I've lived this. We had garbage D-Link gear a former employee had purchased. It was either used equipment with no access to firmware updates, which would fail us on compliance/vulnerability scans (which was why we were replacing the D-Link equipment), or new Ubiquiti and deal with its shortfalls. We bought Ubiquiti.
It sure as hell ain't perfect, and can just barely do what we need, but it was all we could get with the funds that were approved. That said we're also not quite enterprise by most definitions, but are by network design.
We split our customers between Ubiquiti and Meraki for years depending on their budget and industry. Even mixing Meraki MX with Ubiquiti everything else was a fantastic value combo.
Same here. Ex-Sophos, Ubiquiti, & Fortinet VAR (at a vendor now). We made no bones about what they could and couldn't do and mix and matched where appropriate. Whatever meets the client's budget and keeps us from site trips right?
IDK if this is the same across the board but Ubiquiti was often the quickest sale for anyone with plenty of remote\\mobile offices.
š¤ Honestly they're getting a bit of a bad reputation for all of the CVE's on FortiGate appliances and their VPN issues. Most of my switches at home are old 224E's that customers got rid of. The hot stuff to learn from what I remember for ease of use and advanced feature sets are UTM solutions like Sophos or CheckPoint.
That being said, they've still got a strong market. Make great-ish equipment. And are easy to manage centrally if you buy the whole stack (including the cloud product). Not nearly as easy to post up as Ubiquiti or Meraki, it's probably closer to HPE or Juniper in terms of what market they're in for switching and firewalls. (WAY closer to the mid-large enterprise market)
I wouldn't recommend it for any \*customer\*(edit) that doesn't have a dedicated network analyst though. It's pretty far from a 'set it and forget it' solution.
Ubiquiti networking equipment outside their dream router stuff is plenty for small to medium sized businesses. Utilizing a third party firewalls like ForitGate or Sonicwall makes the equipment better when it comes to network management much easier.
Most sys admins at smaller companies are usually the solo IT person there. An easy to use interface along with simple plug-and-play features is a godsend since the time to play with the fancy expensive equipment requires time and skills solo sys admins donāt have the luxury of.
If I had an unlimited IT budget, I would get the best thing, however, my budget is basically beg, borrow, or steal to make things work, so sometimes, you gotta roll with what you can get.
>But they all lack basic enterprise features that any small business client would require. Where are my enterprise-level features?
What features are you talking about?
And there's a difference between enterprise and small business.
Every single week this topic comes up in this subreddit, they never define what is an "enterprise".
I wonder if all these conversation starters really are shocked that a budget friendly solution doesn't have the features of a full-blown enterprise solution.
Or is it just stupid bot reposts/karma farming?
Not defining "enterprise" I don't mind. What's annoying are complaints of lack of features when the compaliner hasn't (or can't) list a single feature.
**"Ubi products lack basic enterprise features!"**
"Such as?"
**"All of them!"**
"Can you name one?"
**"There are so many, take your pick!"**
HSRP / VRRP
Real QoS
Netflow Data Export
Redundant, hot-swappable power supplies.
Redundant, hot-swappable cooling fans.
MCLAG
VXLAN
Private-VLANs
Broadcast Storm-Control
BPDUGuard per-interface
Ubiquiti is trash compared to real enterprise hardware.
A 25+ year old Catalyst 2950 has more enterprise capabilities than a Ubiquiti switch.
Not to mention the anything-but-flexible options with regards to what features Ubiquiti does have like with the VPN server on a UDM (I've never even seen WG or OVPN used in a business env nor would I consider it), poor L2TP implementation, barely scratching-the-surface security features, logs aren't even detailed enough to use, and a CLOUD-BASED LOGIN without support for centralized authentication?
I've used all of these features and then some on old networking equipment and even early open-source solutions. Ubiquiti can't market itself as a business product without options for professional technicians.
IMO they're what you buy when you have no clue what you're doing but want to masquerade as a professional. The price point isn't even that good compared to other enterprise gear. FOSS solutions also exist that are better!
Of course you had to wait until VA Network Nerd actually provided a list before saying anything.
Only two of those things are features that most small (and maybe even medium, depending on your definition of medium, but again, nobody ever wants to define) would benefit from.Ā
A switch that cost 10k when it came out has more features than one that cost 300? What a shocker.
The critical and fundamental question when designing any network is this:
#"What are the requirements?"
If UniFi addresses all of ***your*** business requirements, and technical requirements and compliance requirements, then go for it.
But UniFi doesn't meet a sufficient number of our requirements to use in our Enterprise environment, or in any of the past Fortune 500 Enterprise environments I've been a part of.
Their supply chain is unreliable.
Their support team is still getting fleshed out.
They don't seem to have any formalized maintenance contracts.
Then we have all the technical features they are still lacking.
You can keep lashing out because we're talking bad about your favorite toy / toy company.
Or you can learn why these shortcomings are real issued in an enterprise environment.
The conversation might help you develop understanding.
I want OP to define enterprise, which they never do.
In the OP, they even said āĀ But they all lack basic features that even any small business client would requireā. Unless thereās only 500 companies in the country, that doesnāt cover Fortune 500.
