Those of you with Ubiquiti - Are you as frustrated as I am?

catogtp

[H]ard|Gawd
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May 28, 2007
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I got sick of poor wifi coverage in my house so I decided it was time to upgrade to something a bit more enterprise level. This project started almost a year ago.

I ordered an ERPOE-5 router and a single UAP-AC-PRO-US to start out. I was plagued with heat issues on the router which ended up being the fact that I wanted to use all 4 ports in a bridge, which is software based, rather than the default configuration of using the three ports designated as the internal switch and using two externals. No big deal. Switch back to three ports as the fourth really isn't needed. Once got that resolved I ran into the memory leak bugs in my AP and had to upgrade firmware a few times to finally get that resolved. Finally, things are solid and working as they should.

Fast forward, I hated using their AP controller software on my desktop and setting it up to run all the time was just silly. I bought a cloudkey from someone here and it's been perfectly fine. It runs hot but has not given me any troubles at all. I even added a second AP to help cover the basement about a month ago.

This morning, I had an issue that I've had two other times. I wake up and my router does not have an internet IP. I think "It's the cable modem" and reset it. Still no IP. Release and renew the interface, nothing. Reboot router, it gets an IP and works fine.

I'm becoming increasingly tired of rebooting my equipment. My asus RT-66 may not have had the greatest wifi range, but it would carry on doing what it was set to do for as long as it had power. No rebooting, no funky configurations, nothing.


Maybe I am just complaining but we use a competitor to them at work that is in a very similar price range and we haven't had any issues with this in the 5 years I've managed it.
 
I have Ubiquiti equipment with little to no issues.

ERL-3 - older model running latest 1.9.1 software with no issues. Typically have uptimes of months if I leave alone but I'm always messing with my network so...
AP-AC-LR - runs great, excellent coverage, very reliable. Never reboots unless I mess with it.
AP-AC-PRO - added for additional coverage, runs great, very reliable, same as above.

I run the controller software on an old Zotac SFF PC (Celeron dual core) on Ubuntu 16.04. No issues, runs plenty fast. Only reason I run it is for reporting and to check users connected just because. I have run the APs without the controller running for weeks with no issues after they were configured. The controller can also be run on a RPi 3.

Check that the power to the router is good. Maybe a failing power brick? Try running the AP(s) on its/their own POE injector(s) see i that helps. Can't think of anything else. My set up has been very stable for the year and a half I have had it set up, runs circles around the two ASUS routers I was using (one as a router/AP and one as an AP) before.
 
I don't really have issues with my APs anymore now that they have fixed the memory leak bugs.

As for the power, going to be hard to figure that out since it has a proprietary brick. I have it on a UPS as well so I would hope it's not a source power issue.

It's just silly because the router just stops routing, a reboot fixes it every time. If you mess with your router and restart it a lot you may not see this issue at all. It was up about 3 months prior to the issue this morning.

Controller is pretty good as well now that I have moved away from trying to run it in a vm as a windows service, no real issues with it.
 
Running an ERL-3 also. Only using 2 out of the 3 ports though. Got a ASUS-RT66U router connected to it as a switch and wireless AP. No issues. Was the only way I was able to get my 1Gbps connection to 950+ Mb/sec. Running just the ASUS-RT-66U limited it to around 300 Mb/sec.
 
I run the software on an old laptop so its not bothering me.

I had never touched this kit before and I had major issues configuring an AP. I would reset it and reboot it and then it would go back to how it was, configured with the old incorrect settings. I was flummoxed. Then I realised what was happening and just un-installed the software, reset the AP and then re-installed the Ubiquity software. I forgot that after a reset it would just connect to the software and reinstall the set config.

I've since got more familiar with the software and its much easier now. It's nice kit once you get used to it.
 
You have to watch their code releases - their latest release completely broke roaming for mobile devices in my house. Had to roll back to get things working somewhat normal again.

I'm at the point where I'm about to start buying enterprise AP's - they've come down in price enough.
 
I've yet to run into any issues with the AP-AC-PRO in a small office setting. Granted, i'm running their firewall -> switch -> AP. No downtime, no reboots. Very stable.
 
