I find it ironic they force you to use their cloud right after their data was breached... Glad I didn't have a unifi account, I just did it all locally. The breach doesn't have me very excited to sign up lol.
I hope a bunch of the smaller manufacturers get together and support an open source alternative that works across their platforms because as a collective they have the size to compete with Unifi, Cisco and the like for the prosumer and SME segment.
As far as I know UniFi devices are running some kind of openWRT firmware. So basically a controller software for all openWRT routers would be cool. I think the main reason that this hasn’t happened by now is, that people knowing how to flash openWRT on cheap tp-link hardware don’t need a controler software for doing basic network changes, like UniFi customers. Only benefit for these kind of customers would be fleet management.
@@mishortProductions Ubiquiti devices run EdgeOS, a fork of Vyos(formally Vyatta). Regard OpenWRT: There is a sort of central management solution for OpenWRT called openWISP.
The problem is getting access to the full Qualcomm and Broadcom feature set - think beamforming, hardware switch acceleration, even Broadcom's layer 2 bridging.
They had the cloud requirement in the roadmap before the breach. The breach does not come at the opportune time for them and it could be argued that a malicious breach may be in retaliation against those plans. Or it could just be a coincidence of timing.
You raised some true points. In November I migrated my modest home network from Cisco Meraki to Ubiquiti Unify and I have not regretted it once so far. I run a DreamMachine (not the Pro) as my Router and bought a couple of UniFi APs to cover the house, but the hardware was still cheaper than extending the Meraki licences for another three years
@@nilpo The management of multiple sites does get a little troublesome using OpenVPN TCP or SSTP vs Unifi. I am using Mikrotik hardware for my home firewall, Queuing, PPPOE, VLANS, routing and mangle rules. RouterOS combined with Unifi works really well for my projects.
I bought the cloud key as I did not want to have to maintain yet another VM, computer, etc. Simple just sits off to the side. Update the firmware and now you have to have a cloud account, no way. Only had my setup for a year and it is working well, but with this change and who knows what else, time to look else where. Also won't be deploying the product anymore.
Tom, what do you think about joining forces with other tech youtubers with a huge fan base like linus tech tips to politely persuade Ubiquiti into making decisions that are more welcoming to their customers?
Thank you for being the voice of reason. You are totally correct. I can't find anything out there that allows for an self-hosted controller in the range of Unifi. Doesn't really happen until you get to the next tier of expensive.
Omada is actually pretty good and I'd suggest diving into it. Especially with the new Switches and Routers, very little devices but it looks promising. Plus they're working on the cloud controller as well.
As an early Unifi user, I am now an early Omada user. Please do a video on a basic Omada SDN605 + Switch + Access point... It hasn't been a bad experience on a symmetrical gigabit connection with multiple VPN's
Definitely not the way to go for cameras. The hardware is middle of the road, software is promotive, and the price is high end. Switches are marginal - cisco's Small Biz line the got from Linksys has better bang for the buck. Their 'security gateway' is flawed in concept - not enough ass to do any real filtering at speed. All in all, UB is charging a very steep price for the UI, in the form of limitations in the discrete components.
Yeah, the problem is that once they get big (nearly monopole size in their respective area), they forgot how they got there! If people would not trust their product/services would not pay for it! The same is true still, the way this can be fought is by having law to protect customers, users and businesses who buys their product against such changes!!! Also monopolization should be banned on the law level and should punish such with HUUGE FINE so that it not worth to do so, plus the law also should prohibit to merge lots of similar types of company under ONE BIG and consider it as monopolization too and deal with it accordingly! Until such time unifi/redHat/apple/ms/fb/twitter/amazon/google etc will exist and have big impact on our digital life and keep destroying competition! - Hope Unifi will NOT get more nasty and this is their last business level goofing toward customers and will not try further stupid similar thing! The next stupid move certainly will cause their business, although that will require uniform user back off to hurt their economy/stock value enough to have investors change their minds to get their stock value back. Unfortunately ALL INVESTORS base their decision solely or ROI in a very very very stupid disrespectful way to their actual customers, sadly not enough customers STOP supporting the product when it happens! If there would be a law to sue companies easily for such under the belt changes with really ridiculously BIG fines, this really would make ANY BIG CORPORATION to think multiple times before even considering to pull such move off!
@@MikeBolitho Yeh, but now IBM got the bright idea to further monopolize on it even risking to break the trust which has been put into CentOS, not mentioning all the efforts contributors put into to CentOS. Greedy bastards!
Aruba Unified APs running Instant virtual controller locally is a great UniFi replacement. Combined with Aruba Airwave (on site) allows for great multi site management of Instant clusters and Aruba switches. Airwave is a paid per device license though.
Been using TP-Link for a few years at an SMB without much issues. Literally the only thing I have ever had is a hand full of times over the years I have had to reboot the APs because some users cellphone would not connect. Setup and applying firmware updates has been a breeze.
The big issue I see with Aruba Instant On is there’s no firewall/gateway controlled by the portal. I know the one AP can be a firewall, but the features are very limited on that.
Hey if you see this, after 3 years, are you still happy with Aruba Instant On? How about firmware issues? This was my complaint about Unifi. I got tired of being the home IT department and switched to multiple Eero Pro 6E APs. All was good last year except for lack of features, but it worked. This year not so good with firmware seeming like Alpha or beta. So I am looking to make another change.
The pi have a drawback, it's only sd card. It wear out the cards over time, even the expensive ones.. When pi have real hard drive controller that would probably be a better solution.
Wow clients with 300-400 APs?! I used to setup networks/servers for large call centers supporting upwards of 500 employees and I can't remember ever installing more than maybe 30 APs max. 400 APs sounds like a massive corporate head quarters for FAANG.
You can still add local credentials for a super admin account in user management. And if you really don't like UnifiOS, you can downgrade firmware to 1.1.13 via SSH as well. Multisite workarounds: If you have a new CKG2 with UnifiOS preinstalled you can downgrade firmware to create a second site before upgrading to UnifiOS in which case you'll retain multisite option on the latest firmware. If you upgraded single site configuration to UnifiOS, you can backup the configuration, load it up into a self hosted controller in a VM, add another site, back it up on VM and import it back to CloudKey. What bothers me is that you cannot change owner account once you've set it.
At this point, it’s very challenging to say that Ubiquiti fully understands their users. You really nailed it with the roadmap...I just wish they’d publish a public roadmap. This would help manage disappointment from users.
To be honest unifi-video wasn't going away when protect came out, but a year late EOL ubiquity has track record when it comes to these things. When they remove something in one place you can be sure that the rest follows.
I like the TP-Link Omada platform for small single site deployments. The hardware is inexpensive and reliable, and the Omada controller software does what you need after you learn it's quirks. But I dont see it scaling up very well. Their new SDN controller update is less than a year old, and the switch support is minimal. They also dont have great options for switching hardware, especially noticeable is 10G/multi switches being absent while their newest AP offering has a 2.5G port on it.