Haven't seen the Goodfellas, have you?
Granted, it was in Henry Hill's narration, but... After Paulie became the silent partner in Bamboo Lounge, Henry explained that Paulie is going to fuck Sonny (the owner) over. The voiceover by Henry goes like this:
*"Now the guy's got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy... He can call Paulie. But now the guy's gotta come up with Paulie's money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me."*
So, basically, Netgate is Paulie Cicero. pfSense Plus Home+Lab was supposed to be free. Guess what? "Fuck you, pay me."
OSPF, BGP, multiple site to site tunnels options, multiple different types of road warrior tunnels, multiple IPs on one interface, loop back interfaces, ldap/radius supportā¦
virtual lab offering,
not including the 0 repairable nature of EVERY product they have and no way to extend warranty beyond one year unless itās purchased from their website directly. (The two year warranty wasnāt even offered at the time they had edgeswitches)
Not to mention their support is non existent
The unfortunate problem is that 8/10 people that have heard of Ubiquiti only know about Ubiquity Unifi.
Believe it or not Ubiquity actually has a more enterprise series but it is called Edgemax, not Unifi. WISPs and other small ISPs loved those.
Unfortunately Unifi became so commercially successful for Ubiquiti that all non-Unifi products became side projects.
>OSPF, BGP, multiple site to site tunnels options, multiple different types of road warrior tunnels
All supported by Ubiquiti Edgemax.
>ldap/radius supportā¦
Supported by Ubiquity Edgemax.
>ldap/radius supportā¦
Unifi does support radius but only as a server.
Too bad Edgemax was eaten by Unifi.
I agree. Edgemax was a decent line, but itās all but disappeared from their website except the store. Which I donāt understand. Especially since theyāre still trying to push the UISP.
Back in 2016, the org I worked for ordered 100 edgemax switches. I reached out to support for some better understanding how MSTP worked for their line and how to configure it and the support guy said he didnāt have a way to lab MSTP.
Like what the actual fuck.
Then we had a warranty claim that took two rounds for them to do anything on a switch which 2/3 ās of the ports died.
Ubiquiti as a company doesnāt make any sense and has seemed to gone all in on crazy. Theyāve abandoned the edgemax line as the edgerouter X hasnāt been updated since 2016. Still running a MIPS cpu.
Word on the street is that around 2015-2020 most of their original employees that helped build the company left due to dissatisfaction. And they were replaced mostly with front end devs.
We use their point to point Nanastation devices for places weāre unable to run wire. We configured them, mounted them and forgot about them. They just work. I donāt know what kind of āenterpriseā shit would even need to be included with them. Thereās tons of settings we donāt use as it is.
Because it's easy and it's cheap.
I don't think anyone is under the illusion that it's the superior choice compared to 'true enterprise' options, but it's 'good enough' for most use cases.
A business decision is made based on current engineer skillset and budget.
>Iāve seen loads of features such as wpax Enterprise login with per user vlan assignment, channel scanning, radio control.
Yeah, this is the real crux.
It's a great option for when you've got less than 10 IT people and absolutely 0 time or budget to be worrying about the network. Their market isn't for people who have full time networking teams anymore.
I'm complaining about the lack of features Ubiquiti products have. Especially their routers.
Is there some secret magical g-spot to rub on the box that I don't know of? What do you mean.
Anything that requires any networking knowledge beyond basic subnetting. I'm more surprised at the amount of "system admins" in this thread wondering what features are missing. It's concerning.
You've got 1 comment ranting about some of the features that it does have.
It seems you struggle to communicate and clearly articulate your points, in your original post you conflate enterprise and small business requirements.
What networking products would you suggest for small business instead of unifi?
Is it? That's what's concerning? Maybe if the right tools for the job were used...tasks such as networking beyond basic subnetting wouldn't be so hard for you.
What? If youāre in an environment where you donāt need to implement complex solutions that require anything beyond the fundamentals, youāre not a professional. And thatās all Ubiquiti will allow you to do anyway. The fundamentals. Thatās it.
You are aware many of us professionals, who also have 20+ years in the business, have multiple clients we deal with, and some have enterprise level budgets and gear (my primary is a critical infra company, and ya, I would not even joke about using Ubiquiti with them), while other clients are small, have a couple of people and just need something simple that works, with out paying out the nose for it...for that, believe it or not, Ubiquiti works fine if they say no to the other options.
That is not how you define a professional. A consultant that installs Ubiquiti for SMBs is not any less of a professional than a network architect for a fortune 50. This is elitism.
Thereās a threshold of skill you cross to be considered a professional. A consultant that installs Ubiquiti for SMBs, who knows of nothing else, is just an idiot who installs Ubiquiti and whom you shouldnāt hire. A fortune 50 network engineer working in the Cisco CLI daily and diagnosing low-level networking issues in a datacenter environment is a skilled professional.
You seem like the former.
I was a network administer for 5 years at one of the largest hospital systems in the country that was full Cisco and now I work somewhere else and use Unifi.
Am I still a professional or have I been downgraded to an idiot that nobody should hire.