I have two AC-Pro's in my house, two AC-lite's at my parents place, and 12 UAP-Pro's at local school that I manage. All are working great and the controller is hosted as a VM in a datacenter. I have only had one UAP-Pro die after 5 years in service.

As a side note I have had the usb stick inside of a EdgeRouter Lite die, replaced it, ran recovery procedure and everything runs fine. Currently runs my parents internet.

As stated before be sure to wait a few weeks before you upgrade to the latest unifi controller as they often cause bugs with each fresh release.
 
No problems here:>
2x UAP pro at home
2x UAP at customes business
USGPro at customers office (with USG at customers remote office, L2TP vpn is always up between them)
1x UAP at another customers office
I dont run the controller all the time though (actually its been like 2 yrs I havent run it at one customer and at least a yr at the other, plus I dont have the software installed at home at all)
 
Maybe I just have bad luck. I seem to have all these little bs issues that just drive me crazy. Aside from these it's been very stable though. I do use the PoE for one of my APs as well as the cloudkey which I am at the point of potentially buying a PoE switch and setting up wifi on it's own vlan along with a guest vlan that is isolated, just for fun.

You have to watch their code releases - their latest release completely broke roaming for mobile devices in my house. Had to roll back to get things working somewhat normal again.

Yup, I have noticed that quite a bit. Their QA process is apparently non existent. I am on the 3.8.6.6650 build and may have seen the issue with roaming when I first upgraded but it seems to have cleared up. About 11 months ago I was having to reboot them about once a week due to a memory leak that would basically cause them to stop passing traffic. This was right after I installed them and my family was all about to kick my ass.
 
running a USG, 8p 60w switch, LR ap and key, no issues as of yet

only real complaint is the DPI is lackluster but apparently next release addresses some of that
 
I don't really have issues with my APs anymore now that they have fixed the memory leak bugs.

As for the power, going to be hard to figure that out since it has a proprietary brick. I have it on a UPS as well so I would hope it's not a source power issue.

It's just silly because the router just stops routing, a reboot fixes it every time. If you mess with your router and restart it a lot you may not see this issue at all. It was up about 3 months prior to the issue this morning.

Controller is pretty good as well now that I have moved away from trying to run it in a vm as a windows service, no real issues with it.

Just a shot in the dark here, but have you checked what is going on with your ARP settings? Not sure how you have your 2 APs setup, but it could be possible that the ARP tables are somehow getting messed up after a period of time, thus it losing its connection to the modem. When you reboot the device, it flushes the ARP table and usually will reconnect just fine. I have seen this issue quite a bit with various devices.
 
I'm not really having issues with wifi any more. What was going on this last time was wired and wireless connections. It was on the actual router. I was running the 1.9.1 firmware at that time, but since it died and had to be rebooted, I went ahead and loaded the latest with update 3 on it. Maybe it will stop this nonsense. In this specific instance though, the router lost the public ip that is handed to it from my modem. A modem reboot didn't work, nor did a dhcp release/renew. Had to reboot so it could very well be something ARP or broadcast related that is corrupting over time.
 
FYI.... https://hardforum.com/threads/fixing-unifi-ap-performance.1943812/

I 've been a beta member for UNIFI and EdgeMax for a number of year now. I watch the firmware releases very carefully.

Branch 5.6.x will be LTS for the first Gen AC APs shortly as seen here: https://community.ubnt.com/t5/UniFi-Updates-Blog/UAP-AC-UAP-AC-Outdoor-LTS-Announcement/ba-p/2059058

I tend to be very conservative in my firmware and only upgrade due to security issues or some new feature that will benefit my environment. Which may explain why I'm still running: Unifi 5.5.21


I use EdgeMax 1.9.1 (The hotfixes fix some things and break others.) Hotfix 3 is still not 100% and has been linked to some random restarts as well.

Firmware 1.9.8 which is Alpha for most of the Routers and Beta for the unreleased products is a fork of the 1.9.1 hotfix #2

1.9.1 Hotfix 3 is 3/4 baked.... there might be a hotfix 4 coming or perhaps they will call it 1.9.2... I never know.

1.9.8.x will drop once the new products are released <--and will most likely be a code merge between the older routers and the new products.