I've been using Aruba IAP-205s in my house for about two years. I have never needed to reboot one. They just work. I just ordered 3 Aruba IAP-225s to get the 3x3 MIMO capabilities, and they were $89/each used from eBay. No controller needed. No cloud. No licenses. Enterprise features. Configure one AP the way you want, and the rest boot up, discover, and auto provision themselves.
Is it true that the self-hosted unifi controller now brings up an alert on login (after updating to the latest version) that recommend a UDM Pro for the best experience? Cause if that's true.. that's worrying.
@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Do you think they're going to remove multi-site in general? That's kind of the impression I'm getting that they want one device per site.
Cambium has on on-prem option, however, they only have APs and switches so you'd have to go a different route for a gateway device. I just signed up for a partnership with them and have some NFR devices on order that I plan on testing.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I would like to suggest if you can comment about Mikrotik. I know it doesnt have a nice UI but I got impress about its flexibility and low price.
@@nellermann But their prices blow up your wallet, compared to Unifi. This is also something nobody seems to remember: Unifi sits at a rather interesting price point in the market, not just in terms of over-time investment, but also the immediate cost of hardware. That may not matter much for large deployments, where you buy hundreds of access points for a single customer, but with smaller customers, being able to deploy the entire hardware necessary for the wireless side of things for a couple thousand euros less than say Meraki is a pretty big deal.
I understand some of the ubiquity APs can be flashed with Open-WRT firmware. For those devices it is available OpenWisp 2 - a free software controller, created for Mass deployments ( developed for the city of Rome ). I’ve never tried it, but it can be a good exercise and who knows... Maybe it is a hidden jewel.
I setup a friend house with Unify , ended up using a NanoPi R2S running a docker for the unify controller . Works well, cheaper than cloud key stuff and no cloud...
TP-Link recently released a pretty big update to their Omada Controller and I think at the least it's a step in the right direction. They've added support for switches and they also have a router/firewall appliance that supports it as well, and I believe they even released software updates for a few recent switches to add support for them. They claim to have a simplified VPN setup if you are connecting sites that have their supported router/firewall. It's not quite as robust in terms of configurability even compared to Unifi, but I think it's fair to at least keep it in your radar! I use their OC200 appliance that runs the controller software and paired it with a few of their APs in my home with a couple WLANs and I've basically had zero Wi-Fi problems.
Aruba Instant is self hosted controller/cluster on the AP's themselves, I've got Several Aruba Instant AP's in my home and have been very happy with them.
We use TP-Link with single and multi-site customers that we manage and so far haven't had any real issues. Granted we've not really used UniFi so possibly don't miss what we've never known and from watching your videos I can see that the UniFi feature-set is richer. Also from your videos, we don't have any of the large-scale deployments that you have showcased, so there may be a consideration there. That said when the price-point is taken into consideration TP-Link become a much more compelling argument. Obviously, people can only speak from their own experience but ours has been happy clients and minimal troubleshooting.
I have Unifi at home and have deployed Omada in 3 sites all managed for my controller located at one of the sites. ust put the IP address or URL of the controller into the remote device and it appears in yor cloud controller straight away. All works great from the app or jumping straight in via the static IP of the site hosting the controller. We chose Omada as the sites are mainly outdoors and the product is cheaper and just works!
Having deployed and used many systems as an IT professional here’s my view: Meraki: Great cloud control, super expensive. Extremely unreliable AP.s. Good for small multi site companies with unlimited budget. Single IT staff to maintain and monitor everything from cloud. Their AP for the price crashes a lot Ruckus: Basic controller but rock solid reliability. In the real world after setting up even after the so call limitations, the main difference is that it doesn’t have any trouble. Never needing reboot, just solid
I give another real world scenario. One of my projects was to deploy a 50x TV display wall that stream video contents. Meraki struggle after 20 devices connected. Unifi struggled after 30x. It was only Ruckus that was able to handle the load. Unifi is great for the price but not the best at any price. Many companies willing to pay a few hundred more for better equipment
Hey Tom... I was recently looking for UniFi alternatives as well and kind of get to the same conclusions as you. Like it or not, UniFi still has some very interesting differentials from all the others. Not being forced to cloud only management is very important to me as well and, as of today, UniFi is basically the only one that allows that. There's Mikrotik with capsman, but it's for the very techy nerds only, not quite easy as things can be with UniFi. Despite being worried with some changes and specially lack of communication on some important changes, I have no option to keep using UniFi. Despite some problems, it's still a very great networking solution (for wireless and switches, forget the gateways)
Aruba have awesome features as access point, BLE and optional EnOcean gateway (not on InstantOn though), which is great for both businesses and smart homes. They also have Zigbee dongles, but they cost as much as Unifi AC PRO.
Also, for everyone who's complaining about the UDM&UDMPro who upgraded from a USG, I think you completely mistaken the target market it was for - it seems to be built for ppl who are on Amplifi and are looking to move into the Unifi market. Normally for current Unifi customers, the real upgrade path with have been the UXG, and apparently with a self-hosted controller for sure now.
5:23 Really really interested to hear you expand on the ways you believe Omada to not be ready to compete with unifi. Does that assessment apply only to commercial contexts or prosumers also? That would be a great vid!
I set up some Omada in a Business and at a private Customer, and Unifi at Schools. They feel very similar, but Omada kinda is not as fancy, but does it Job well. Didn't test both of them well tho, i mostly set it up and did a bit of testing.
The only other companies I see that offer on site controllers are firewall companies; the firewalls are the controllers. Watchguard, Sonicwall. And they tend to only be for Wifi APs. They do work great for customizing ports as they are firewalls and allow for all the normal customizations you'd expect a business grade firewall to do.
@@rubenschoups7937 retail? Yes. however, 90 dollars on eBay for the controller and 105 dollars on eBay for their equivalent of a AP AC nanoHD. (ap-335)
@@rubenschoups7937 depends on the customer too. Like I have a bunch of small customers I've put used enterprise gear at, and at my full time gig I'm a k12 so I get deep discounts with eRate, so I'm not paying retail anyway.
It’s pretty clear the direction they are going now. They are keeping the local hosting with the cloud keys and then using the online admin role for remote management. That allows you to manage many locally hosting devices from the cloud. They also seem to be working toward merging their unifi and edge lines of equipment.
One of my sites is a multi-suite building with switching on all floors and layer 2 connectivity between tenants and ISP. Love it for easy management; however, may have to consider another product because UniFi only allows egress bandwidth throttling on switch ports, not ingress. Some tenants are periodically choking the upload for the whole building. I don’t really want to go back to individual direct access to switches just for the traffic shaping capability.
I agree that Ubiquiti needs to improve its communication. I expect at least a public statement to be issued when a release contains a significant change like this one. It can be a simple blog post, but please be transparent as much as you can and explain the rationale behind that decision.
Aruba doesn't require a cloud subscription. I use IAD-305s at my house and it has a built-in controller. I don't pay any licensing fees and still get firmware updates regularly.