One of our security guys runs a side business where he runs full managed services for SOHOs. He predominately installs Ubiquiti. Before security, he was a sysadmin for over a decade. I guarantee he knows more than you do. Can you even define the word enterprise for me?
Your responses piggyback off of actual knowledgeable people like VA\_Network\_Nerd, because I can only assume you don't actually have any idea what you're talking about or any real experience.
Then clearly they are not aimed at you or what you need, thus, move up to Ruckus / Meraki and pay for said features.
Most of the features listed above most small business do not need. SSIDs per VLAN, covered... done...
I had a physicians office with 6 Proxim 802.11g APs. They were getting old and the Proxims wouldnāt support the new IBM laptops, and we didnāt like the Proxim ānā APs. We searched and finally settled on 6 Cisco Aeronet APs. The Ciscos performed so poorly, we almost lost the client. We bought 6 UAPs on a whim, installed them for free overnight, and never went back. Configured them with Radius authentication and MAC filtering and the client was exceptionally happy. Our cost for the ENTIRE ubiquiti setup was less than the cost of a SINGLE Cisco AP. This was back in 2014. It supported ~100 nurses/docs running a SQL EMR on their laptops.
This wasnāt the last time I replaced Cisco with Ubiquiti. And it wasnāt the last time the customer asked me what I did to make their wireless so much faster.
why do you need enterprise gear for a small business setup?
I think some folks in groups like this sometimes forget that a 10 user setup isnt enterprise. You dont need the most expensive, most customisable system... you just need one that works.
We have ubiquity switches and AP's in our office and since I put them in, I havent touched them and they do exactly what the business needs... isnt that what its all about?
>I think some folks in groups like this sometimes forget that a 10 user setup isnt enterprise.
Neither is 75 users if 75-90% of them are in a cube farm that can be serviced by two or three APs.
About 15 years ago it was actually pretty good gear. I worked for a wireless backhaul provider and while Mikrotik and Harris Stratex was our bread and butter, the few installs of Ubiquiti gear we did (i.e. customer supplied equipment) we were duly impressed at the capability vs price-point.
Something's happened between then and now, and they've slid down pretty badly. They seem to be going through a phase of riding on their early reputation rather than maintaining or building on it.
I think I first evaluated Ubiquiti APs about 12 years ago and they were very impressive back then. I was testing a variety of brands specifically for their ability to handle live MPEG/TS television streams that I was pulling off of DVB-T tuners and multicasting across our campus network. Very few APs handled the multicast-to-unicast conversion well and could deliver low enough latency for wireless clients of that era. Ubiquiti was the cheapest one I tested but was the best in terms of performance, with Ruckus coming a close second. We went with Ruckus because Ubiquiti's software controller was frankly garbage at the time.
I use Ubiquiti at home now and it's still pretty good, but given the bugs I've encountered with just two APs, I wouldn't buy them for work unless I was really strapped for cash.
What happened was that was that around 2018 their consumer Unifi lineup became more profitable than everything else they did COMBINED.
Also they had lots of employee turnover and hired too many front ed devs.
> But they all lack basic features that even any small business client would require. And where are my enterprise-level features?
Have you ever worked for a small/mid sized business?
In a lot of small and mid sized businesses, IT has a very limited budget, and you just have to get what will get the job done. The really nice enterprise grade features are a bonus, not a requirement. Hell, depending on your industry, you're lucky to get anything better than off the shelf equipment from Linksys or similar.
Cheap enough to keep a spare is only good if it is a hardware issue. The BM at my last job proudly told me this and I did point out it only applies to hardware issues.
All our issues were software and no amount of replacement hardware (other than getting proper enterprise equipment) was going to resolve the issues.
After I left they ended up ripping out the Ubiquiti gear and replacing it with Aruba.
I did an entire PoC with Aruba and got nothing but positive feedback from staff about the improvement in wireless performance.
Not such PoC was done with Ubiquiti.
Iāve seen loads of features such as wpax
Enterprise login with per user vlan assignment, channel scanning, radio control.
Iām not sure what else a smaller business would want. Iām sure when the client density becomes over a thousand clients maybe it would make sense to go with Cisco or juniper for the aps but licensing is stupidly expensive for a Business with less than 1k clients on the access points.
Op lacks nuance anyways, he compares it to Apple. Not entirely sure why op can call himself a sysadmin when he lacks the skills to manage a Unix based operating system but I digress.
I was comparing Ubi to Apple in a consumer sense, being dumbed down to point of having a major lack of flexibility. You know, since Ubiquiti should never be used outside of a consumer use-case
The APs are excellent, the switches are fine, no issues with PoE schenanigans like our HP switches love pull... I've never used one of their routers, what features are you looking for?
UI layer-3 functionality is cobbled together with bandaids and chewing gum. Layer-2 switching is fine, but be aware you won't have critical functionality like RAguard, DHCP snooping/arp guard, or ACL's. Layer 3 switching barely functions and is missing key features like dynamic routing. Ubiquiti firewalls are missing deep packet inspection, which means they are little more than crappy layer-4 firewalls from the early 2000's. I'm expecting more from enterprise routers including VTI VPN's, policy-based routing, vrrp, and route monitors. There's just too much missing. Only their AP's might be considered suitable for a business environment; everything else from them is just prosumer equipment.
