T4rd
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- Joined
- Apr 8, 2009
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- 20,109
After making this thread to see how I could combine my 2 ISP connections, I got an Edgerouter X to do so and it's been working great so far with my 2 crappy ISP modem/routers to dish out their own WiFI (effectively bypassing the Edgerouter) until I picked up a few UniFi APs to run off of it to get adequate WiFI coverage throughout my house, because my walls are concrete and an single AP struggles to reach past one wall so I need at least 3 to reach through the whole house.
I just got one of them today and Jesus Christ is this thing fighting me every step of the way to work properly; I almost wish I would have just picked up an overpriced mesh system from Google or something now after just trying to get it set up.
First, I had to re-order the network cables on my Edgerouter interfaces so that I could run PoE into Eth0 (to power both the router and AP) and out of Eth4 (to the AP) as required by the router since that's the only way it supports PoE. I initially had both my WAN/ISP connections on Eth3/4 with load balancing and it was working great; even was combining my connections of certain downloads so I was getting nearly double the speed on downloads.
Since I got my AP now, I moved my WAN/ISP connections to Eth0/1 and I guess since one of my ISPs are down right now (hence the want/need for two different ISPs for failover because ISPs are very unreliable here), I couldn't get internet access anymore after running the wizard to configure both the first two Eth ports as WAN links, so after an hour of troubleshooting that, I submitted and relented to only setting up Eth0 for my WAN/ISP connection and got internet back on everything at least.
Now I connect up the AP to Eth4 (the only PoE port on the router) and enable PoE on the interface in the web interface and it powers up. Look at the installer guide and it tells me to install the controller software on my PC so that I can manage/configure the AP... well that's garbage, I thought with it being a Ubiquiti product, the Edgerouter would be the controller and it would be a relatively seamless setup with the UniFi phone app or something.. but ooooooh boy was I wrong. Despite saying right here on the app's description: "Provision a UniFi Access Point (AP) for basic functionality without configuring a UniFi Controller", that app still rely's on a dedicated controller to set it up because I couldn't get it to detect a damn thing while my AP was lit up right in front of me and my phone. Only after I ran the UniFi installer on my Windows box and get the AP function for my phone to connect to, did that app let me do anything. But that was a long process in itself that included a nice chat with their tech support to see why my AP wouldn't provision (or "adopt") or update its firmware on my network. Here's that whole transcription if that may give you some more info that I forget to mention otherwise:
A few hours later, I have yet to hear anything from them, but I've got it mostly figured out now except for the controller software crapping out on me. It ran fine for hours right up until I got the AP working by basically going into the controller network settings and pointing DHCP and the gateway info all to my router and then figuring out that I forgot to set DNS on the Edgerouter's DHCP server after another hour or two of troubleshooting because I had DNS specified on my PC's NIC, but thought it was getting it via DHCP so my phone or wireless devices wouldn't have internet access through the AP still.
So now that I have the AP functional and providing internet, the damn controller software refuses to stay running on my PC; I've reinstalled it a few times and it will work and it retains my network/AP config for a few mins seemingly and then throws a "websocket connection error" and times out from connecting to my localhost server after that. I've tried:
So if anyone here has any experience with these APs and the controller software on Windows, I would really appreciate some insight or assistance on how to get this all running properly with as little headache as possible, else I'm tempted to just send them back and get a mesh kit from another vendor and call it done.
TIA.
Edit: Jesus, just found this article to install the controller software as a service and it seems to work for now again without having to reinstall the software again. Dafuq, I thought it installed it as a service in the first place, but apparently not. Doesn't make sense to me that it doesn't install as an automatic service by default if you want to be able to manage the AP at any point..
I just got one of them today and Jesus Christ is this thing fighting me every step of the way to work properly; I almost wish I would have just picked up an overpriced mesh system from Google or something now after just trying to get it set up.
First, I had to re-order the network cables on my Edgerouter interfaces so that I could run PoE into Eth0 (to power both the router and AP) and out of Eth4 (to the AP) as required by the router since that's the only way it supports PoE. I initially had both my WAN/ISP connections on Eth3/4 with load balancing and it was working great; even was combining my connections of certain downloads so I was getting nearly double the speed on downloads.