Hey Tom, I like using mikrotiks CAPs and WAPs, they're all managed by mikrotiks CAPsman, and so far, this it the least expensive option, I've installed them for a couple of family members and they love it, it works around same as unifi, but it's all managed in the RouterOS, and since I always use mikrotik as a GW, it's really convenient.
@@martinmuren8757 Yea there is, you can run it in a VM, but I see no point in that since I need to use something as a GW anyway, powerful mikrotik device that can route a gigabit is pretty cheap, so I see no point in using anything else, plus from where I am from, everything else is way too uncommon and expensive.
6.043 is the newest and i can stil add sites on my windows controller so this can also on a raspberry pi or intel nuc or server , multisite should not be hosted on a cloud key.
That was probably the thought process of Ubiquiti as well, since you cannot scale out a cloud key, as easily as a self hosted UniFi install (regardless if on-prem or cloud). But we will have to wait and see, if further news emerge in the near future.
Newer ruckus unleashed 200.8 actually does support management of their switches, it also increases a lot of limits such as the max aps going from 25 to 128.
I would love to hear what UniFi has to say about it. Possibly it would restore confidence in the users, if we would know the exact reasons and that there is no general change of policy to be expected. The way it is now, I am not sure at all should deploy it in larger installations.
If they know not to do it to the self hosted controller why did they even do it to the cloudkey in the first place? You always need to be able to threaten to move supplier or they get complacent, pull features, and raise prices on a whim.
I'm sure if Fortinet has been mentioned or not but they do all sorts of stuff. I manage a few sites with their stuff. The company does all sorts of stuff in the networking and cybersecurity space. I've used some of their FortiAP/FortiGate NGFW. I like them but have dealt with some annoying bugs that sometimes never seem to go away. They're support was pretty good though when I needed some firmware help and diving into logs causing a memory leak or something like that. Seemed better than the basic paid Cisco support as well. The Meraki stuff I've used also seems to be pretty stable and was mindblowing to see them in person when they launched and try it out but was too expensive for our needs at the time, we needed 1000s of APs, and switches, routers, bridges etc. Either way, I could go on and on but check them out. Maybe Sophos FW/APs worth mentioning? I've used a few others but not sure they're worth mentioning as actual alternatives to the SDN of Ubiquiti's stuff. I can't say I know of anyone that's doing so much of what Ubiquiti is doing or UniFi line to be specific quite like they are without support costs and closed source.
Aruba instant on switches are fantastic! Cheaper than comparable unifi, more features, local device management, real support, not running perpetually beta firmware. No cloudkey equivalent, but you have stacking on the 1960 series.
stacking is a killer feature. I`m looking on Ubiquiti, and just cannot understand how do they release "Enterprise" line switches (25G!!) without MLAG or stacking. In their vision, mission critical means adding a battery inside of the switch. what a hell do they smoke?
Is Sonic Wall viable option? I just purchased a Sonic Wall Router for like $250. This devices are pretty pricey though and their parent company is HELL/DELL. I own Ubiquity products and I like the enterprise level SDN control without having to pay the big price of a Sonic Wall.
CloudKey was always a giant waste anyhow. You're better off with a 4 or 8GB Raspberry Pi 4. For uber longevity, get the new Argon40 M.2 SSD case. You can load Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on the Pi, boot from an SSD (much longer life than an SD Card), and run UniFi in a Docker container with minimal hassle. You can educate yourself in a day how to get the job done. Now you've got room to run other apps on the Pi. Upgrades are terribly easy (pull latest container version, stop current container, rename current container, instantiate new container, later delete old container).
Tom, can you please do a video on the privacy implications of joining a ubiquiti device with the cloud? Do you know if they send browsing/network use telemetry back to their servers?
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Aruba Instant (not InstantOn) which runs the controller in the APs as well. There is also full fledged ArubaOS controllers and also Cisco controllers but those start to get $$$$!
I had a couple original pre-Cisco Meraki MR12 APs still deployed until late 2019. If there was an end of life notification, I missed it, but they showed up as valid devices on my Meraki dashboard.
On my business side thankfully our installer was more aware of what was going on & started conversations about migration a year ago. I personally was using unifi to manage my different relatives' home networks & I'm unsure if I believe the solution is to invest in at least a rpi for each home. If they decide to screw the brand & destroy the controller too at least the pis w/ external antenna & batman-ad are a future proof & robust mesh solution
Atleast the networking equipment should be kept local which handles our data or is the gateway to our home . It should be totally localised and just connect to the internet for updates
The cloud has pro’s and con’s. In my experience hybrid is the way to pitch for *many* businesses. Core infrastructure maybe shouldn’t be in the cloud and flexible workloads maybe shouldn’t be local.
you're far from alone, i detest it,, one thing richard stallman said that I agree with, the cloud is just a hyped up marketing term, the clueless thinks WOW, cloud... but cloud means simply "someone elses hardware stemming from the old POTS" so ummm hello, used web hosting in the past 25/30 years? ... *sigh*
First I want to compliment you on your videos. Your expertise and clear explanations are spot on. Your willingness to share your knowledge is complimentary. Aruba Instant On may require the cloud but Aruba Instant AP does not. I believe Instant AP can be considered a viable, although more expensive, alternative to Unifi. Does not require cloud account or a controller. One AP acts as the local controller. How you want to manage that remotely / centrally with no cloud dependency is another question. You can certainly manage each location individually.
I've used ubiquiti for a long time, even after our company was purchased. But recently we started our IT integration with our massive Corporate entity. So now we are moving to all Cisco gear. I never thought I'd say this put I'm actually happy so I don't have to worry about the BS happening over at Ubiquiti in the last few years.
I would love to see a serious competitor to Ubiquity. I don't love the direction they are going, and some of the decisions they've made. I don't even care if that comes with a monthly or yearly cost for excellent support. I don't mind paying more for the best, and I am just not blown away by any company geared toward SOHO, small business, etc. I want a guaranteed support length, with EOS/EOL/etc. spelled out up front, no games, no losing features, no surprises. Can there seriously not be a company like this out there?
Tom, I just ran into an issue with a UniFi switch (and the support team) I purchased 2 lite 8port switches, I had a problem with one that would adopt and then just disappear from the network. I then adopted a second one, and it worked and continues to work. the 1st one after much resetting and emails back and forth with UniFi support, just will not stay visible to the controller. UniFi answer to the problem was that its my controller. (raspberry Pi Hosted) and that I should choose a "supported hardware" device.
Good afternoon Tom, thank you for all the videos and comments you give to expand our knowledge of different technologies and platforms. My question is; for the free downloadable version of Unifi Universal Controller, are these customers affected by this change? I am in the process to upgrade my home network and I was researching Unifi to buy the UniFi Dream Machine Pro and the UniFi Switch PRO 24 PoE. However, now with the new changes am hesitant to move forward with the buy.