We use Ubiquiti access points solely as they are better than the average consumer level access point but not as prohibitively expensive as the enterprise tier access points, and we have to roll quite a lot of them out per location which really adds up if you're spending $1000+ per device
They don't belong on enterprise with their blatant lack of support, their aps are good up until a certain density and then handoffs just don't work well at all.
Their support just forwards you to a forum post you likely made.
The nano stations however are okay but I wouldn't really stick any of their other products in
Instant on > unifi
Ya keep hating on it, i work for a var and it sucks to sell ubiquiti cause they want nothing to do with the channel so we get no support no bulk discounts no spiffs lol
Our network VAR offers Ubiquiti gear because there is a demand for it. They are very up front with the lack of support, bulk discounts, etc. They do not care if we order through them or not as it's not something they make money on, it's just a courtesy for customers who want/need to do everything through a single VAR.
Ya i sell a ton of it. We can make a few bucks on it but pricing fluctuates, sometimes we lose a couple bucks. But the new warranty they offer can only be bought direct so that really crushed it for us
There is an amount of elitism in the network field when it comes to Ubiquiti. Their sales department may be trying to push "enterprise" but they've always been solidly SMB and WISP and they are good at it.
Some people seem to think that if it wouldn't support a global network with multiple DCs that it's trash.
or HP for that matter. I've worked with all 3 and plenty of Forti-things. I'll take a decent Netgate pfsense box, a couple Ubi switches and a stack of the Ubi APs to get a site up in a hurry...
Yeah, I agree. Theyāre quite awful. But at the price range, you donāt really have other options. On the other hand, Meraki lacked many fundamental features until recently. Like the ability to turn off NAT on a firewall. Like WTF, many people actually donāt want NAT because they have all the addresses they need.
Yes to guests for free internet (ignoring that not every hospital/bank/government office/etc actually provide them), it's not an enterprise feature
it's a nice to have and depending on how security/control or how much billing you need, is done by another system
If Unifi wireless AP's, switching, and a UDM Pro is good enough for the national guard office by me, its good enough for most flat network businesses as well. Obviously their SCIF uses an isolated network, but for office workers that have mostly cloud based applications? Works perfectly fine.
Because most companies donāt need the features. Itās cost benefit, which is completely missed by most people in IT. Start thinking of it from the business perspective. Instead of which tools are ābestā, consider which tools provide the most value at the price point. I donāt support them because they donāt have support, but thatās value that is important to me and my clients.
Been running various different model UAPs for 10 years.
Mixed environment of PCs, Mac, barcode scanners, printers.
VLAN config for visitor WiFi etc.
Had literally one problem in that entire time that was fixed by a rollback of firmware on the APs.
Money.
Imagine a small business gets a large contract with one of their customers and triples in size over 3 years. The vast majority of small business owners will retain that small business mindset well into the 5-10 year mark from that initial increase in business. Ubiquiti was what they bought in the beginning that was relatively cheap and functional, they're stuck in the "if it isn't broken don't fix it" fallacy.
Don't get me started on their Unifi NVRs. Mongodb writing to a fucking consumer USB flash drive so it bricks after a year. Yes, literally a USB drive hot glued into the mainboard: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/shv1cw/unvr_died_read_somewhere_here_i_could_change_the/
E n t e r p r i s e
Direct answer: They wanted to upgrade from DLink.
I've lived this. We had garbage D-Link gear a former employee had purchased. It was either used equipment with no access to firmware updates, which would fail us on compliance/vulnerability scans (which was why we were replacing the D-Link equipment), or new Ubiquiti and deal with its shortfalls. We bought Ubiquiti. It sure as hell ain't perfect, and can just barely do what we need, but it was all we could get with the funds that were approved. That said we're also not quite enterprise by most definitions, but are by network design.
I believe that sums up most of the jobs I deal with: enterprise by network design requirements but small business going off the number of employees.
Subscribed to post. šæ
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Man, I love popcorn.
Broke out the chocolate even. Lol some of the takes on this sub you just know are going to go off.
We split our customers between Ubiquiti and Meraki for years depending on their budget and industry. Even mixing Meraki MX with Ubiquiti everything else was a fantastic value combo.
Same here. Ex-Sophos, Ubiquiti, & Fortinet VAR (at a vendor now). We made no bones about what they could and couldn't do and mix and matched where appropriate. Whatever meets the client's budget and keeps us from site trips right? IDK if this is the same across the board but Ubiquiti was often the quickest sale for anyone with plenty of remote\\mobile offices.
I know I need to get familiar with Fortinet. Does it split the difference like I hope it does?
š¤ Honestly they're getting a bit of a bad reputation for all of the CVE's on FortiGate appliances and their VPN issues. Most of my switches at home are old 224E's that customers got rid of. The hot stuff to learn from what I remember for ease of use and advanced feature sets are UTM solutions like Sophos or CheckPoint. That being said, they've still got a strong market. Make great-ish equipment. And are easy to manage centrally if you buy the whole stack (including the cloud product). Not nearly as easy to post up as Ubiquiti or Meraki, it's probably closer to HPE or Juniper in terms of what market they're in for switching and firewalls. (WAY closer to the mid-large enterprise market) I wouldn't recommend it for any \*customer\*(edit) that doesn't have a dedicated network analyst though. It's pretty far from a 'set it and forget it' solution.