The Firmware 2.0 release is loosely scheduled for 1st quarter next year and moves the kernel to Debian Jessie (this change was locked/tied to the binary support provided by the CPU hardware manufacturer, whom just provided the updated binaries 3 months ago) This is NOT a problem since the router stack follows the LTS path. Full security support will be available for the upcoming Jessie Kernel until 2020. Wheezy (the current 1.9.x kernel) LTS support expires May 2018.
 
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I bought a Ubiquiti ERX to replace an aging Asus NT56u and haven't had a good first week with it. At first it was working well, then slowly but more frequently I noticed devices dropping off the network. I rebooted it a few times but the problem got so bad that I had to do a factory reset. It seems ok now but I am not filled with confidence.

Also when I setup DHCP reservations it seemed to cause a bunch of issues. The DHCP server would compain about duplicates because it had retained the old lease that the devices first had along with the new static reservation.

I'm fine doing manual setup but troubleshooting basic things like DHCP is a bit much. It should just work.
 
Whenever I buy unbt i always feel like a paying beta tester.

I loved the mFI power strips, then the controller software was abandoned in 2015 (no WIN 10 support) but they still sell the hardware, knowing most of it is useless without the controller.

I was looking into Unifi security gateway but I'm Not sure what security features it has to be a "security gateway" also lack of built in interface and JSON files is annoying.

I want a light weight firewall/router but not sure i'll go ubnt.
 
I bought a Ubiquiti ERX to replace an aging Asus NT56u and haven't had a good first week with it. At first it was working well, then slowly but more frequently I noticed devices dropping off the network. I rebooted it a few times but the problem got so bad that I had to do a factory reset. It seems ok now but I am not filled with confidence.

Also when I setup DHCP reservations it seemed to cause a bunch of issues. The DHCP server would compain about duplicates because it had retained the old lease that the devices first had along with the new static reservation.

I'm fine doing manual setup but troubleshooting basic things like DHCP is a bit much. It should just work.


DHCP is either reserved or not.

DNS is either static or populated by the client

It kind of sounds like you were using DHCP and then created reservations for your machines. Then you did not either force or update DNS registration or restart the router, leading to the condition you saw.
 
DHCP is either reserved or not.

DNS is either static or populated by the client

It kind of sounds like you were using DHCP and then created reservations for your machines. Then you did not either force or update DNS registration or restart the router, leading to the condition you saw.

I know what dhcp is and how it works. I used the Gui to click a lease and convert it to a static reservation. The router created the new reservation and still complained that the MAC was associated with a lease to the old IP. A better system would know that I converted that MAC to a reservation and would delete lease without me going into the cli to delete it manually.

This has nothing to do with DNS.
 
Whenever I buy unbt i always feel like a paying beta tester.

I loved the mFI power strips, then the controller software was abandoned in 2015 (no WIN 10 support) but they still sell the hardware, knowing most of it is useless without the controller.

I was looking into Unifi security gateway but I'm Not sure what security features it has to be a "security gateway" also lack of built in interface and JSON files is annoying.

I want a light weight firewall/router but not sure i'll go ubnt.

The security portion is the DPI Deep packet inspection able to categorize traffic, and if you know how...filter or route based on those categories.

JSON is a pain, Ubiquiti knows it and something different will be arriving next year to replace it.

The interface in the latest code is miles ahead of what you'd see a year ago. You can browse the current online demo here: https://demo.ubnt.com/manage/site/default/dashboard
 
Nope, once I put the flakey UAPs in the closet and replaced with an RT66, all my wireless problems just magically went away.
 
I recently read an article somewhere that argued ubiquity is cooking its books in order to allow the owner to buy the rest of the grizzlies. Just a side note
 
I recently read an article somewhere that argued ubiquity is cooking its books in order to allow the owner to buy the rest of the grizzlies. Just a side note


I saw this....

There's quite a few factors being ignored.