Since I got my AP now, I moved my WAN/ISP connections to Eth0/1 and I guess since one of my ISPs are down right now (hence the want/need for two different ISPs for failover because ISPs are very unreliable here), I couldn't get internet access anymore after running the wizard to configure both the first two Eth ports as WAN links, so after an hour of troubleshooting that, I submitted and relented to only setting up Eth0 for my WAN/ISP connection and got internet back on everything at least.
Now I connect up the AP to Eth4 (the only PoE port on the router) and enable PoE on the interface in the web interface and it powers up. Look at the installer guide and it tells me to install the controller software on my PC so that I can manage/configure the AP... well that's garbage, I thought with it being a Ubiquiti product, the Edgerouter would be the controller and it would be a relatively seamless setup with the UniFi phone app or something.. but ooooooh boy was I wrong. Despite saying right here on the app's description: "Provision a UniFi Access Point (AP) for basic functionality without configuring a UniFi Controller", that app still rely's on a dedicated controller to set it up because I couldn't get it to detect a damn thing while my AP was lit up right in front of me and my phone. Only after I ran the UniFi installer on my Windows box and get the AP function for my phone to connect to, did that app let me do anything. But that was a long process in itself that included a nice chat with their tech support to see why my AP wouldn't provision (or "adopt") or update its firmware on my network. Here's that whole transcription if that may give you some more info that I forget to mention otherwise:
Code:
(06:02:03 PM) Abby P.: Hello there.
(06:02:09 PM) Abby P.: Is the Edge router configured?
(06:02:12 PM) T4rd: Heya, Abby
(06:02:19 PM) T4rd: Yes, and working fine otherwise
(06:02:52 PM) T4rd: I configured it to do port forwarding on switch0 and enabled PoE passthrough on it to get power to the AP
(06:03:08 PM) Abby P.: While adoption the AP and controller PC both should be connected hard wired to same switch or router.
(06:04:10 PM) T4rd: Yes, the controller software is installed on my desktop, which is hardwired directly to the Edgerouter X along with the AP. My desktop is on eth2, while the AP is on eth4
(06:05:03 PM) T4rd: My dashboard says "No UniFi security gateway detected. Routing info unavailable.
(06:05:08 PM) Abby P.: Are the ports configured?
(06:05:18 PM) Abby P.: Both the ports should be on same network.
(06:07:23 PM) T4rd: I did exactly this: https://youtu.be/psakurWSotw?t=161
(06:08:39 PM) T4rd: I have no port forwarding rules configured though.
(06:11:48 PM) T4rd: Still there..?
(06:12:12 PM) Abby P.: Yes I am there.
(06:12:27 PM) T4rd: Can you see that video?
(06:13:18 PM) Abby P.: Try to access edge router CLI and share the output of:
show interfaces
(06:13:58 PM) T4rd: Interface IP Address S/L Description
--------- ---------- --- -----------
eth0 192.168.178.128/24 u/u Internet
eth1 - u/D Local
eth2 - u/u Local
eth3 - u/u Local
eth4 - u/u AP
lo 127.0.0.1/8 u/u
::1/128
switch0 10.7.7.1/24 u/u Local
(06:14:23 PM) T4rd: Eth0 is my WAN/ISP, Eth4 is the AP
(06:14:57 PM) T4rd: My controller/desktop is on Eth2
(06:16:25 PM) Abby P.: https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002531728-EdgeRouter-Beginners-Guide-to-EdgeRouter
here is the help article which will help you to configure the ports of edge router.
(06:20:12 PM) T4rd: That article is for initial setup and doesn't specify anything to do with the ports. I've already done everything in that article to get my Edgerouter working in the first place. The issue is that my AP isn't detecting the network.
(06:20:51 PM) T4rd: That article doesn't mention anything about access points either.
(06:24:30 PM) Abby P.: The ports are not cofigured.
(06:24:43 PM) Abby P.: *configured
(06:28:20 PM) T4rd: Please cite on that page where it specifies how to configure the ports for an AP. I don't see anything about port configuration on that page.
(06:29:00 PM) Abby P.: What is the LED status of the AP?
(06:29:10 PM) T4rd: Solid blue right now.
(06:29:30 PM) Abby P.: It means it is already adopted in any other controller software.
(06:29:51 PM) Abby P.: Try to hard reset the AP and get it managed under you controller.
https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205143490-UniFi-How-to-Reset-the-UniFi-Access-Point-to-Factory-Defaults
(06:31:24 PM) T4rd: Ok, just reset it now with the button on the back.