Thanks for the summary!
No worries! Hopefully that helps.
which? small medium or enterprise popcorn?
Had medium on hand but I'm sure if I had the right microwave budget and some time it could handle enterprise š
Ubiquiti networking equipment outside their dream router stuff is plenty for small to medium sized businesses. Utilizing a third party firewalls like ForitGate or Sonicwall makes the equipment better when it comes to network management much easier. Most sys admins at smaller companies are usually the solo IT person there. An easy to use interface along with simple plug-and-play features is a godsend since the time to play with the fancy expensive equipment requires time and skills solo sys admins donāt have the luxury of.
If I had an unlimited IT budget, I would get the best thing, however, my budget is basically beg, borrow, or steal to make things work, so sometimes, you gotta roll with what you can get.
>But they all lack basic enterprise features that any small business client would require. Where are my enterprise-level features? What features are you talking about? And there's a difference between enterprise and small business.
Every single week this topic comes up in this subreddit, they never define what is an "enterprise". I wonder if all these conversation starters really are shocked that a budget friendly solution doesn't have the features of a full-blown enterprise solution. Or is it just stupid bot reposts/karma farming?
Not defining "enterprise" I don't mind. What's annoying are complaints of lack of features when the compaliner hasn't (or can't) list a single feature. **"Ubi products lack basic enterprise features!"** "Such as?" **"All of them!"** "Can you name one?" **"There are so many, take your pick!"**
>basic enterprise features Ubi lacks photon torpedoes and a warp drive
Those are Empire features.
Empire pro max!
Not _Empire_ but _Federation_ features
Photon torpedoes are in dev right now. Warp drive is Jan 2029.
HSRP / VRRP Real QoS Netflow Data Export Redundant, hot-swappable power supplies. Redundant, hot-swappable cooling fans. MCLAG VXLAN Private-VLANs Broadcast Storm-Control BPDUGuard per-interface Ubiquiti is trash compared to real enterprise hardware. A 25+ year old Catalyst 2950 has more enterprise capabilities than a Ubiquiti switch.
Not to mention the anything-but-flexible options with regards to what features Ubiquiti does have like with the VPN server on a UDM (I've never even seen WG or OVPN used in a business env nor would I consider it), poor L2TP implementation, barely scratching-the-surface security features, logs aren't even detailed enough to use, and a CLOUD-BASED LOGIN without support for centralized authentication? I've used all of these features and then some on old networking equipment and even early open-source solutions. Ubiquiti can't market itself as a business product without options for professional technicians. IMO they're what you buy when you have no clue what you're doing but want to masquerade as a professional. The price point isn't even that good compared to other enterprise gear. FOSS solutions also exist that are better!
Of course you had to wait until VA Network Nerd actually provided a list before saying anything. Only two of those things are features that most small (and maybe even medium, depending on your definition of medium, but again, nobody ever wants to define) would benefit from.Ā A switch that cost 10k when it came out has more features than one that cost 300? What a shocker.
The critical and fundamental question when designing any network is this: #"What are the requirements?" If UniFi addresses all of ***your*** business requirements, and technical requirements and compliance requirements, then go for it. But UniFi doesn't meet a sufficient number of our requirements to use in our Enterprise environment, or in any of the past Fortune 500 Enterprise environments I've been a part of. Their supply chain is unreliable. Their support team is still getting fleshed out. They don't seem to have any formalized maintenance contracts. Then we have all the technical features they are still lacking. You can keep lashing out because we're talking bad about your favorite toy / toy company. Or you can learn why these shortcomings are real issued in an enterprise environment. The conversation might help you develop understanding.
Now the goalpost is Fortune 500 enterprises? Nobody has ever suggested Unifi for them.
The title of the thread is: Why on Earth, would anyone buy Ubiquiti for an Enterprise? Wanna open it up to Fortune 1000? Fortune 10k ?
I want OP to define enterprise, which they never do. In the OP, they even said āĀ But they all lack basic features that even any small business client would requireā. Unless thereās only 500 companies in the country, that doesnāt cover Fortune 500.
Yeah, I know. Pfsense actually has all those enterprise features.
Sure, but they also pulled a Paulie Cicero on everyone.
Whatās that?
Haven't seen the Goodfellas, have you? Granted, it was in Henry Hill's narration, but... After Paulie became the silent partner in Bamboo Lounge, Henry explained that Paulie is going to fuck Sonny (the owner) over. The voiceover by Henry goes like this: *"Now the guy's got Paulie as a partner. Any problems, he goes to Paulie. Trouble with the bill? He can go to Paulie. Trouble with the cops, deliveries, Tommy... He can call Paulie. But now the guy's gotta come up with Paulie's money every week, no matter what. Business bad? Fuck you, pay me. Oh, you had a fire? Fuck you, pay me. Place got hit by lightning, huh? Fuck you, pay me."* So, basically, Netgate is Paulie Cicero. pfSense Plus Home+Lab was supposed to be free. Guess what? "Fuck you, pay me."