Fortinet - despite your reporting about a year ago of their hard-coding flaws (and to your point fortinet has a robust history of reporting updates to their customers unlike UBNT). Fortigate products are dense. It’s hard to penetrate ones brain into their immense product stack with probably 100 different Forti*** brands. But they do offer on site control. The firewalls are the Golightly with security features robust enough for most enterprises. But the WAPs are good too and management is done on their hardware. Downside as I mentioned would be your knowledge of their hard coded keys, also they tend to make things a bit too complex when ordering with so many products. It’s worth a check though. Fortinet definitely gives off a more “grown up company” vibe than UBNT
So I may or may not be out of place here, but I am looking to setup a whole-home network for the house that I am closing on in the near future. So this means a NAS, maybe a couple of switches, one or two access points and about 6 cameras; plus all of the miscellaneous network devices that my family uses. Is it manageable to not have a single dashboard to manage everything? I know it would be more convenient to have everything controlled from one place, but Ubiquiti's business model concerns me moving forward. So, this means I would need to go with a more pieced together solution, and lose on the benefits of a nicely integrated ecosystem. Any thoughts on this? My biggest worry is getting locked into an ecosystem, having the business model change significantly, and have thousands of dollars(That's a lot for me) of equipment to try to find replacements for because said business model change isn't sustainable for me.
Interesting reading the comments on Omada, lots of people seem to have had a poor experience with it. Personally we have been using it at a few small offices and it’s been rock solid, better than our old UniFi deployments. We are using OC200s which compared to the Gen1 CKs are a dream. They don’t shit the bed on a hard shutdown. I can’t comment on their switching and routing get as we won’t touch that. The one big advantage of the TP Link APs is that they have their own web management console so you don’t have to use Omada. Opposed to unifi having to configure with a controller or a phone app.
I can't say with 100% certainty, but I think some of the issue may be because the "Omada" name is a recent change. I tried the TP-Link offering a few years ago and it was not called Omada and there appears to be a lot of legacy equipment / migration stuff from the old thing into Omada. For example, I had a TP-Link switch that the model number was listed as supporting Omada, but if you dig into it you find out you need to flash a special firmware to the switch to make it Omada compatible. Then on top of that my specific hardware revision of that model was explicitly NOT compatible with Omada in their documentation. This all leads me to believe there's a somewhat messy transition happening to get the Omada stuff up and running. On the TP-Link site there is a very short list of supported hardware which all appear to be newer products that were just released / releasing soon. However if you dig into the support section of their site there is a lot of legacy equipment that can be flashed to be "compatible" with Omada and some carry limitations. The single switch and AP I purchased came from the supported hardware list and were not legacy pieces of hardware that were reflashed and I haven't noticed any problems yet.
Are you sure about this "Unleashed" stuff from Ruckus? It seems - while you don't need a dedicated controller - you still need the "end user support for Unleashed APs".
I would like to see a review of the Ruckus Unleashed AP's and get your [Tom] opinion on them. As you have extensively dealt with the UniFi AP's. I've been running a Ruckus R510 AP with the unleashed firmware and been very happy. You can pick the Ruckus AP's off of eBay for very reasonable prices. That is where I purchased mine from.
TPLink has improved greatly for their normal individual home/homeoffice APs. Better than any other $50-150 non-controller AP. Their mesh stuff is half baked. Haven't tried their managed things yet.
I just upgraded to the UDM Pro as I was having performance issues with IPS (USG Pro 4/Cloud Key Gen1), completely didn't realise that the UDM Pro is single site, WISH I had known/researched better before the purchase, I would NOT have bought it, very annoyed that a device with Pro in it's title has less features than a device a generation older.
great comment about Ubiquiti and I really hope that's the self hosted controller do stay with us with the UDM and.... Would love to see a interview with the CEO.
To this day after 2 years I still don't understand why anyone would buy a cloud key. I run my controller on a pi 3. I just moved off of USG to pfsense. But I love unifi's ap because the ssids can still be bound to vlans.
I agree with you for most situations. For home users, it's easy to run it on a RPi or an old laptop. For corporate users, it's easy to run it on docker or spin up a VM (I run it on docker on a VM). For small businesses (or home users) who want an entire turnkey network a cloudkey or UDM may be desirable, everything is included, no need for any additional hardware or configuration, just drop it in. For VARs or MSPs that don't have a lot of Unifi deployments, I can see how a cloudkey could also be advantageous.
@@Zeric1 I can see how Amplifi or UDM is useful, thus my follow up response. In those situations, once again, I don't see why Cloudkey is useful at all for home users. For Cloudkey now, in light of the recent firmware changes, I really see no use. It may be better for someone to (maybe Ubiquiti) to just sell an SD card with the software preconfigured for Raspberry Pis or other SBC.
I find it ironic they force you to use their cloud right after their data was breached... Glad I didn't have a unifi account, I just did it all locally. The breach doesn't have me very excited to sign up lol.
I hope a bunch of the smaller manufacturers get together and support an open source alternative that works across their platforms because as a collective they have the size to compete with Unifi, Cisco and the like for the prosumer and SME segment.
im hoping some open source system emerges at some point so that all the vendor lock in goes away :)
Diy is the route to go if you are looking at this with the same pi many host their controllers on.
As far as I know UniFi devices are running some kind of openWRT firmware. So basically a controller software for all openWRT routers would be cool.
I think the main reason that this hasn’t happened by now is, that people knowing how to flash openWRT on cheap tp-link hardware don’t need a controler software for doing basic network changes, like UniFi customers. Only benefit for these kind of customers would be fleet management.
The support and stability also goes away when there's no financial motivation. I love open source in theory, but I'm skeptical.
@@mishortProductions Ubiquiti devices run EdgeOS, a fork of Vyos(formally Vyatta). Regard OpenWRT: There is a sort of central management solution for OpenWRT called openWISP.
The problem is getting access to the full Qualcomm and Broadcom feature set - think beamforming, hardware switch acceleration, even Broadcom's layer 2 bridging.
blown away that they want you to have a cloud account but were just breached not too long ago.
I love me some irony
They had the cloud requirement in the roadmap before the breach.
The breach does not come at the opportune time for them and it could be argued that a malicious breach may be in retaliation against those plans.
Or it could just be a coincidence of timing.
and breached again just a few days ago.
The breach was a employee trying to extort Bitcoin from Ubiquiti.
You raised some true points. In November I migrated my modest home network from Cisco Meraki to Ubiquiti Unify and I have not regretted it once so far. I run a DreamMachine (not the Pro) as my Router and bought a couple of UniFi APs to cover the house, but the hardware was still cheaper than extending the Meraki licences for another three years
Really love Unifi for wireless. CAPsMAN may be an option but with drawbacks.
What drawbacks are you concerned about? I prefer it over Unifi in most ways.
@@nilpo The management of multiple sites does get a little troublesome using OpenVPN TCP or SSTP vs Unifi. I am using Mikrotik hardware for my home firewall, Queuing, PPPOE, VLANS, routing and mangle rules. RouterOS combined with Unifi works really well for my projects.
I bought the cloud key as I did not want to have to maintain yet another VM, computer, etc. Simple just sits off to the side. Update the firmware and now you have to have a cloud account, no way. Only had my setup for a year and it is working well, but with this change and who knows what else, time to look else where. Also won't be deploying the product anymore.
