so we don’t need super crazy networking. Really something that gives us wifi throughout the house (basement, main floor, second floor) and the backyard. We’ll have our Telus fibre (1.5 Gbps).

I have my cart loaded with two Ubiquiti UniFi Express 7 - one acting as a primary router located in the basement and the second acting as an AP located on the second floor. I’ll add a Ubiquiti Switch Lite 8 PoE to power the four hard wire Cat6 drops we have and another port for my Reolink NVR for my cameras.

Any feedback? Is this a reasonable setup? Am I missing something or not thinking about anything? Critical feedback is welcome!

You don't need 2 - express 7s, just one to run the gateway and then connect an AP or 2 upstairs through your switch. If you want to switch to unifi cameras in the future you might want to look at a UDM PRO SE instead of an express 7 + switch lite 8 + NVR.

[DoubleF]

Originally Posted by Meelapo

Hey folks. I think this is the appropriate thread and my question is fairly inline with the OP…

We’re moving into a new build house and I’m wanting to move away from our TPLink setup. We’re a young family so we don’t need super crazy networking. Really something that gives us wifi throughout the house (basement, main floor, second floor) and the backyard. We’ll have our Telus fibre (1.5 Gbps).

I have my cart loaded with two Ubiquiti UniFi Express 7 - one acting as a primary router located in the basement and the second acting as an AP located on the second floor. I’ll add a Ubiquiti Switch Lite 8 PoE to power the four hard wire Cat6 drops we have and another port for my Reolink NVR for my cameras.

Any feedback? Is this a reasonable setup? Am I missing something or not thinking about anything? Critical feedback is welcome!

You say you don't need crazy networking, but you're already kinda dabbling in crazy networking with that initial idea and description of what you will be needing/doing.

Agreed with indes that for what you're spending, the UDM Pro SE potentially makes more sense in the long run and worth looking into. Your idea will work. The UDM Pro SE is just a more compact and sleek solution with potential and flexibility to expand even more in the future with things you're already doing. For instance, your camera and outdoor wifi needs are things you can add to a UDM Pro and then take advantage of certain features in that rich ecosystem. The Express 7 set up basically only allows for you to add more systems that work independently/beside each other, rather than potentially integrated with each other.

The UDM Pro will be very good for a long time and future proofed while the Express 7 set up will be very good for a long time. Also, I don't know if your situation may end up with a "special situation". A UDM Pro set up will always have some option/add on you can add to solve it. Comparatively to the Express 7 set up which may run into a situation where there's no clear solution. However, I will also say that the Express 7 may need less fine tuning and debugging than the UDM Pro at first, so if you just need it to be installed and work right away with absolute zero hiccups, that's a consideration too. Debugging wise, it theoretically wouldn't be expected to be a few hours from identifying the issue to finding a solution.

WORD OF WARNING. Buying a UDM Pro is a VERY slippery slope.

It's $715 for the UDM Pro SE and you still need an AP which will be about $150-$250 each depending on the path you choose. I'd choose a single U7 Pro for $239, place it strategically and only add additional AP if needed. Ceiling mounting on main floor in a central location and you'd probably for sure only need one AP. But if the speeds house wide aren't enough and staying with existing hard wiring in the walls and no fancy mounting, the U7 Pro + a U6+ ($139) AP on opposing sides of the home + playing with the settings so that the AP radios don't interfere with each other and give better speeds should do it for sure (that's a similar set up to what I personally have, but I aim to ceiling mount in a few years as a "fun project").

The 2x Express 7 and POE are already initially at $719 whereas the UDM Pro SE has an initial buy in of $954 with a worst case scenario of $1093.

The UDM Pro SE might be the stupid short term solution, but the better long term one (5-10 years). The Express 7 might be a significantly better short term solution, but the worse long term one (fine for up to 5 years ish, then in 5 years, you might replace it all to gain certain features you need and lose out on some value there even if the Express 7 set up still functional).

For me, my $600 3x Amplifi HD mesh set up from 2015 (similar to your Express 7 mesh set up) would have served me well and continued to do so as of now 10 years later vs my current $850 UDM Pro set up (not SE) I've been using since 2022. The mesh system would have limited me/added complexities for certain network/NAS set ups I added and I know I occasionally had issues with certain devices like the sous vide disliking mesh systems and the device would either not connect or disconnect if it couldn't be bound to a specific AP. But the UDM set up also had complexities like corporate locked/restricted devices would disconnect from wifi 7 after an hour and I couldn't get them back on unless I restarted my entire system including the UDM Pro. In the end, the solution was buying a wifi 6 AP so that the devices could get on via the old standard, before being handed back to the AP with wifi 7 (stupid because I sold the "old standard" AP to a CP member thinking I didn't need it, only to realize I needed it). UDM Pro is not hands down a better solution at first, but long run I personally don't regret it at all and believe I would have done it sooner or later.