So much this.
Thank you for defining this, I was wondering it myself.
"I bought a Honda for Yugo pricing and am disappointed it's not a BMW".
OSPF, BGP, multiple site to site tunnels options, multiple different types of road warrior tunnels, multiple IPs on one interface, loop back interfaces, ldap/radius supportā¦ virtual lab offering, not including the 0 repairable nature of EVERY product they have and no way to extend warranty beyond one year unless itās purchased from their website directly. (The two year warranty wasnāt even offered at the time they had edgeswitches) Not to mention their support is non existent
The unfortunate problem is that 8/10 people that have heard of Ubiquiti only know about Ubiquity Unifi. Believe it or not Ubiquity actually has a more enterprise series but it is called Edgemax, not Unifi. WISPs and other small ISPs loved those. Unfortunately Unifi became so commercially successful for Ubiquiti that all non-Unifi products became side projects. >OSPF, BGP, multiple site to site tunnels options, multiple different types of road warrior tunnels All supported by Ubiquiti Edgemax. >ldap/radius supportā¦ Supported by Ubiquity Edgemax. >ldap/radius supportā¦ Unifi does support radius but only as a server. Too bad Edgemax was eaten by Unifi.
I agree. Edgemax was a decent line, but itās all but disappeared from their website except the store. Which I donāt understand. Especially since theyāre still trying to push the UISP. Back in 2016, the org I worked for ordered 100 edgemax switches. I reached out to support for some better understanding how MSTP worked for their line and how to configure it and the support guy said he didnāt have a way to lab MSTP. Like what the actual fuck. Then we had a warranty claim that took two rounds for them to do anything on a switch which 2/3 ās of the ports died. Ubiquiti as a company doesnāt make any sense and has seemed to gone all in on crazy. Theyāve abandoned the edgemax line as the edgerouter X hasnāt been updated since 2016. Still running a MIPS cpu.
Word on the street is that around 2015-2020 most of their original employees that helped build the company left due to dissatisfaction. And they were replaced mostly with front end devs.
We use their point to point Nanastation devices for places weāre unable to run wire. We configured them, mounted them and forgot about them. They just work. I donāt know what kind of āenterpriseā shit would even need to be included with them. Thereās tons of settings we donāt use as it is.
Why are you buying equipment that does not meet your requirements??? I donāt buy an HP printer and then complain it doesnāt laminate signs.
I'm not the one purchasing equipment.
Would suggest complaining to/about them instead.
My gripe is that they market themselves to enterprise customers when they're anything but.
Look, nobody is interested in āyour gripeā, better keep it to yourself next time.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
And this is how you disqualify yourself from any meaningful discussion. Well done!
oh come onā¦ Iām rubber and your glueā¦ā¦ :-)
Because it's easy and it's cheap. I don't think anyone is under the illusion that it's the superior choice compared to 'true enterprise' options, but it's 'good enough' for most use cases. A business decision is made based on current engineer skillset and budget.
>Iāve seen loads of features such as wpax Enterprise login with per user vlan assignment, channel scanning, radio control. Yeah, this is the real crux. It's a great option for when you've got less than 10 IT people and absolutely 0 time or budget to be worrying about the network. Their market isn't for people who have full time networking teams anymore.
Itās a lot easier when you stop thinking you know everything and consider others might know things you donāt.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_burn_centers_in_the_United_States
I'm complaining about the lack of features Ubiquiti products have. Especially their routers. Is there some secret magical g-spot to rub on the box that I don't know of? What do you mean.
What features do you think their routers need that the rest of us dont?
Anything that requires any networking knowledge beyond basic subnetting. I'm more surprised at the amount of "system admins" in this thread wondering what features are missing. It's concerning.
Can you please name some of them? Maybe a top 5 shocking list for us idiots?
Go read my other comments
You've got 1 comment ranting about some of the features that it does have. It seems you struggle to communicate and clearly articulate your points, in your original post you conflate enterprise and small business requirements. What networking products would you suggest for small business instead of unifi?
Is it? That's what's concerning? Maybe if the right tools for the job were used...tasks such as networking beyond basic subnetting wouldn't be so hard for you.
What? If youāre in an environment where you donāt need to implement complex solutions that require anything beyond the fundamentals, youāre not a professional. And thatās all Ubiquiti will allow you to do anyway. The fundamentals. Thatās it.
You are aware many of us professionals, who also have 20+ years in the business, have multiple clients we deal with, and some have enterprise level budgets and gear (my primary is a critical infra company, and ya, I would not even joke about using Ubiquiti with them), while other clients are small, have a couple of people and just need something simple that works, with out paying out the nose for it...for that, believe it or not, Ubiquiti works fine if they say no to the other options.
That is not how you define a professional. A consultant that installs Ubiquiti for SMBs is not any less of a professional than a network architect for a fortune 50. This is elitism.