We know that the CEO burns an enormous amount of cash on travel since Ubiquiti development was distributed world wide. Some of that missing money was spent on telecommunications and infrastructure and support. The entire enterprise support system came online in the past couple months. They 've spent a ton of money on adding new products to their Wifi portfolio and getting code running on the next generation of processors. Sales slumped on the routing side as much of what Ubiquiti offers just isn't that competitive on the router side. The upcoming products I know of resolve that, but they need the code to be bug free and push out a completely new router portfolio. The other big expense is the jessie binary update which is going to be massively expensive process. The writing won't be on the wall until 4th qtr next year. If the things I mentioned are not up and running by then, Ubiquiti may be forced to restructure some of their operations.
 
"Enterprise support system"??

Sorry, but Chat support != enterprise support if that is what they are referring to.


NOPE:

UNFI Elite:

  • Premium US phone-based support 8-5 MST Monday-Friday
  • Extended Warranty
    • Limited Warranty is extended for each Elite-licensed device through the end of the one-year subscription term and continues to extend with each device license renewal.
  • Priority RMA fulfillment process; advanced replacement available when needed.
  • Regular stable software releases available for upgrading your Elite controller(s)
  • 24x7 high-availability controller access

Price is not cheap but is about 60% less than meriki's offering

Each AP is $50 per year, but you also have to license the router at the very minimum.


So if a home user with a USG and 1 AP wanted the service it would cost $150 per year after the hardware was purchased.


10UNIFI APs, (2) 16 port UNIFI switches and a USG Pro = $640 a year
 
Enterprise is not 8x5 phone support. This is the exact reason we no longer sell or install Synology. Their support sucks now and we can't do any maintenance after hours because if something blows up, we have no assistance until the following business day.
 
Ubiquiti's stance is their products are inexpensive enough to have spares. It's a valid line of thinking, but I agree that is not comforting when the spare has not been kept up to date and you've been tasked with restoring services.
 
Yeah, I'm not sure I would want to duplicate my entire infrastructure because they suck at software QA. I hope things get better with the new hardware/software because I do like the product, just not impressed with their quality control on the software side.
 
nope, super happy, heh, i've not had any of the problems mentioned here... those DHCP res issues sound really strange, as many routers as i have flying around i don't have any issues with it...

that said, i found the unifi interface kind of buggy for configuring routers, i stay away from the USG... EdgeRouter and UNMS is the way to go
 
We use UAP AC Pros for clients all the time and I have not seen any of these problems. The only Ubiquiti router I have used is the EdgeRouter X in my home and it has been rock solid. After replacing my Comcast modem with a TP-link and installing the Edgerouter I haven't needed to reboot once. I forgot what it was like to never need to reboot my equipment lol.

The controller software just needs to be run to configure the equipment, you shouldn't need to have it running on your desktop all the time.

It sounds like many of the issues you guys are seeing are related to advanced configurations? Most of our clients are small enough that default settings work fine across a couple access points. Maybe this is where Ubiquity shines?
 
We use UAP AC Pros for clients all the time and I have not seen any of these problems. The only Ubiquiti router I have used is the EdgeRouter X in my home and it has been rock solid. After replacing my Comcast modem with a TP-link and installing the Edgerouter I haven't needed to reboot once. I forgot what it was like to never need to reboot my equipment lol.

The controller software just needs to be run to configure the equipment, you shouldn't need to have it running on your desktop all the time.

It sounds like many of the issues you guys are seeing are related to advanced configurations? Most of our clients are small enough that default settings work fine across a couple access points. Maybe this is where Ubiquity shines?


Nope, our setup was as basic as it gets. 2 UAPs doing nothing but acting as regular APs, attached to it's own network adapter on PFsense. Management software was running on a server 2012 VM, always available. The devices would drop signal/speed constantly, or appeared to just stop routing packets to the gateway.
 
Nope, our setup was as basic as it gets. 2 UAPs doing nothing but acting as regular APs, attached to it's own network adapter on PFsense. Management software was running on a server 2012 VM, always available. The devices would drop signal/speed constantly, or appeared to just stop routing packets to the gateway.

It's a shot in the dark but what did you have the power output set to? Did you ever touch the setting?
 
It's a shot in the dark but what did you have the power output set to? Did you ever touch the setting?

