Unifi Home Network Upgrade - Why I finally switched

Let me know what your favorite Unifi features are or what you want to see down in the comments.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Become a Channel Member!

Support the channel on:

Affiliate Links:

My Studio Equipment:

0:00 Intro
1:13 Hardware
7:01 Hardware Setup
9:04 My Network Setup
18:53 Conclusion

[scottwilkins]

My house was also a "both" situation. I love how Ubiquiti helped me solve that. Internet comes into the "office" while the distribution switch is in another room. Ubiquiti makes it make sense.

[ecur]

When I found out about Ubiquiti I was sold and all these thoughts came to mind, started watching few videos of other home setups and decided to buy and install new rack, ran cables for cameras, bought the UDM Pro a 24 PoE switch, 3 APs and few cameras. About $3000 later and convincing my wife not to divorce me I can say that I'm pretty happy, we have solid connectivity all around the house, I host my own surveillance videos and the system pretty much runs itself.

[ZRubidium]

Really glad you're down to earth and honest about your level of knowledge on the stuff you do videos on.

I setup Unifi in my town home and a full system in my parents new home, added the ability for me to manage it for them. It's really cool, and I can help them troubleshoot much easier while being hundreds of miles away. I'm looking to upgrade once I buy my own home. Keeping making awesome videos

[mikeborkhuis]

Welcome to Unifi. I use a pfSense router with Unifi switches and AP. Great setup.

[jasonrrossi]

Appreciate the honest position and "just enough tech". Your explanations of the reasons are relatable, your artistic choice to focus on the unique deltas between what you have and what is common in youtube is a good approach.

I think its amusing on some levels to have a networking backend like you show with the number of devices you have... but that's another story. But its not a negative, its just the nature of an enthusiast over a minimalist. And comments about "optimization" I think are interesting (either money {you can get x more if you did y, or performance ).Sometimes you buy a car because you just need to transport, sometimes you buy it because it cheap, other times you have a luxury to try something new. These are personal choices, all with pros and cons.


I hit a tipping point at home were the number of devices and the usage caused me grief using google wifi (having to restart the device regularly), the locked eco-system didn't allow me to easily put pfsense in front (ended up with a double NAT). So I debate the path to some increased stability and I favor simplicity over many other items these days..

I do hope ubiquity gives you some product to allow you to compare a UDM Pro to pfsense, but I fear that will never happen until they have better feature parity. I suspect you will see nothing but things you miss, or logical issues with their implementation. These gaps are usually "ok" for a typical situations, but its hard to lose features you are used to.

[WizzRacing]

I started using them 7 years ago.. I ended up taking their Unifi University courses. As a client wanted only their products. As he had enough of Cisco Systems....Was I in for a surprise. As the cost was 10x cheaper then Cisco Systems...

I now have several clients that this is all I used. As The Cloud Key allows me to login from anywhere. To perform maintenance and troubleshooting.

You can also down load your home layout. Then place each each product in the place you have it. Then use the Icon matching for the devices you are using....

And be real careful what you update. It can bring headaches. If you're not ready.. Especially the router and any repeaters installed.

[mercurysteam]

Refreshing to see a slightly unconventional setup, most tech Youtubers will go straight to a UDM Pro, a bunch of top end UAP devices and the most expensive Unifi switch they can get. This is much more reminiscent of prosumer setups some of us have at home and I'll be keeping an eye out for more of your videos.

Keep up the good work 👍

[sirmrorange]

Chris from CrossTalk solutions has good videos on Unifi, if you want to get more out of the ecosystem.


Got mine setup through his vods :)

[JoaquinVacas]

Main reason why I virtualize network "appliances" is because having 3 Proxmox nodes (for example) + Ceph with dedicated links between them, leaves me huge room for "expanding" the resources of each VM/container, less power consumption, cables, general use of space and a Cloud Key could fail, but 3 nodes at the same time is pretty difficult.

[AvengeTheTECH]

I'm just making the switch myself, completely new to ubiquiti. I got the dream machine pro se and the 24 enterprise XE. Move the Internet in to the outhouse and using devolo homeplug to carry 1Gig into the house as it on the same mains ring. Will eventually turn of the Wi-Fi on the devolo AP and use PoE injector and ubiquiti AP for Wi-Fi in the house. Still a work in progress as need to configure current draytek router configuration into the dream machine. Crazy fun headaches

[techtalkandtechunboxed]

Welcome to UniFi family you will love it and Pfsense choice is great and work well with UniFi I have same pfsense router but small one sg 1100

[dylantaylor]

For the switch flex XG, just plug it into USB-C and use the 1Gbit PoE uplink as a downlink for something like a raspberry pi.

[jonathanhellewell]

That 1Gb port on the Flex XG doesn't need to be your uplink, use it only as poe input. Run another cable to one of the other ports for your link to the rest of the network at 10Gb

[kleeenco]

Hey just FYI a lot of people have annotations turned off, if you want to link to something please add it to your description. it's fun to watch youtubers point to empty space though :D

[petervandebeek]

Cool video! I'm planning to set something up also with those two Enterprise switches.

But on the Wifi-side. Please do yourself and others a favour and set the 2.4GHz band to 20MHz. 40MHz is always overlapping something. And don't go crazy on the 5GHz also. 40MHz is great in most cases. Only 80MHz when you have the "air" space.

[TripOnSpot]

I just got a deco x55 and it’s perfect for the average person

[Walterz]

Nice video if I ever get the chance to run cables in my home I need a minimum 12 port Poe in the attic and then just a small 8 port would be nice on the main floor with fiber running from attic to main floor with a back up fiber then I can have 4 ports each bedroom and 4 for outdoor cameras I also have the udr installed at the moment and loving it just waiting to order one for my mother

[mikescott]

I like the look of the Cisco CBS range

[andrevangijsel]

I switchef to Aruba instant on it has a cloud controller by standard and automatic firmware upgrade, you can choose wether you configure your switch locally or in the cloud. It supports stacking depending on switch series. Ap22 is a great device.

[curtispavlovec]

I’m a fan of UniFi APs and the Flex Mini switches are a great value. I’m less excited with their routers/firewalls and their other switch products.