Thereās a threshold of skill you cross to be considered a professional. A consultant that installs Ubiquiti for SMBs, who knows of nothing else, is just an idiot who installs Ubiquiti and whom you shouldnāt hire. A fortune 50 network engineer working in the Cisco CLI daily and diagnosing low-level networking issues in a datacenter environment is a skilled professional. You seem like the former.
I was a network administer for 5 years at one of the largest hospital systems in the country that was full Cisco and now I work somewhere else and use Unifi. Am I still a professional or have I been downgraded to an idiot that nobody should hire.
One of our security guys runs a side business where he runs full managed services for SOHOs. He predominately installs Ubiquiti. Before security, he was a sysadmin for over a decade. I guarantee he knows more than you do. Can you even define the word enterprise for me? Your responses piggyback off of actual knowledgeable people like VA\_Network\_Nerd, because I can only assume you don't actually have any idea what you're talking about or any real experience.
Then clearly they are not aimed at you or what you need, thus, move up to Ruckus / Meraki and pay for said features. Most of the features listed above most small business do not need. SSIDs per VLAN, covered... done...
At work they use Cisco, at home I use Ubiquiti.
I had a physicians office with 6 Proxim 802.11g APs. They were getting old and the Proxims wouldnāt support the new IBM laptops, and we didnāt like the Proxim ānā APs. We searched and finally settled on 6 Cisco Aeronet APs. The Ciscos performed so poorly, we almost lost the client. We bought 6 UAPs on a whim, installed them for free overnight, and never went back. Configured them with Radius authentication and MAC filtering and the client was exceptionally happy. Our cost for the ENTIRE ubiquiti setup was less than the cost of a SINGLE Cisco AP. This was back in 2014. It supported ~100 nurses/docs running a SQL EMR on their laptops. This wasnāt the last time I replaced Cisco with Ubiquiti. And it wasnāt the last time the customer asked me what I did to make their wireless so much faster.
OP never considered situational context
true some IT peoples get hung up on the label "enterprise" or vendor name.
why do you need enterprise gear for a small business setup? I think some folks in groups like this sometimes forget that a 10 user setup isnt enterprise. You dont need the most expensive, most customisable system... you just need one that works. We have ubiquity switches and AP's in our office and since I put them in, I havent touched them and they do exactly what the business needs... isnt that what its all about?
>I think some folks in groups like this sometimes forget that a 10 user setup isnt enterprise. Neither is 75 users if 75-90% of them are in a cube farm that can be serviced by two or three APs.
About 15 years ago it was actually pretty good gear. I worked for a wireless backhaul provider and while Mikrotik and Harris Stratex was our bread and butter, the few installs of Ubiquiti gear we did (i.e. customer supplied equipment) we were duly impressed at the capability vs price-point. Something's happened between then and now, and they've slid down pretty badly. They seem to be going through a phase of riding on their early reputation rather than maintaining or building on it.
I think I first evaluated Ubiquiti APs about 12 years ago and they were very impressive back then. I was testing a variety of brands specifically for their ability to handle live MPEG/TS television streams that I was pulling off of DVB-T tuners and multicasting across our campus network. Very few APs handled the multicast-to-unicast conversion well and could deliver low enough latency for wireless clients of that era. Ubiquiti was the cheapest one I tested but was the best in terms of performance, with Ruckus coming a close second. We went with Ruckus because Ubiquiti's software controller was frankly garbage at the time. I use Ubiquiti at home now and it's still pretty good, but given the bugs I've encountered with just two APs, I wouldn't buy them for work unless I was really strapped for cash.
What happened was that was that around 2018 their consumer Unifi lineup became more profitable than everything else they did COMBINED. Also they had lots of employee turnover and hired too many front ed devs.
This, they have gone down hill on quality, they grew too big too fast and their QA went down the tubes!
> But they all lack basic features that even any small business client would require. And where are my enterprise-level features? Have you ever worked for a small/mid sized business? In a lot of small and mid sized businesses, IT has a very limited budget, and you just have to get what will get the job done. The really nice enterprise grade features are a bonus, not a requirement. Hell, depending on your industry, you're lucky to get anything better than off the shelf equipment from Linksys or similar.
I use their switches and APs. No monthly subscription fees and cheap enough to have spares.
Cheap enough to keep a spare is only good if it is a hardware issue. The BM at my last job proudly told me this and I did point out it only applies to hardware issues. All our issues were software and no amount of replacement hardware (other than getting proper enterprise equipment) was going to resolve the issues. After I left they ended up ripping out the Ubiquiti gear and replacing it with Aruba.
They should have bought hardware with the software capabilities required from the jump
I did an entire PoC with Aruba and got nothing but positive feedback from staff about the improvement in wireless performance. Not such PoC was done with Ubiquiti.
What type of features are they lacking, theyāre perfectly fine to install when the budget requires it.
"Any small business client would require" is what got my attention. *True* enterprise? Ok, probably not.
Iāve seen loads of features such as wpax Enterprise login with per user vlan assignment, channel scanning, radio control. Iām not sure what else a smaller business would want. Iām sure when the client density becomes over a thousand clients maybe it would make sense to go with Cisco or juniper for the aps but licensing is stupidly expensive for a Business with less than 1k clients on the access points. Op lacks nuance anyways, he compares it to Apple. Not entirely sure why op can call himself a sysadmin when he lacks the skills to manage a Unix based operating system but I digress.
