After nearly a week of researching WiFi 6E options, I’ve decided I’m probably going to opt for my first Ubiquiti setup. I want 6E regardless, I have 2x laptops ready for it, I’ve wanted to get off WiFi 5 for a couple of years now (Ruckus APs.)
Ruckus is not an option due to price, over $1k per AP (vs the $50 per AP I paid for R500’s back in 2021.) Ubiquiti look like the cheapest by quite a bit
I have an IT background, sysadmin 10+ years, currently running Sophos XG on an old Dell but XG has limited support for newer hardware, making 2.5Gbps awkward.
I’d like to go full 10G but this sounds difficult with limited 2.5G compatibility (for access points + PC.)
Ultimately I’ve went full circle and it looks like Ubiquiti will be my simplest option:
-Dream Machine SE (2.5G WAN, 10G DAC to E-24)
-Enterprise 24 PoE
-U6 Enterprise access points
I understand this stuff is expensive but realistically, I can only see potential savings by using a SFF PC instead of the Dream Machine, for the sake of a few hundred I’d rather keep it simpler.
My current fibre is 1Gbps IPoE (I had PPPoE ordered and cancelled for IPoE), with my country trialling 1.2/1.8Gbps next year. The Dream Machine SE is supposed to manage upto 3.5G with security enabled, I’m expecting at least 3 years from this setup. All in, it’s not much more than 3x 6E Orbis.
Does anyone have any suggestions or advice before I order? I’ve read so many mixed reviews about Ubiquiti, I don’t even know what’s real anymore. While I can manage a complex setup, I just want what’s going to be most reliable/stable.
I have used Ubiquiti for my home network for years, and it has always worked great at what it promised to do for me. People’s frustrations with it—in my experience—usually revolve around things they want it to do that it doesn’t, and the fact that it is very unfriendly to hacks or jury-rigging. So you have to be very sure going in that it matches your requirements. It’s like Apple gear.
Another option you could look at is TP-Link’s Omada system, which is basically their clone of Unifi but has a wider variety of hardware options.
I also often see people using Ubiquiti switches and APs in combination with a pfSense firewall if they want more sophistication and configurability. If you’re coming from Sophos and want to do sophisticated routing and filtering, you’ll probably find the Unifi firewall lacking in features (but it works great for people who don’t want to do that).
I ended up ordering the Ubiquity setup, I’m hoping it’s a good balance between performance and simplicity. Sophos XG has been great but I’ve lost hours/days working on it, I think sometimes simpler is better.
I’ll never buy anything by TP-Link though, that’s one very fishy company. Aside from stuff I’ve read online (eg. too much telemetry), I was working on a TP-Link Powerline for a friend of the family years ago and the instructions for pairing didn’t work. So instead I managed to find it’s internal IP and bring up the web interface - only to be presented with a page from BT’s powerline software. It clearly wasn’t intended to be accessed by the average consumer, and I would suspect it was ripped from BT’s devices.