(06:33:14 PM) Abby P.: Let it come is steady white color.
(06:33:20 PM) T4rd: It said "adopting" for a min on the devices page, then "updating (failed)
(06:33:35 PM) T4rd: It's solid blue again now
(06:33:48 PM) T4rd: Was white while it was attempting to adopt it
(06:34:56 PM) Abby P.: What is the firmware of the AP?
(06:35:31 PM) T4rd: UniFi AP-AC-Lite 4.0.69.10871
(06:35:53 PM) Abby P.: What is the IP of the controller PC?
(06:36:22 PM) T4rd: 10.7.7.38
(06:36:51 PM) T4rd: I'm using 10.7.7.0/24 as my DHCP subnet on my router
(06:37:07 PM) Abby P.: What is the IP of the AP?
(06:38:45 PM) T4rd: 10.7.7.49 according to my DHCP leases, I don't see where it says on the controller page though
(06:40:33 PM) Abby P.: Try to SSH in AP via putty and run this command:
set-inform http://10.7.7.38:8080/inform
Run this whole command multiple times.
(06:41:53 PM) T4rd: What credentials do I use on it?
(06:42:18 PM) T4rd: I never set a username/password on it
(06:42:30 PM) Abby P.: Try to use ubnt/ubnt
(06:43:33 PM) T4rd: BZ.v3.7.58# set-inform http://10.7.7.38:8080/inform
Adoption request sent to 'http://10.7.7.38:8080/inform'.
1. please adopt it on the controller
2. issue the set-inform command again
3. <inform_url> will be saved after device is successfully managed
(06:43:38 PM) T4rd: That's what I get
(06:44:05 PM) Abby P.: Try to run that command multiple times.
(06:46:42 PM) T4rd: Ok, I just ran it like 50 times
(06:47:07 PM) Abby P.: I need to take you on email and check with my team.
(06:47:20 PM) Abby P.: Get back to you shortly on email.
(06:47:33 PM) T4rd: Ok...
(06:49:35 PM) T4rd: Can I talk on the phone instead?
(06:49:52 PM) Abby P.: I apologize, we do not provide phone support. I will certainly be able to help you via chat or email.
(06:51:13 PM) T4rd: Ok, I'd like to stay in chat if possible so I can do this faster and get it fixed ASAP.
(06:52:37 PM) Abby P.: i need to escalate your case to internal team and they will update you shortly on email.
(06:52:57 PM) T4rd: Ok, thanks, Abby
(06:53:31 PM) Abby P.: You're welcome.
(06:53:35 PM) Abby P.: Thanks for your time.
(06:53:41 PM) Abby P.: We will see you on email shortly.
A few hours later, I have yet to hear anything from them, but I've got it mostly figured out now except for the controller software crapping out on me. It ran fine for hours right up until I got the AP working by basically going into the controller network settings and pointing DHCP and the gateway info all to my router and then figuring out that I forgot to set DNS on the Edgerouter's DHCP server after another hour or two of troubleshooting because I had DNS specified on my PC's NIC, but thought it was getting it via DHCP so my phone or wireless devices wouldn't have internet access through the AP still.
So now that I have the AP functional and providing internet, the damn controller software refuses to stay running on my PC; I've reinstalled it a few times and it will work and it retains my network/AP config for a few mins seemingly and then throws a "websocket connection error" and times out from connecting to my localhost server after that. I've tried:
- Disabling my firewall
- Installing both 32 and 64-bit Java after seeing it recommended in another online post about this issue.
- Looking up the UniFi service in my services.msc console to see if it's running, which it isn't listed there at all even after reinstalling the controller software and getting it to connect/function for another few mins.
So if anyone here has any experience with these APs and the controller software on Windows, I would really appreciate some insight or assistance on how to get this all running properly with as little headache as possible, else I'm tempted to just send them back and get a mesh kit from another vendor and call it done.
TIA.
Edit: Jesus, just found this article to install the controller software as a service and it seems to work for now again without having to reinstall the software again. Dafuq, I thought it installed it as a service in the first place, but apparently not. Doesn't make sense to me that it doesn't install as an automatic service by default if you want to be able to manage the AP at any point..
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