Ubiquiti Second Thoughts

Second thoughts not in the way that one normally thinks about that term, but just thinking about the process of having installed a small Ubiquiti configuration in my house and how it's worked out.  As I look through the blog posting history, I don't see any indication that I wrote about the Ubiquiti system in the first place.  So, I guess I should.

What drove my deployment of Ubiquiti was upgrading my FiOS connection to GB at the behest of my boys, who were living with me at the time.  The Verizon-provided router that I was currently using was not going to be capable of 1 GB.  This was after Verizon had lowered GB Internet to reasonable prices (< $100/month) and about March of 2017, right about two years ago.

Our first attempt was to use a new Verizon-provided router for the service.  It could not have been worse.  It kept needing to be reset and otherwise was not terribly reliable.  I researched my available options and ultimately decided that despite the expense, a Ubiquiti-based system would provide a lot of flexibility and provide outstanding coverage across my (not terribly large, but somewhat spread out) house and back yard.  The goal of the system was to have a reliable, but easy-to-manage system that would just work.

I purchased the following:

• Unifi Security Gateway (USG) to be the router
• 2 x Unifi AC AP LR
• Unifi AP Outdoor
• Unifi CloudKey
• 2 x 5 Port EdgeRouter PoE
• Unifi Video Camera G3

After I had made a separate decision to build a simple Linux server which could host the Ubiquiti configuration software, I decided that I could return the CloudKey.  I was also annoyed that the CloudKey was not powerable via PoE provided by the EdgeRouter.  The other thought was that I could use the server to run Ubiquiti's software to run security cameras.  I did get the software working and tested my one camera, but I never ended up deploying the six or so security cameras that I had been planning on doing.

The Unifi AC AP LR (as in 802.11 ac, access point, long range) had to be wired and could be mounted to the ceiling.  I did install one near the router cabinet in the living room as below:

All blue!  Providing super-fast wifi close to most of the usage (in the living room and kitchen)

USG not mounted yet, but you can see the cloud key on the floor.  Server to come soon to replace the box on the left.

Previous outdoor setup relied on a large antenna and some Amplifi gear, but it never lived up to its promise

Here is the new Unifi AP Outdoor all hooked up - but no cable management has been completed

I loved a few things about the network:

• Web-accessible dashboard (both internal and external to our network)
• Single SSID; a seemless transition between access points as you moved across the house
• Overall, quite speedy

Our GB FiOS connection never lived up to the hype, but we do get upwards of 870 Mbps, which is something.  All of the backbone network in the house is also now going through GB ethernet switches, so there is just good speed to be had all around.

I have done very little in terms of network maintenance or fiddling over the last couple of years.  Mostly just updating the firmware on the devices and rebooting them.  I do that probably not more than once per six months.  One of the times that I decided to do that, I found that the outdoor access point and one of the indoor ones were not listed as active.  What was up?

I did not go on a tear to find out.  I was reasonably lazy and took my time.  I still seemed to have wifi where and when I needed it, so there wasn't too much of a need to do something quickly.  Ultimately, I have figured two things out:

• The outdoor AP not working was a result of some animal deciding to chew through the ethernet cable that goes out of the house at the study and back to the device.  Annoying, but also somewhat relieving that it was not anything to do with the device.  I haven't fixed the cable and I'm not sure that I will before I sell the house (which will hopefully happen in the next couple of months).
• The indoor AP was a bit of a surprise.  I thought that it was the AP located in the study that had stopped working and that was likely driven somewhere in the cable routing upstream (of which there was quite a bit).  It turned out not to be true - the AP in the study was the only one that was working.  The AP pictured above in the living room, despite having it's blue ring on, was not working.  I'm still not quite sure why.  I pulled it off the ceiling and connected it into the EdgeRouter with a shorter ethernet cord (into a PoE'd port) and it has been functioning fine since.  I should note that the cable that runs from the EdgeRouter to the ceiling-mounted AP is one that I put the ends on.  So I might not have done a great job.  This is something that I may have to deal with in the future, but also don't want to do much before I sell the house.  Whatever setup I have, will be good enough.

So despite these two quirks, I'm still really happy with the network and am hopeful that I get another three or four years out of the gear.  If I do, I will declare myself satisfied with the purchase and will look into buying another round of Ubiquiti gear.

Backyard Wi-Fi, Finally

So I had posted a while back about my efforts to get Wifi in my backyard.  They were not successful and decided that I should give it a go one more time.  I did some stuff write, but more wrong.

At the start I had thought that I should move my AirPort Extreme from my study to the external mount under my eve and connect it to the large outdoor antenna.  I bought some small wires to replace the internal antennas on the AirPort that had external antenna connections on it.  It was a bit of a messy process, but I have pictures below.  I followed the directions on the MacWireless website, even though I didn't buy the antenna connectors from them (Amazon had them for $5 or so).