Tom, what do you think about joining forces with other tech youtubers with a huge fan base like linus tech tips to politely persuade Ubiquiti into making decisions that are more welcoming to their customers?
Thank you for being the voice of reason. You are totally correct. I can't find anything out there that allows for an self-hosted controller in the range of Unifi. Doesn't really happen until you get to the next tier of expensive.
Omada is actually pretty good and I'd suggest diving into it. Especially with the new Switches and Routers, very little devices but it looks promising. Plus they're working on the cloud controller as well.
As an early Unifi user, I am now an early Omada user. Please do a video on a basic Omada SDN605 + Switch + Access point... It hasn't been a bad experience on a symmetrical gigabit connection with multiple VPN's
I use EdgeMax for wired portion and Engenious Tech for wireless portion.
You could run router OS virtually, run CAPsMAN and then link in external CAPs
Engenius comes to mind with their EzMaster controller. Never played with it though.
I've used the on prem switch/controller which is great! Haven't used EzMaster though.
Damn! I was literally learning about OpenDayLight.. When this video popped up..
I'm currently trying to set a Mikrotik + ODL Network..
this makes me rethink on going with them for home was thinking of a udnp 1-2 ap's and 2-5 cameras will wait for now
Definitely not the way to go for cameras.
The hardware is middle of the road, software is promotive, and the price is high end.
Switches are marginal - cisco's Small Biz line the got from Linksys has better bang for the buck.
Their 'security gateway' is flawed in concept - not enough ass to do any real filtering at speed.
All in all, UB is charging a very steep price for the UI, in the form of limitations in the discrete components.
Yeah, I didn't think Redhat would F#*k over their community, but sometimes corporations just don't care.
Yeah, the problem is that once they get big (nearly monopole size in their respective area), they forgot how they got there! If people would not trust their product/services would not pay for it!
The same is true still, the way this can be fought is by having law to protect customers, users and businesses who buys their product against such changes!!!
Also monopolization should be banned on the law level and should punish such with HUUGE FINE so that it not worth to do so, plus the law also should prohibit to merge lots of similar types of company under ONE BIG and consider it as monopolization too and deal with it accordingly!
Until such time unifi/redHat/apple/ms/fb/twitter/amazon/google etc will exist and have big impact on our digital life and keep destroying competition!
- Hope Unifi will NOT get more nasty and this is their last business level goofing toward customers and will not try further stupid similar thing! The next stupid move certainly will cause their business, although that will require uniform user back off to hurt their economy/stock value enough to have investors change their minds to get their stock value back. Unfortunately ALL INVESTORS base their decision solely or ROI in a very very very stupid disrespectful way to their actual customers, sadly not enough customers STOP supporting the product when it happens!
If there would be a law to sue companies easily for such under the belt changes with really ridiculously BIG fines, this really would make ANY BIG CORPORATION to think multiple times before even considering to pull such move off!
Well, Red Hat has been owned by IBM for quite a while now... ;)
@@MrVagyok RHEL isn't their own entity.
@@MikeBolitho Yeh, but now IBM got the bright idea to further monopolize on it even risking to break the trust which has been put into CentOS, not mentioning all the efforts contributors put into to CentOS.
Greedy bastards!
Aruba Unified APs running Instant virtual controller locally is a great UniFi replacement. Combined with Aruba Airwave (on site) allows for great multi site management of Instant clusters and Aruba switches. Airwave is a paid per device license though.
Been using TP-Link for a few years at an SMB without much issues. Literally the only thing I have ever had is a hand full of times over the years I have had to reboot the APs because some users cellphone would not connect.
Setup and applying firmware updates has been a breeze.
I swear Ruckus has a chart with 3 levels of controller, unleashed, local, and cloud, but i can't seem to find where I saw that.
The big issue I see with Aruba Instant On is there’s no firewall/gateway controlled by the portal. I know the one AP can be a firewall, but the features are very limited on that.
I switched from full Unifi to Aruba Instant On, awesome AP's and very stable. no firmware problems so far :)
Hey if you see this, after 3 years, are you still happy with Aruba Instant On? How about firmware issues? This was my complaint about Unifi. I got tired of being the home IT department and switched to multiple Eero Pro 6E APs. All was good last year
except for lack of features, but it worked. This year not so good with firmware seeming like Alpha or beta. So I am looking to make another change.
I'm also reminded why I deploy onsite unifi controllers on Raspberry Pis instead of cloud keys..
What spec pi do you need for the controller? Does it need much RAM?
@@DonGerico 2GB or 4GB should do.
Are they east to remotely manage? I haven't deployed these yet so I'm not too familiar with the interface unfortunately
The pi have a drawback, it's only sd card. It wear out the cards over time, even the expensive ones..
When pi have real hard drive controller that would probably be a better solution.
@@jada1173 Which is where a RAM disk comes in. Or use network storage.
Wow clients with 300-400 APs?! I used to setup networks/servers for large call centers supporting upwards of 500 employees and I can't remember ever installing more than maybe 30 APs max. 400 APs sounds like a massive corporate head quarters for FAANG.
You can still add local credentials for a super admin account in user management.
And if you really don't like UnifiOS, you can downgrade firmware to 1.1.13 via SSH as well.
Multisite workarounds:
If you have a new CKG2 with UnifiOS preinstalled you can downgrade firmware to create a second site before upgrading to UnifiOS in which case you'll retain multisite option on the latest firmware.
If you upgraded single site configuration to UnifiOS, you can backup the configuration, load it up into a self hosted controller in a VM, add another site, back it up on VM and import it back to CloudKey.
What bothers me is that you cannot change owner account once you've set it.
You mentioned Zoneminder @ 6:50 I think you meant Zonedirector ? Zoneminder is an opensource camera surveillance software for Linux which I use.
At this point, it’s very challenging to say that Ubiquiti fully understands their users. You really nailed it with the roadmap...I just wish they’d publish a public roadmap. This would help manage disappointment from users.
To be honest unifi-video wasn't going away when protect came out, but a year late EOL ubiquity has track record when it comes to these things. When they remove something in one place you can be sure that the rest follows.
I like the TP-Link Omada platform for small single site deployments. The hardware is inexpensive and reliable, and the Omada controller software does what you need after you learn it's quirks.
But I dont see it scaling up very well. Their new SDN controller update is less than a year old, and the switch support is minimal. They also dont have great options for switching hardware, especially noticeable is 10G/multi switches being absent while their newest AP offering has a 2.5G port on it.
I've been using Aruba IAP-205s in my house for about two years. I have never needed to reboot one. They just work.
I just ordered 3 Aruba IAP-225s to get the 3x3 MIMO capabilities, and they were $89/each used from eBay.
No controller needed. No cloud. No licenses. Enterprise features. Configure one AP the way you want, and the rest boot up, discover, and auto provision themselves.
udm/pro also removed the ability to config snmp w/ this firmware/controller as well
I'm hoping for an open source competitor where you flash an opensource OS on existing AP devices and connect it to a similar server like Unifi's
Is it true that the self-hosted unifi controller now brings up an alert on login (after updating to the latest version) that recommend a UDM Pro for the best experience? Cause if that's true.. that's worrying.
