Unifi switch setup

[aac]

Ouch, Can't say I would ever have considered pulling a 5406ZL2 for a Netgear.

 

Edge side we normally use Aruba 2930M models if we need stacking or 2930F if not required.

 

Reality is that with HP/Aruba switches no longer having a lifetime warranty the market is opening up considerably. HP/Aruba are just to darn expensive to recommend for the vast majority of schools, Netgear are what they are but the M4300 is a very high end switch with high end features that are backed up by a lifetime warranty which is a big selling point particularly for a core switch and the case studies on them show they have a strong user base...

[ITGuyNW]

Are Aruba switches decent enough though? Is it worth spending more money for reliability etc over ruckus?

[Primus]

Are Aruba switches decent enough though? Is it worth spending more money for reliability etc over ruckus?

 

What's your concern with Aruba? HPE bought them in 2015 and the kit is solid and well supported.

[ITGuyNW]

What's your concern with Aruba? HPE bought them in 2015 and the kit is solid and well supported.

Previous poster said "HP/Aruba are just to darn expensive to recommend for the vast majority of schools"

[Primus]

Previous poster said "HP/Aruba are just to darn expensive to recommend for the vast majority of schools"

 

That hasn't been our finding, however we only use them at the core and we're still happy with the 5400r ZL2 models until they go EoL and we're forced onto the slightly more expensive newer line - for the core I don't think they're parcticularly expensive and if it wasn't for Unifi being such a price effective solution we'd have probably gone Aruba at the edge and/or for WiFi too.

[aac]

That is exactly my point, they are cost effective enough for the core but for the Edge they are far too expensive these days particularly without the lifetime warranty...

[Primus]

That is exactly my point, they are cost effective enough for the core but for the Edge they are far too expensive these days particularly without the lifetime warranty...

 

Do you mean now it's a "limited-lifetime warranty"?

 

I favour Unifi for the edge but even for the edge I don't think Aruba are particularly expensive when compared to others in the industry.

 

Their "limited-lifetime warranty" covers the device up until the end of sale date and then 5 more years so it's not a rubbish warranty by any means.

[aac]

My understanding is no HP/Aruba switches have a lifetime warranty anymore

[Primus]

My understanding is no HP/Aruba switches have a lifetime warranty anymore

 

For switches it's a "limited-lifetime warranty" now which is coverage to the end of sale date plus 5 more years.

[Tefters]

I'm in the other boat on this one, I don't understand why people do not trust Unifi for the core to be honest.

 

I swapped our very old and expensive HP ZL core switch which had 5x 24 port RJE POE modules, 3x 12 port SFP modules and a 10Gbe 4 port SFP for Unifi 3x Pro 48 port POE switches and 2x Pro Aggregation Switches and my networks running like a dream.

 

I'm now about to bite the bullet and buy a Pro Max Dream Machine to replace our Sonicwall NSA 2650 as the IPS throughput is 2.5x faster and will complete the network through a single UI.

[DrCheese]

I'm in the other boat on this one, I don't understand why people do not trust Unifi for the core to be honest.

You've been lucky with firmware....

The lack of Layer 3 is a big reason why I wouldn't touch it at this stage - They promise a lot is "coming soon" that doesn't end up coming out, or is half baked.

[Jcx500]

How’s the Unifi Controller these days? Haven’t used it in a few years Edited June 10, 2024 by Jcx500

[Tefters]

How’s the Unifi Controller these days? Haven’t used it in a few years

 

Running it on a Windows server and its fantastic.

 

They moved away from Oracle Java over a year ago now and since then the controller has been fantastic. Huge performance improvements, snappy to load, performance metrics and graphs including the network map come through quickly and the only real quirk I found is that the mobile app on Xaomi android phones is iffy whereas on my colleagues iPhone and my iPad it runs flawlessly.

[DrCheese]

Aye run ours on a Windows server as well and it's fine - They're constantly updating it with new features.

[Tefters]

You've been lucky with firmware....

The lack of Layer 3 is a big reason why I wouldn't touch it at this stage - They promise a lot is "coming soon" that doesn't end up coming out, or is half baked.

They do support layer 3 now though, have done for quite a while.

[FN-GM]

You've been lucky with firmware....

The lack of Layer 3 is a big reason why I wouldn't touch it at this stage - They promise a lot is "coming soon" that doesn't end up coming out, or is half baked.

 

The way security is getting this isn’t that big of an issue anymore. Lots of people are now routing through an interior firewall to achieve micro segmentation.

Edited June 11, 2024 by FN-GM

[midweek]

We do the routing through our pfsense which works well for us. The Unifi Controller (linux VM in our case) is miles better than it used to be.

[Tefters]

Pro Max Dream Machine arrived today! [emoji16]

 

Not brave enough to plug it in and start fiddling until summer but looking forward to testing its throughput, changing the networks management and start seeing the application data stats and what it can do.

[gszech]

You've been lucky with firmware....

The lack of Layer 3 is a big reason why I wouldn't touch it at this stage - They promise a lot is "coming soon" that doesn't end up coming out, or is half baked.

UniFi Switch - Layer 3 Routing: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042281174-UniFi-Switch-Layer-3-Routing

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Pro Max Dream Machine arrived today! [emoji16]

 

Not brave enough to plug it in and start fiddling until summer but looking forward to testing its throughput, changing the networks management and start seeing the application data stats and what it can do.