I believe that was one of the settings the support had me play around with, but it never helped. The 2 UAPs could easily cover the whole building, so turning the TX power up wasn't needed. Users were less than 20' from the UAP and still had issues anyway.
 
Enterprise is not 8x5 phone support. This is the exact reason we no longer sell or install Synology. Their support sucks now and we can't do any maintenance after hours because if something blows up, we have no assistance until the following business day.

Actually enterprise support is whatever the company deems it to be. There is no universal definition for enterprise support. You used to get far less from companies in the past for enterprise support. I would say going from e-mail or chat support to 8-5 phone support is a start. there are other network companies that do not offer 24x7 phone support. To get that, you need to make arrangements ahead of time with the company, and they will give you a window they can be available.
 
We use UAP AC Pros for clients all the time and I have not seen any of these problems. The only Ubiquiti router I have used is the EdgeRouter X in my home and it has been rock solid. After replacing my Comcast modem with a TP-link and installing the Edgerouter I haven't needed to reboot once. I forgot what it was like to never need to reboot my equipment lol.

The controller software just needs to be run to configure the equipment, you shouldn't need to have it running on your desktop all the time.

It sounds like many of the issues you guys are seeing are related to advanced configurations? Most of our clients are small enough that default settings work fine across a couple access points. Maybe this is where Ubiquity shines?

naw, i've got a really advanced configuration with lots and lots of edgerouters and near enough to 100 APs in many locations and don't have any real issues...

with regards to dhcp problems, in recent memory i can think of one bug that came from a fw update to an edgerouter, something having to do with DNS-suffix breaking on 1.9.3 i think it was? there was a workaround but i just decided to revert versions

i mean i have noticed really slow DHCP performance, but it definitely all works...


also, i watched the video from that stock analyst and he has 0 valid points, he's obviously clueless about the tech "their next big product is a go-pro ripoff" he has no idea what this company is selling, they got 10g routers and gpon setups now, they'll make 100x more money off of those two products than their go-pro ripoff and he has no idea

calling ubnt disruptive is not just a buzz-word drop... it's kind of their entire business model, to be honest...
 
In the process of packing up my house to put it on the market, but I will be buying more Ubiquity stuff once we get moved. Currently using the ER-Lite with one of the older UAP-LR units and couldn't be happier. This is coming from using Netgear and D-Link wireless routers in the past with nothing but issues.

Current uptime for the ER-Lite is 4.5 months, and that reboot was only because of re-arranging my office. At the time it had approximately 9 months of uptime. This was after dealing with weekly reboots of a DLink DIR-655 and monthly reboots of a Netgear WNDR3700 router. Yeah, older tech but so is the UAP-LR and ER-Lite. Add on the fact that every device in the house gets wifi coverage with the access point sitting in the master closet on the second floor. With both the Netgear and the DLink, when they were set up in the office on the first floor the master bedroom was very spotty on coverage and even if you did get a signal it was so weak that browsing the internet on my phone was painful. I work from home 3 days a week and both the D-Link and Netgear would drop my VPN connection to work multiple times a day over wireless.. with just the UAP-LR it might drop once a week but I've gone a couple weeks at a time without a single loss of connectivity.
 
Actually enterprise support is whatever the company deems it to be. There is no universal definition for enterprise support. You used to get far less from companies in the past for enterprise support. I would say going from e-mail or chat support to 8-5 phone support is a start. there are other network companies that do not offer 24x7 phone support. To get that, you need to make arrangements ahead of time with the company, and they will give you a window they can be available.

Have had many different "enterprise" support contracts that were anything from 8-5 M-F to whenever you call, they answer and work with you. Worst support to date has been with HP Enterprise Storage support!
 
Here's a tidbit I learned tonight. Once of the new UNIFI USG developers came over to the team from PFsense where he was a senior developer from 2008-2016.
 
I'm guessing enough people have already beat this up, but from the original post it sounds quite obvious that most of the issues revolve around your ERPOE-5. I can't say as I've deployed one of those, nor has anyone else on this board that I've heard. The majority of the users are using the APs with a smaller number using ER-L or ER-X devices. I don't run the cloud controller either because there is not really a need to do so, especially if you're not using a router.