Since 6.0.43 you get this message when adding a new site twitter.com/TomLawrenceTech/status/1352699777310486530
@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Do you think they're going to remove multi-site in general? That's kind of the impression I'm getting that they want one device per site.
@@droknron if so, they would lose me as a customer (25 sites, 1 Controller). I bought ubiquiti with no cloud in mind.
Cambium has on on-prem option, however, they only have APs and switches so you'd have to go a different route for a gateway device. I just signed up for a partnership with them and have some NFR devices on order that I plan on testing.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. I would like to suggest if you can comment about Mikrotik. I know it doesnt have a nice UI but I got impress about its flexibility and low price.
I’m looking to switch as well. Ubiquiti has been going downhill rapidly.
I'm with Tom I don't think they'll move to the cloud.. But! Again they're people that used to work for Apple.. 😅
I feel like it's the bait and switch method. Get everyone on there platform and then pull the features that everyone switched because of.
@Kirk Eby I run mine in a docker container as well on my NAS.
@@daltonschrader8328 Sad, but true!
@Kirk Eby I also self host via docker for my customers. I use an unraid Nas
Aruba sells perpetual capacity licenses for its AP's connected to series 7000 series controllers.
Aruba's warranty blows Unifi out of the water as well!
@@nellermann But their prices blow up your wallet, compared to Unifi. This is also something nobody seems to remember: Unifi sits at a rather interesting price point in the market, not just in terms of over-time investment, but also the immediate cost of hardware. That may not matter much for large deployments, where you buy hundreds of access points for a single customer, but with smaller customers, being able to deploy the entire hardware necessary for the wireless side of things for a couple thousand euros less than say Meraki is a pretty big deal.
I understand some of the ubiquity APs can be flashed with Open-WRT firmware. For those devices it is available OpenWisp 2 - a free software controller, created for Mass deployments ( developed for the city of Rome ). I’ve never tried it, but it can be a good exercise and who knows... Maybe it is a hidden jewel.
I setup a friend house with Unify , ended up using a NanoPi R2S running a docker for the unify controller . Works well, cheaper than cloud key stuff and no cloud...
TP-Link recently released a pretty big update to their Omada Controller and I think at the least it's a step in the right direction. They've added support for switches and they also have a router/firewall appliance that supports it as well, and I believe they even released software updates for a few recent switches to add support for them. They claim to have a simplified VPN setup if you are connecting sites that have their supported router/firewall. It's not quite as robust in terms of configurability even compared to Unifi, but I think it's fair to at least keep it in your radar! I use their OC200 appliance that runs the controller software and paired it with a few of their APs in my home with a couple WLANs and I've basically had zero Wi-Fi problems.
Maybe Engenius or Grandstream
I have 3 Grandstream Access Points since 1 year and very happy😀
Aruba Instant is self hosted controller/cluster on the AP's themselves, I've got Several Aruba Instant AP's in my home and have been very happy with them.
Mikrotik and Draytek come to mind.
We use TP-Link with single and multi-site customers that we manage and so far haven't had any real issues. Granted we've not really used UniFi so possibly don't miss what we've never known and from watching your videos I can see that the UniFi feature-set is richer. Also from your videos, we don't have any of the large-scale deployments that you have showcased, so there may be a consideration there. That said when the price-point is taken into consideration TP-Link become a much more compelling argument. Obviously, people can only speak from their own experience but ours has been happy clients and minimal troubleshooting.
I have Unifi at home and have deployed Omada in 3 sites all managed for my controller located at one of the sites. ust put the IP address or URL of the controller into the remote device and it appears in yor cloud controller straight away. All works great from the app or jumping straight in via the static IP of the site hosting the controller. We chose Omada as the sites are mainly outdoors and the product is cheaper and just works!
Having deployed and used many systems as an IT professional here’s my view:
Meraki: Great cloud control, super expensive. Extremely unreliable AP.s. Good for small multi site companies with unlimited budget. Single IT staff to maintain and monitor everything from cloud. Their AP for the price crashes a lot
Ruckus: Basic controller but rock solid reliability. In the real world after setting up even after the so call limitations, the main difference is that it doesn’t have any trouble. Never needing reboot, just solid
I give another real world scenario. One of my projects was to deploy a 50x TV display wall that stream video contents. Meraki struggle after 20 devices connected. Unifi struggled after 30x. It was only Ruckus that was able to handle the load.
Unifi is great for the price but not the best at any price. Many companies willing to pay a few hundred more for better equipment
Hey Tom... I was recently looking for UniFi alternatives as well and kind of get to the same conclusions as you. Like it or not, UniFi still has some very interesting differentials from all the others. Not being forced to cloud only management is very important to me as well and, as of today, UniFi is basically the only one that allows that. There's Mikrotik with capsman, but it's for the very techy nerds only, not quite easy as things can be with UniFi. Despite being worried with some changes and specially lack of communication on some important changes, I have no option to keep using UniFi. Despite some problems, it's still a very great networking solution (for wireless and switches, forget the gateways)
Aruba have awesome features as access point, BLE and optional EnOcean gateway (not on InstantOn though), which is great for both businesses and smart homes. They also have Zigbee dongles, but they cost as much as Unifi AC PRO.
Also, for everyone who's complaining about the UDM&UDMPro who upgraded from a USG, I think you completely mistaken the target market it was for - it seems to be built for ppl who are on Amplifi and are looking to move into the Unifi market. Normally for current Unifi customers, the real upgrade path with have been the UXG, and apparently with a self-hosted controller for sure now.
5:23 Really really interested to hear you expand on the ways you believe Omada to not be ready to compete with unifi. Does that assessment apply only to commercial contexts or prosumers also? That would be a great vid!
I set up some Omada in a Business and at a private Customer, and Unifi at Schools. They feel very similar, but Omada kinda is not as fancy, but does it Job well. Didn't test both of them well tho, i mostly set it up and did a bit of testing.
The only other companies I see that offer on site controllers are firewall companies; the firewalls are the controllers. Watchguard, Sonicwall. And they tend to only be for Wifi APs.
They do work great for customizing ports as they are firewalls and allow for all the normal customizations you'd expect a business grade firewall to do.
From reading comments on different TH-cam videos you’d think none of our access points are going to work when I get to the office Monday morning.
Mikrotik has been working great for me
Same. Depending on deployment requirement. But have a larger deploy using CAPSman
I'm jumping ship to Aruba with an on-site controller :)
Aint aruba much more expensive ?
@@rubenschoups7937 retail? Yes. however, 90 dollars on eBay for the controller and 105 dollars on eBay for their equivalent of a AP AC nanoHD. (ap-335)
@@NickF1227 if you go ebay agree, but i cant put ebay stuff at customers. Just checked the ap335 would be 1080 without vat 😅
@@rubenschoups7937 depends on the customer too. Like I have a bunch of small customers I've put used enterprise gear at, and at my full time gig I'm a k12 so I get deep discounts with eRate, so I'm not paying retail anyway.