DM me if you need any help. We are using Dream Machines across all our schools.

[DrCheese]

UniFi Switch - Layer 3 Routing: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042281174-UniFi-Switch-Layer-3-Routing

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

 

DM me if you need any help. We are using Dream Machines across all our schools.

 

Yes it has "Layer 3" but from watching Youtube videos on it in the past, it's a very half baked implementation. I can't remember why off the top of my head but the consensus was that it's not in the same ballpark as other vendors.

 

I can't say from personal experience tho so if it's doing what people need then /shrug

[midweek]

We are using Dream Machines across all our schools.

 

How are you finding them in comparison to something more "traditional" like a Smoothwall/SophosXG/Fortigate?

 

At the price point I'm tempted to get 2 for failover and have our whole environment Unifi.

[gszech]

How are you finding them in comparison to something more "traditional" like a Smoothwall/SophosXG/Fortigate?

At the price point I'm tempted to get 2 for failover and have our whole environment Unifi.

 

We used Smoothwall for 10+ years. It's a good web filter device, average firewall and web filtering report was quite hard to read at the time.

With SW pricing we could never afford a spare firewall so there was always a one point of failure on our network.

 

When we moved to UniFi we had to separate the firewall and web filtering to two different products. Securly is our web filter and UniFi - firewall.

The Smoothwall subscription costs covered the cost of Securly license.

 

As for the features, here is a list of the Gateway & Routing options that UniFi offers: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/sections/13671944731927-Gateway-Routing

Like I've mentioned before they are adding more features on a weekly basis. For example this was added last week: https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/15179064940439-UniFi-Gateway-DNS

 

I manage multiple schools so for us UniFi really works well:

[Tefters]

I second @gszech when it comes to Unifi churning out features and improvements over the last 2 years, their cadence, offerings and stability has been fantastic.

 

Unifi were a bit iffy pre-covid but they have turned things around. Their layer 3 at the start was a laughing joke and ACL's were done on switches via CMD line and did not survive reboot or upgrade but that changed about 2 years back as mentioned above.

 

Even their CCTV and door access is looking quite spiffy and well priced, the only thing missing is the Unifi Identity Pro/Max/Whatever it's called that is US only at present for the subscription which would be nice to see in the UK as a simple mobile app that can be used for door access, EV charging, VPN.

 

My only gripe when purchasing is that UK resellers are taking the p*ss with pricing. 4gon, broadband buyer and others are charging over the odds compared to just buying direct on the Unifi website.

Edited June 13, 2024 by Tefters

[DrCheese]

My only gripe when purchasing is that UK resellers are taking the p*ss with pricing. 4gon, broadband buyer and others are charging over the odds compared to just buying direct on the Unifi website.

 

Yes I noticed this - £256 ex vat (300+ vat!) for a U7-Pro Max that costs £223 on Unifi's website - Forced to use the resellers tho as they accept purchase orders/trade accounts...

 

That's good if the Layer 3 stuff has improved a lot, I might have to update my knowledge a bit....

 

My only other gripe about Unifi is they're pretty rubbish at product roadmaps -

Instead of releasing all their U7 range in one hit, they're dripping them out so you don't know if what you buy is the best out of the range. I bought a few U7 Pro's for school for key areas but would have bought the Pro Max with it's spectrum analyzer.

 

They did the same with the "Gateway lite" - Released it as a USG replacement at £129 then a month or so later released the "Gateway Max" which is a much better product at £159. Narked me a bit as I wouldn't have bought the lite for home if I knew a better product was 1+ month away.

[Tefters]

Yes I noticed this - £256 ex vat (300+ vat!) for a U7-Pro Max that costs £223 on Unifi's website - Forced to use the resellers tho as they accept purchase orders/trade accounts...

 

That's good if the Layer 3 stuff has improved a lot, I might have to update my knowledge a bit....

 

My only other gripe about Unifi is they're pretty rubbish at product roadmaps -

Instead of releasing all their U7 range in one hit, they're dripping them out so you don't know if what you buy is the best out of the range. I bought a few U7 Pro's for school for key areas but would have bought the Pro Max with it's spectrum analyzer.

 

They did the same with the "Gateway lite" - Released it as a USG replacement at £129 then a month or so later released the "Gateway Max" which is a much better product at £159. Narked me a bit as I wouldn't have bought the lite for home if I knew a better product was 1+ month away.

 

I just go with the rule of waiting for the pro or pro max, either of those 2 to be honest are more than enough for a school density environment.

 

I did our wireless infrastructure just after covid and went with the U5 nano's as U6's were not readily available on the market at time of need. U6's are more than capable for current school WIFI needs, hell we have 1000 iPads now along with laptops and then a good 400+ wired devices and our network runs great!

Going to do some finer VLAN adjustments over summer along with the new router but that's about it.

 

We don't actually have any WIFI 6 capable devices anyway so would only benefit from the transmission strength and density of 6 not the actual speed as we are on Gen9 pads. Now that Apple have axed them from the sale SKU and its 10 from now on then we will start to see the first few WIFI 6 devices but that wont be until next year and even then to replace all 90 AP's we are looking at £13k roughly at Capex cost only with no Opex so its cheap as chips. Even if we wanted to go WIFI 7 then we are only talking £18k which is still crazy good compared to competitors and then they have Opex to account for too.