The first step, removal of the rubber pad on the bottom didn't go so well.

This is the plastic plate below the rubber pad - its easy to remove the five screws and move on to the next step.

Removing the guts of the wireless router wasn't straightforward.  It didn't want to come out and had to be wedged out with a screw driver.  I was a bit hesitant to do so but it wasn't too hard.

 

I drilled a small hole in the side (1/4") to allow the new antenna cables come out

Shown, with two external antennas hooked up.

Rubber pad reinstalled and (close to) good as new!

So at this point, I realized that I didn't have a 1 Gbps switch to put in the place of the AirPort and decided that it might be better if I just left the normal house network alone and added a new wireless access point to the back yard.  It seemed to make sense, but in retrospect may not have been the right answer.  A 1 Gbps 5 port switch isn't much more than a low end wireless router.  So why not just have a separate network in the back?

So the first and really only glitch is that the low end wireless routers (even those with external antennas) have fixed antennas.  Not those easily screwed off.  With that knowledge, I decided that an online purchase might not be the best idea and headed out to MicroCenter (on my way to a BBQ) knowing that I could at least look at the device before I bought it.  Bad idea.  The sales folks knew nothing.  And none of the wireless routers were out for display.  The only ones for which I could be sure that they had detachable antennas were the Amped Wireless models.  I ended up spending $75 on an AP300 - about $50 more than I had originally intended to be laying down.

The installation of the AP300 started out well enough, but I ran into one very odd and unmentioned (based on my searching) quirk about the device: you can't connect it into a normal ethernet wire, or it will not work (I think it anticipates getting power - POE - and won't work).  This caused a bit of problems until I figured that out.  I ended up putting a female/female ethernet connector in the box on the house so that I could use the special 4 wire cable instead of trying to wire one correctly myself.

After all of the above, it's now working all the way back to the far side of the pool.  I tested it with my Google Nexus 7 streaming video.  That device has the worst wifi performance of any device I have, so if it works, then its all good.

The one quirk is that our iPhones are super flakey now.  My MacBook Air works just fine (can keep a VPN connection forever, good speeds when surfing), but the iPhones just freak out.  Not sure what is going on here, but I think it might have something to do with the fact that both the TimeMachine and the AirPort Extreme are broadcasting the same SSID.  I am going to change the one is the stereo cabinet and see if that clears things up.

My network now looks like the following:

A Failure to Broadcast

I blogged before about doing some outdoor wifi so that I could use my outdoor stereo system.  While this setup worked in the testing phase, it turned out not to work after everything was installed.  It also had the disadvantage that I could no longer use my Aria wifi scale - setting up the Amped Wireless SR10000 required me to turn off the wifi band that the scale depended on.  After I had figured out the system wasn't working, I switch my Apple network back to including the missing band (I think it was g).  I've been bouncing around in my head how to solve this problem and just recently concluded that I should just use another Apple product.

To be clear, what I mean to set up is another AirPort Extreme (APE) extending my Apple-based wireless network to the outside.  The key, though is the ability to get the external antenna hooked up to my APE.  This is where the research came into play.  And I will admit, it was slow going on my end.

I did find a website that sells modified APEs, but they were substantially marked up (to roughly $135). [I can't find the link at the moment, but when I do, I will link it]. This was way more than I wanted to spend, so I kept looking.  Eventually, I found this installation guide on MacWireless.com.  While the site also sells the connectors, I decided to hunt around for them elsewhere; I am much more interested in buying on a trusted site.  Amazon didn't let me down - I found just what I needed.  Free shipping, too.  That said the shipping time is between 17 and 28 days.  No worries, though, I need this for summer not for the present.

Right now, here is a view of my network configuration (with a big thank you to Gliffy - of which I'm a big fan), click through to get the full-sized version:

I'm thinking that I'll I will need to do is find a 10/100 Mbps repeater and replace the APE with that and then move my APE into the box hanging off of my eve.  The APE then would be directly connected to the large, externally mounted antenna.  From there, I'd up the power level to the max and see how my wifi coverage looks throughout the house and outside.  If I need the additional interior coverage, I will purchase another APE and place where my existing one is.  I'm debating whether or not I really need a Gigabit switch, or if 10/100 Mbps will be sufficient (and I think I have one lying around).  I think that will be the first attempt and then if it doesn't work, I'll look at purchasing a $40 5 Port Gigabit switch.

A minor change to the configuration represented below (and a more complete representation of the network, including wireless devices and labeled cable runs):

I think that's a pretty full network - 50 devices directly connected.  And I'm guessing that I don't have the most of folks out there.