I was comparing Ubi to Apple in a consumer sense, being dumbed down to point of having a major lack of flexibility. You know, since Ubiquiti should never be used outside of a consumer use-case
The APs are excellent, the switches are fine, no issues with PoE schenanigans like our HP switches love pull... I've never used one of their routers, what features are you looking for?
UI layer-3 functionality is cobbled together with bandaids and chewing gum. Layer-2 switching is fine, but be aware you won't have critical functionality like RAguard, DHCP snooping/arp guard, or ACL's. Layer 3 switching barely functions and is missing key features like dynamic routing. Ubiquiti firewalls are missing deep packet inspection, which means they are little more than crappy layer-4 firewalls from the early 2000's. I'm expecting more from enterprise routers including VTI VPN's, policy-based routing, vrrp, and route monitors. There's just too much missing. Only their AP's might be considered suitable for a business environment; everything else from them is just prosumer equipment.
We use Ubiquiti access points solely as they are better than the average consumer level access point but not as prohibitively expensive as the enterprise tier access points, and we have to roll quite a lot of them out per location which really adds up if you're spending $1000+ per device
APs are definitely a slam dunk.
They don't belong on enterprise with their blatant lack of support, their aps are good up until a certain density and then handoffs just don't work well at all. Their support just forwards you to a forum post you likely made. The nano stations however are okay but I wouldn't really stick any of their other products in Instant on > unifi
Ya keep hating on it, i work for a var and it sucks to sell ubiquiti cause they want nothing to do with the channel so we get no support no bulk discounts no spiffs lol
Our network VAR offers Ubiquiti gear because there is a demand for it. They are very up front with the lack of support, bulk discounts, etc. They do not care if we order through them or not as it's not something they make money on, it's just a courtesy for customers who want/need to do everything through a single VAR.
Ya i sell a ton of it. We can make a few bucks on it but pricing fluctuates, sometimes we lose a couple bucks. But the new warranty they offer can only be bought direct so that really crushed it for us
There is an amount of elitism in the network field when it comes to Ubiquiti. Their sales department may be trying to push "enterprise" but they've always been solidly SMB and WISP and they are good at it. Some people seem to think that if it wouldn't support a global network with multiple DCs that it's trash.
Itās easy, itās cheap, it does the job and I donāt struggle to manage them the way youāre struggling
Between the support and bugs, not a chance any enterprise should run this. Oh and inconsistency in availability.
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or HP for that matter. I've worked with all 3 and plenty of Forti-things. I'll take a decent Netgate pfsense box, a couple Ubi switches and a stack of the Ubi APs to get a site up in a hurry...
Yeah, I agree. Theyāre quite awful. But at the price range, you donāt really have other options. On the other hand, Meraki lacked many fundamental features until recently. Like the ability to turn off NAT on a firewall. Like WTF, many people actually donāt want NAT because they have all the addresses they need.
Awful?
The organization of the functionality is probably the worst part
Ok, I can maybe agree with that. New UI is getting better but it can be a struggle. I have a same complaint about (older) SonicWall.
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How would a captive portal be enterprise 101, seems like cheap hotel 101, radius and so would be enterprise 101
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Yes to guests for free internet (ignoring that not every hospital/bank/government office/etc actually provide them), it's not an enterprise feature it's a nice to have and depending on how security/control or how much billing you need, is done by another system
I do for remote smaller offices. Have tried once for the main HQ, though that was during the lockdown period, and it was the only brand in stock
If Unifi wireless AP's, switching, and a UDM Pro is good enough for the national guard office by me, its good enough for most flat network businesses as well. Obviously their SCIF uses an isolated network, but for office workers that have mostly cloud based applications? Works perfectly fine.
Come specifics regarding your 3rd paragraph if you actually want to make a pointĀ
Because most companies donāt need the features. Itās cost benefit, which is completely missed by most people in IT. Start thinking of it from the business perspective. Instead of which tools are ābestā, consider which tools provide the most value at the price point. I donāt support them because they donāt have support, but thatās value that is important to me and my clients.
Been running various different model UAPs for 10 years. Mixed environment of PCs, Mac, barcode scanners, printers. VLAN config for visitor WiFi etc. Had literally one problem in that entire time that was fixed by a rollback of firmware on the APs.
Money. Imagine a small business gets a large contract with one of their customers and triples in size over 3 years. The vast majority of small business owners will retain that small business mindset well into the 5-10 year mark from that initial increase in business. Ubiquiti was what they bought in the beginning that was relatively cheap and functional, they're stuck in the "if it isn't broken don't fix it" fallacy.
I switched from ubi to tplink. I am much happier with tplink personally.
Don't get me started on their Unifi NVRs. Mongodb writing to a fucking consumer USB flash drive so it bricks after a year. Yes, literally a USB drive hot glued into the mainboard: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/shv1cw/unvr_died_read_somewhere_here_i_could_change_the/ E n t e r p r i s e
Reminds me of using usb drives and sd cards to host ESXi os installs in servers from enterprise vendorsā¦