It’s pretty clear the direction they are going now. They are keeping the local hosting with the cloud keys and then using the online admin role for remote management. That allows you to manage many locally hosting devices from the cloud. They also seem to be working toward merging their unifi and edge lines of equipment.
Im curious, what is ur opinion regarding TP-link Omada?
thank you
5:23
One of my sites is a multi-suite building with switching on all floors and layer 2 connectivity between tenants and ISP. Love it for easy management; however, may have to consider another product because UniFi only allows egress bandwidth throttling on switch ports, not ingress. Some tenants are periodically choking the upload for the whole building. I don’t really want to go back to individual direct access to switches just for the traffic shaping capability.
I agree that Ubiquiti needs to improve its communication. I expect at least a public statement to be issued when a release contains a significant change like this one. It can be a simple blog post, but please be transparent as much as you can and explain the rationale behind that decision.
Aruba doesn't require a cloud subscription. I use IAD-305s at my house and it has a built-in controller. I don't pay any licensing fees and still get firmware updates regularly.
Hey Tom, I like using mikrotiks CAPs and WAPs, they're all managed by mikrotiks CAPsman, and so far, this it the least expensive option, I've installed them for a couple of family members and they love it, it works around same as unifi, but it's all managed in the RouterOS, and since I always use mikrotik as a GW, it's really convenient.
Isn't there a self-hosted routeros?
@@martinmuren8757 Yea there is, you can run it in a VM, but I see no point in that since I need to use something as a GW anyway, powerful mikrotik device that can route a gigabit is pretty cheap, so I see no point in using anything else, plus from where I am from, everything else is way too uncommon and expensive.
6.043 is the newest and i can stil add sites on my windows controller so this can also on a raspberry pi or intel nuc or server , multisite should not be hosted on a cloud key.
That was probably the thought process of Ubiquiti as well, since you cannot scale out a cloud key, as easily as a self hosted UniFi install (regardless if on-prem or cloud). But we will have to wait and see, if further news emerge in the near future.
Newer ruckus unleashed 200.8 actually does support management of their switches, it also increases a lot of limits such as the max aps going from 25 to 128.
I would love to hear what UniFi has to say about it. Possibly it would restore confidence in the users, if we would know the exact reasons and that there is no general change of policy to be expected. The way it is now, I am not sure at all should deploy it in larger installations.
If they know not to do it to the self hosted controller why did they even do it to the cloudkey in the first place?
You always need to be able to threaten to move supplier or they get complacent, pull features, and raise prices on a whim.
I'm sure if Fortinet has been mentioned or not but they do all sorts of stuff. I manage a few sites with their stuff. The company does all sorts of stuff in the networking and cybersecurity space. I've used some of their FortiAP/FortiGate NGFW. I like them but have dealt with some annoying bugs that sometimes never seem to go away. They're support was pretty good though when I needed some firmware help and diving into logs causing a memory leak or something like that. Seemed better than the basic paid Cisco support as well. The Meraki stuff I've used also seems to be pretty stable and was mindblowing to see them in person when they launched and try it out but was too expensive for our needs at the time, we needed 1000s of APs, and switches, routers, bridges etc.
Either way, I could go on and on but check them out. Maybe Sophos FW/APs worth mentioning? I've used a few others but not sure they're worth mentioning as actual alternatives to the SDN of Ubiquiti's stuff. I can't say I know of anyone that's doing so much of what Ubiquiti is doing or UniFi line to be specific quite like they are without support costs and closed source.
Aruba instant on switches are fantastic! Cheaper than comparable unifi, more features, local device management, real support, not running perpetually beta firmware. No cloudkey equivalent, but you have stacking on the 1960 series.
stacking is a killer feature. I`m looking on Ubiquiti, and just cannot understand how do they release "Enterprise" line switches (25G!!) without MLAG or stacking. In their vision, mission critical means adding a battery inside of the switch. what a hell do they smoke?
Is Sonic Wall viable option? I just purchased a Sonic Wall Router for like $250. This devices are pretty pricey though and their parent company is HELL/DELL. I own Ubiquity products and I like the enterprise level SDN control without having to pay the big price of a Sonic Wall.
CloudKey was always a giant waste anyhow. You're better off with a 4 or 8GB Raspberry Pi 4. For uber longevity, get the new Argon40 M.2 SSD case. You can load Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on the Pi, boot from an SSD (much longer life than an SD Card), and run UniFi in a Docker container with minimal hassle. You can educate yourself in a day how to get the job done. Now you've got room to run other apps on the Pi. Upgrades are terribly easy (pull latest container version, stop current container, rename current container, instantiate new container, later delete old container).
Tom, can you please do a video on the privacy implications of joining a ubiquiti device with the cloud? Do you know if they send browsing/network use telemetry back to their servers?
I think Aruba also propose the same scalability as unifi.
You can have locally controled APs without cloud requirements
I’m surprised you didn’t mention Aruba Instant (not InstantOn) which runs the controller in the APs as well. There is also full fledged ArubaOS controllers and also Cisco controllers but those start to get $$$$!
I had a couple original pre-Cisco Meraki MR12 APs still deployed until late 2019. If there was an end of life notification, I missed it, but they showed up as valid devices on my Meraki dashboard.
4:40 there is local management ton Aruba IAP they have a builtin Virtual controller
On my business side thankfully our installer was more aware of what was going on & started conversations about migration a year ago. I personally was using unifi to manage my different relatives' home networks & I'm unsure if I believe the solution is to invest in at least a rpi for each home. If they decide to screw the brand & destroy the controller too at least the pis w/ external antenna & batman-ad are a future proof & robust mesh solution
am I the only one that hates the 'cloud?'
Atleast the networking equipment should be kept local which handles our data or is the gateway to our home . It should be totally localised and just connect to the internet for updates
The cloud has pro’s and con’s. In my experience hybrid is the way to pitch for *many* businesses. Core infrastructure maybe shouldn’t be in the cloud and flexible workloads maybe shouldn’t be local.
you're far from alone, i detest it,, one thing richard stallman said that I agree with, the cloud is just a hyped up marketing term, the clueless thinks WOW, cloud... but cloud means simply "someone elses hardware stemming from the old POTS" so ummm hello, used web hosting in the past 25/30 years? ... *sigh*
Nope
'cloud' and 'subscription models' REALLY get my back up
First I want to compliment you on your videos. Your expertise and clear explanations are spot on. Your willingness to share your knowledge is complimentary.
Aruba Instant On may require the cloud but Aruba Instant AP does not. I believe Instant AP can be considered a viable, although more expensive, alternative to Unifi. Does not require cloud account or a controller. One AP acts as the local controller. How you want to manage that remotely / centrally with no cloud dependency is another question. You can certainly manage each location individually.
I've used ubiquiti for a long time, even after our company was purchased. But recently we started our IT integration with our massive Corporate entity. So now we are moving to all Cisco gear. I never thought I'd say this put I'm actually happy so I don't have to worry about the BS happening over at Ubiquiti in the last few years.
