The UniFi fanbois were aflutter when Ubiquiti released this video promoting an upcoming UniFi Dream Router:
It sounded like a substantial upgrade to the UniFi Dream Machine: WiFi 6, two ports of PoE, 128GB SSD, an SD slot for storage expansion, and the ability to run Protect and other Ubiquiti controllers that haven’t been available to UDM users due to the lack of storage.
Then it hit the Early Access store for $79. Huh?
Continue readingI’ve been lax in firealling my VLANs at home, but with the recent controversy over UniFi devices phoning home without consent, this has taken on renewed importance. I’m also taking on a new tenant in my detached apartment and would like to keep all their stuff segregated from mine.
Fortunately it’s all pretty easy.
For my network, I’m keeping my Cloud Key and Pi-Hole on the main LAN. I have additional Corporate VLANs created for Management, Cameras, and the Apartment.
In the Firewall rules, for WAN_OUT I’ve created two rules to Drop all traffic from the Management and Cameras networks. They cannot reach the Internet at all.
To allow and deny particular cross-VLAN traffic, the first step is to create a group of all the Private IP address ranges:
Back in the Rules area, LAN_IN needs a series of rules:
The Allow rules must be before the Deny rules for each Network.
The gotcha with denying devices access to the Internet is that they cannot directly obtain firmware updates. For UniFi Networking products this can be worked-around by having the UniFi Controller cache the firmware prior to upgrading — see Settings -> Maintenance -> Firmware.
I’m not sure whether Protect can distribute firmware updates to the Cameras. Guess I’ll find out the next time there’s an update available. Once my UniFi Protect NVR arrives I will place that in the Cameras VLAN so that traffic doesn’t have to cross the router and figure out the WAN_OUT / LAN_IN firewall rules needed to keep it happy.
I have a Ring Doorbell Pro on my front door which has always been problematic. At first I could get it to join the WiFi but then it would error — turns out it was trying to use an outside DNS server and I had blocked clients from using any DNS but mine.
When I replaced my temporary AmpliFi setup with UniFi, I couldn’t get it to find my SSID at all. I literally held an AP directly in front of it and it would find several neighbors WiFi but not mine.
I read somewhere that sometimes a Ring will get confused seeing several APs broadcasting the same SSID, so I decided to give it its own AP and SSID on 2.4GHz-only. I put it in the attic slightly offset from being directly above the door. This has mostly worked ok, except that it takes a long time to re-connect after the AP reboots from firmware updates.
Today I had cause to look at my AP retry rates…
And the Ring’s AP retry rate is just ridiculously bad. I crawled into the attic and shoved the AP all the way into the soffit. Gained 6dBm but the retry rate didn’t budge. Changed from Channel 1 to Channel 11, no difference.
Then I had the thought that, since initially installing this stuff, I’ve put a great deal of effort into tuning the power levels and minRSSI values to get devices to use the right AP instead of clinging to a poor signal. Let’s try turning off an AP in the attic I don’t really need anymore, bring the one I’ve been using for the Ring back into broadcasting my normal SSID on 2.4GHz and 5GHz, and trying joining the Ring to it.
And it joined right up! On 5GHz. The signal is decent and the retry rates have dropped to a more reasonable level. Huzzah!
I have a lot of front yard to maintain.
It would be nice to have good WiFi signal while mowing all this lawn. There’s an AP in the attic above the front door but the signal doesn’t reach all that far, maybe 30-40′ out. I needed something with a bit more oomf and the UAP-AC-M + UMA-D antenna combination sounded like the perfect solution.
If you haven’t heard, the UMA-D is a tiny miracle antenna: dual-band, 15dBi, 45-degrees on 5GHz and 90-degrees on 2.4GHz, for $99. It transforms the otherwise unimpressive UAP-AC-M into a directional WiFi blaster that will send its signal hundreds of feet downrange in open terrain.
As an initial test, I placed the combo in the bonus room knee wall space:
Blasting through my roof I was getting about 180Mb/s of download speeds to my iPhone XS… from across the street! That’s 140-ish feet away.
Of course, that wasn’t good enough for me, so I found a pre-existing hole to run an Ethernet cable to and mounted it outside the garage.
The improvement is incredible.
That’s from my phone. 140 feet away.
If you need to blast a WiFi signal far away outdoors, the UAP-AC-M + UMA-D are a powerful and affordable solution.