I know a few people running UAP Pros (myself included) and those have been rock solid. I also setup a perfect combo with an ER-X and a Unifi AP AC Lite. What's neat about that configuration, is that you only need 1 POE adapter to make it happen. You can daisy chain the AP off the last port using the 24v passive power. I don't think you can do that with the UAP Pro because of the odd 24v power requirements. As a side note I'm pretty sure the AC Lite will actually support standard POE now as well as I seem to recall seeing that listed on the box, but it's not listed in some of the documentation as previous revisions of it wasn't capable.

No issues with any of the gear that I've deployed, but I will say that you better be able to put on a network engineer hat if you buy an EdgeRouter X. I work with full blown networking equipment all the time and that device is pretty raw and hardcore to try to setup. It took me a long time to figure out how to get a basic firewall configuration going with NAT, then being able to add in a couple of other networks. I expected it to be a router / firewall in the truest of sense, and the edge routers definitely are. You can save yourself a lot of hassle by picking up a $30 gigabit switch and using that for your network because that's really what the device was designed around. The deployment I created uses a little Dlink DGS-1100-08 which is a great little 8 port gig switch that is vlan capable. I trunked one port to that switch, and trunked the AC Lite off another port. That gives you multiple subnets on both devices and you can certainly bridge the two vlans together if you need to.


The Asus and the Ubiquiti gear are not really in the same league, so you need to have a different mindset if you want to deploy unifi equipment than the all in one Soho like the ASUS. The ASUS is a router / firewall + switch + Access point, so that's why if I were deploying anything I would also be buying a router / firewall + switch + access point. Simply having a switch might have solved some of your headaches in the beginning, but I also question if you don't have a misconfiguration which is causing you grief. If the POE is like the X, you can start out by using the one time wizard which will give you a skeleton configuration to do basic NAT between a pre defined set of ports. It's up to you to make the rest of the work. If you try to run the wizard again it will reset ALL of the configuration, not just the canned stuff. If you picked say the dual WAN wizard for initial setup, but then tried to bridge eth1, you'll end up bridging a WAN port with a LAN port. Not saying that's what is happening on yours by any means, but configuration of an EdgeRouter is very advanced and it's incredibly easy to misconfigure. You can make the ports to whatever you want them to do, but then you need to know what function they are providing or stuff won't work. The Soho you can't change what port is WAN and what is LAN, nor can you change the automatic NAT that occurs between these.
 
I owned a ER-PoE it's basically a ERL with a 3 port switch chip added on. Things go wrong very fast when you try to route across the switch ports, treat the collection of 3 ports like they are one route and things are fine, try to route between those ports and you'll see CPU go up and throughput drop. From what I m reading the OP should have purchased a USG + US-8-60 That would have given him the UNIFI controller in the router, a DMZ port, + 4 normal ports, + 4 PoE 802.3at ports. It also gives full visibility of all of his equipment in one dashboard.

I've replaced my ER-PoE with a ER-6 (not yet released to retail).
 
You can save yourself a lot of hassle by picking up a $30 gigabit switch and using that for your network because that's really what the device was designed around.

I actually have two 8 port gig switches connected, I just didn't mention that in my original post.

My problem isn't with anything on the Ethernet side, aside from the very beginning when I didn't realize that creating a bridge of the 3 port switch and the 4th independent port was going to disable offloading which I redid within the first week. It's all been bugs in the AP firmware and the ER. APs are rock solid now, controller is good, I just have this nagging issue with the ER losing the IP on the WAN interface and not being able to get another via DHCP until I reboot it. My post was basically to see if others were having all these little annoyances that they've had to work through.


I've included a network diagram of my setup.

Primary subnet = 192.168.10.1/24
cloudkey subnet = 192.168.20.1/24

APs are on the 192.168.10.1/24 subnet.
1 SSID for family. 1 SSID for guests

This may not be ideal as I would rather uplink my two 8 ports together but they have some sort of bug with ARP corruption when they are chained together causing the farthest in the chain to randomly stop passing traffic for random MACs. Ultimately I'd like to get a managed gig PoE switch and create multiple vlans for local ethernet, local wifi and guest wifi.

network.jpg
 
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