I would love to see a serious competitor to Ubiquity. I don't love the direction they are going, and some of the decisions they've made. I don't even care if that comes with a monthly or yearly cost for excellent support. I don't mind paying more for the best, and I am just not blown away by any company geared toward SOHO, small business, etc. I want a guaranteed support length, with EOS/EOL/etc. spelled out up front, no games, no losing features, no surprises. Can there seriously not be a company like this out there?
You seem to be describing Cisco Meraki, they have rock solid products with excellent support. But like most things in life you pay for what you get 😀
You should write „commercial“ in the description
Engenius is similar to unifi. they even have similar cloud key function . Do have a look.
Watch out. Engenius likes to put out defective products that they hope they can fix via updates in the future.
The UDM Pro is similar in that they removed multi-site support (actually never had it) and required a cloud account to set up.
Tom, I just ran into an issue with a UniFi switch (and the support team) I purchased 2 lite 8port switches, I had a problem with one that would adopt and then just disappear from the network. I then adopted a second one, and it worked and continues to work. the 1st one after much resetting and emails back and forth with UniFi support, just will not stay visible to the controller. UniFi answer to the problem was that its my controller. (raspberry Pi Hosted) and that I should choose a "supported hardware" device.
Good afternoon Tom, thank you for all the videos and comments you give to expand our knowledge of different technologies and platforms. My question is; for the free downloadable version of Unifi Universal Controller, are these customers affected by this change? I am in the process to upgrade my home network and I was researching Unifi to buy the UniFi Dream Machine Pro and the UniFi Switch PRO 24 PoE. However, now with the new changes am hesitant to move forward with the buy.
EnGenius ???
Fortinet - despite your reporting about a year ago of their hard-coding flaws (and to your point fortinet has a robust history of reporting updates to their customers unlike UBNT). Fortigate products are dense. It’s hard to penetrate ones brain into their immense product stack with probably 100 different Forti*** brands. But they do offer on site control. The firewalls are the Golightly with security features robust enough for most enterprises. But the WAPs are good too and management is done on their hardware.
Downside as I mentioned would be your knowledge of their hard coded keys, also they tend to make things a bit too complex when ordering with so many products.
It’s worth a check though. Fortinet definitely gives off a more “grown up company” vibe than UBNT
How about Cambium Networks? I think they have the option of either an on-prem controller or a cloud controller, depending on your needs
So I may or may not be out of place here, but I am looking to setup a whole-home network for the house that I am closing on in the near future. So this means a NAS, maybe a couple of switches, one or two access points and about 6 cameras; plus all of the miscellaneous network devices that my family uses. Is it manageable to not have a single dashboard to manage everything? I know it would be more convenient to have everything controlled from one place, but Ubiquiti's business model concerns me moving forward. So, this means I would need to go with a more pieced together solution, and lose on the benefits of a nicely integrated ecosystem. Any thoughts on this? My biggest worry is getting locked into an ecosystem, having the business model change significantly, and have thousands of dollars(That's a lot for me) of equipment to try to find replacements for because said business model change isn't sustainable for me.
There are always trade offs, I still like the UniFi line up, just not their routers or UDM/UDM Pro.
Interesting reading the comments on Omada, lots of people seem to have had a poor experience with it. Personally we have been using it at a few small offices and it’s been rock solid, better than our old UniFi deployments. We are using OC200s which compared to the Gen1 CKs are a dream. They don’t shit the bed on a hard shutdown. I can’t comment on their switching and routing get as we won’t touch that. The one big advantage of the TP Link APs is that they have their own web management console so you don’t have to use Omada. Opposed to unifi having to configure with a controller or a phone app.
I can't say with 100% certainty, but I think some of the issue may be because the "Omada" name is a recent change. I tried the TP-Link offering a few years ago and it was not called Omada and there appears to be a lot of legacy equipment / migration stuff from the old thing into Omada. For example, I had a TP-Link switch that the model number was listed as supporting Omada, but if you dig into it you find out you need to flash a special firmware to the switch to make it Omada compatible. Then on top of that my specific hardware revision of that model was explicitly NOT compatible with Omada in their documentation. This all leads me to believe there's a somewhat messy transition happening to get the Omada stuff up and running. On the TP-Link site there is a very short list of supported hardware which all appear to be newer products that were just released / releasing soon. However if you dig into the support section of their site there is a lot of legacy equipment that can be flashed to be "compatible" with Omada and some carry limitations. The single switch and AP I purchased came from the supported hardware list and were not legacy pieces of hardware that were reflashed and I haven't noticed any problems yet.
Are you sure about this "Unleashed" stuff from Ruckus? It seems - while you don't need a dedicated controller - you still need the "end user support for Unleashed APs".
Cambium Networks, they have been know to use same AP hardware, less aggressive to grow, more reliable
I would like to see a review of the Ruckus Unleashed AP's and get your [Tom] opinion on them. As you have extensively dealt with the UniFi AP's. I've been running a Ruckus R510 AP with the unleashed firmware and been very happy. You can pick the Ruckus AP's off of eBay for very reasonable prices. That is where I purchased mine from.
TPLink has improved greatly for their normal individual home/homeoffice APs. Better than any other $50-150 non-controller AP. Their mesh stuff is half baked. Haven't tried their managed things yet.
I just upgraded to the UDM Pro as I was having performance issues with IPS (USG Pro 4/Cloud Key Gen1), completely didn't realise that the UDM Pro is single site, WISH I had known/researched better before the purchase, I would NOT have bought it, very annoyed that a device with Pro in it's title has less features than a device a generation older.
Will be a matter of time before networking goes open source
great comment about Ubiquiti and I really hope that's the self hosted controller do stay with us with the UDM and.... Would love to see a interview with the CEO.
What about Mikrotik with Capsman feature to manage multiple AP? They also introduced some really good priced devices recently like cAP ac.
To this day after 2 years I still don't understand why anyone would buy a cloud key. I run my controller on a pi 3. I just moved off of USG to pfsense. But I love unifi's ap because the ssids can still be bound to vlans.
I agree with you for most situations. For home users, it's easy to run it on a RPi or an old laptop. For corporate users, it's easy to run it on docker or spin up a VM (I run it on docker on a VM). For small businesses (or home users) who want an entire turnkey network a cloudkey or UDM may be desirable, everything is included, no need for any additional hardware or configuration, just drop it in. For VARs or MSPs that don't have a lot of Unifi deployments, I can see how a cloudkey could also be advantageous.
@@Zeric1 I can see how Amplifi or UDM is useful, thus my follow up response. In those situations, once again, I don't see why Cloudkey is useful at all for home users. For Cloudkey now, in light of the recent firmware changes, I really see no use. It may be better for someone to (maybe Ubiquiti) to just sell an SD card with the software preconfigured for Raspberry Pis or other SBC.
Multi site still works, you just have to enable it in settings.
Your take on Omada is interesting. I was looking at that as an alternative, Ubiquiti gear here in AU is... fairly expensive.
Aruba does have local virtual controller..for the Instant versions..