[indes]

I have 2 U6-In Walls for my APs and they're both mounted behind TV's so I could use the built in switch to hardwire the TV & Playstation. Was disappointed the U7 IW doesn't come with the 4 port switch.

[Meelapo]

Thank you both. The reason I went with the two Express 7s was they seemed like the easiest to setup and configure. I know basic wired networking but would be lost if I had to troubleshoot or debug much.

I contemplated with the different access points but ceiling mounting was not an option. Using the U7 Pro Wall with the stand costs as much as buying an express 7 and just making it an AP. This is probably not the best approach but I wanted a Ubiquiti setup but also make it cost effective as there’s other things I wanted to buy for the house. The budget was $700-$800.


Would it be better to just go with the UDM Pro SE for future expansion and hope wireless speeds in the upper parts of the house are fine?


Alternatively I could do the UDM Pro (~$550) and then get the U7 Pro Wall with the stand which would come to around $800 total.

[Regorium]

Can someone explain to me what the point of the gateway like the Express 7 is?

Similar to Meel, I'm moving into a new build and trying to figure out what I need.

So far I've identified:
- Switch to connect all the cat 6 outlets. (does the switch need some special capability to use PoE for a ceiling mount AP?)
- Ceiling mount AP connected to one of those cat 6 outlets on the 2nd floor (pretty open concept plan so I think the one AP might be enough)
- Standard AP in the basement
- Telus router in the basement that connects the modem and the switch.

Potentially I have another AP for the main floor, but I don't have a great place for it (should've asked the builder to do a second ceiling mount but didn't do it). The only place might be a drywall box behind the TV, but we're thinking of a pretty flush mounted samsung frame so it might just be completely pointless. The other spot is my office, but that's way at one end of the house without much else there.

I'm confused at some of these extra pieces and wondering if someone can shed some light.

[Meelapo]

Originally Posted by Regorium

Can someone explain to me what the point of the gateway like the Express 7 is?

Similar to Meel, I'm moving into a new build and trying to figure out what I need.

So far I've identified:
- Switch to connect all the cat 6 outlets. (does the switch need some special capability to use PoE for a ceiling mount AP?)
- Ceiling mount AP connected to one of those cat 6 outlets on the 2nd floor (pretty open concept plan so I think the one AP might be enough)
- Standard AP in the basement
- Telus router in the basement that connects the modem and the switch.

Potentially I have another AP for the main floor, but I don't have a great place for it (should've asked the builder to do a second ceiling mount but didn't do it). The only place might be a drywall box behind the TV, but we're thinking of a pretty flush mounted samsung frame so it might just be completely pointless. The other spot is my office, but that's way at one end of the house without much else there.

I'm confused at some of these extra pieces and wondering if someone can shed some light.

The Express 7 acts as a router really. And it includes the Ubiquiti software that’s needed to run the network. From my research it seems like something in your setup needs to run the software - either their gateway will do this or another dedicated component.

I think next time when I do my build I’ll make sure to do ceiling mounted drops. Something in didn’t even think about. I even did RJ45 for the outside front/back of house for cameras but didn’t think of the interior ceiling.

[indes]

Originally Posted by Meelapo

Thank you both. The reason I went with the two Express 7s was they seemed like the easiest to setup and configure. I know basic wired networking but would be lost if I had to troubleshoot or debug much.

I contemplated with the different access points but ceiling mounting was not an option. Using the U7 Pro Wall with the stand costs as much as buying an express 7 and just making it an AP. This is probably not the best approach but I wanted a Ubiquiti setup but also make it cost effective as there’s other things I wanted to buy for the house. The budget was $700-$800.


Would it be better to just go with the UDM Pro SE for future expansion and hope wireless speeds in the upper parts of the house are fine?


Alternatively I could do the UDM Pro (~$550) and then get the U7 Pro Wall with the stand which would come to around $800 total.

I can't speak to the express 7's specifically but the APs are pretty much plug and play. I didn't know too much about networking either but was able to set my UDM pro SE with a couple youtube videos. IMO the UDM pro wouldn't be worth it for the future proofing as if you did want to add cameras/doorbell/sensors you would still need an NVR and if you want to run POE APs you still need a powered switch.

All just my opinion and I don't think you can go wrong with the unifi stuff, don't be intimidated by the setup there's a ton of resources and videos out there. As for troubleshooting - the nice part is I haven't had to do a single thing since I set up my network ~3 years ago.