So Long, Thanks For All The Help

[Tech9]

I believe the UI help is pretty clear.

In Networks:

In WiFi:

 

[Tech9]

You perhaps noticed already the settings are per network and may be different.

Guest Network with Content Filtering and Main Network without it, for example:

When Content Filtering is active the Gateway will do DNS interception and redirection in order to prevent common avoiding techniques.

 

[Tech9]

Perhaps the documentation is assuming when you need a Guest Network you select it as a Guest Network. Also keep in mind the online documents are for UniFi OS or Network Application and not specifically for your Cloud Gateway Max. Ubiquiti has many different devices. Some of the settings you see there may not be present on your device or you may have settings appearing after software update not mentioned there.

Sometimes you may see even things like this in the UI:

 

[Tech9]

Your Guest Network is fine. It's different VLAN, has own DHCP server, perhaps you have selected DHCP scope already, firewall rules were created automatically for you, Captive Portal authentication options are, etc. Enjoy playing with the settings and testing the results because in short time you'll have nothing more to tweak and play with. The Gateway doesn't reboot on network changes and you'll go through the available options pretty fast.

 

[Tech9]

Not really an App person, but I have both UniFi App and WiFiman on my phone. UniFi App receives the notifications and it's almost full featured management tool. WiFiman with the life data is useful for adjusting the APs settings, performance evaluation, etc. So far I'm happy with the software.

 

[tgl]

So I'm wondering about something. As I've said I live here in Atlanta. Worlds Busiest Airport. I've always had the DFS turned off on the asus routers to prevent them channel hopping. With that was the AX features disabled on 2.4 and 5.0. 2.0 I had limited to 20mhz and the 5.0 was set to 80mhz; both with fixed channels. Thoughts on this. Should I just leave most at default and go with it or set it the same as I've always done with my other routers; set channels, set bandwidth, guest network, etc. Thinking out loud...

Received wisdom on the community.ui.com boards is to not trust UniFi's "Auto" settings for channel or Tx power (or indeed anything else). Their auto channel selection is notoriously stupid, and as far as anyone can tell "Auto" power is just a synonym for "High", which is seldom what you want. Use a wifi scanner or the "Radios/Environment" tab in the UniFi GUI to identify which channels are cleanest where you are, and then select those as fixed channels. Don't put adjacent APs on the same channel.

As for DFS channels ... you might try it. I remember having been scared off that back when I was using Asus XT8s, because (not knowing much about it at the time) I'd tried a DFS channel and the system almost immediately saw a radar pulse and fell over. I acquired my UniFi gear shortly after moving across town into a high-rise apartment block. I figured DFS would be even more of a loss here, because (a) I'm about half as far as before from the local airport and NOAA weather radar station, and (b) I'm on top of a high hill where I've practically got line-of-sight to those institutions, where before the same hill had been blocking them. Nonetheless, the congestion in the 5GHz band in this building is bad enough that I thought I'd try anything, so I started using channels 52 and 132 (both at 80MHz) ... and darn if it hasn't worked great. I don't think I've seen a single radar outage in the roughly-a-year since I set this up, and my neighbors are mostly not using these channels. I do not recall exactly which DFS channel I tried previously, but I wonder if it could've been in the 120-128 range. One of many things I know now that I didn't then is that weather radars run in that frequency range. The rest of the DFS range is reserved for other sorts of legacy radio services that might or might not be operating anywhere near you. TL;DR: give it a try, and try a few different channels in the DFS range before deciding you can't use it.

 

[Tech9]

Don't put adjacent APs on the same channel.

I have all 4x APs currently on the same channels. They share the total available bandwidth, but the roaming happens faster. I rarely have clients taking the entire bandwidth, but I have clients moving from one AP to another. For 2x APs it won't be a problem. Let @ATLga experiment and find own best settings.

 

[tgl]

I have all 4x APs currently on the same channels. They share the total available bandwidth, but the roaming happens faster.

Hmm, have you re-checked that with UniFi? I have all my APs on different channels, and roaming between them works just fine AFAICT. I do have "BSS Transition" (a/k/a 802.11v) enabled, which might help on this.

Let @ATLga experiment and find own best settings.

Yeah, "YMMV" is always applicable with wifi.

 

[Jbennett360]

Max and the U6+ are both out of stock in the UK

 

[Tech9]

Hmm, have you re-checked that with UniFi?

For my home - I checked what works best for my ~20 clients and we don't have 4x 80MHz wide channels on 5GHz band. My previous setup was set on 2x Ch.42 + 2x Ch.155, but this one works better on 4x Ch.42. It comes down to what the user wants - maximum throughput or a bit faster transition. I get a bit faster transition and the throughput is enough. For my business - the system is set on different 40MHz wide channels for ~200 clients.

I do have both ap's set to use the same channels

Just test and see what works best for you. With 2x APs you can do same or different 80MHz non-DFS channels. You may find tuning the system easier on the same channels because wall penetration on 5.2GHz (Ch.42) and 5.8GHz (Ch.155) is a bit different.

 

[tgl]

This was actually one of my questions I had forgotten to ask, thanks @tgl for the initial comment. I do have both ap's set to use the same channels because I had always read previously on the old asus mesh threads when setting those up that they should use same channels for best roaming and that they wouldn't have to reassociate (or something like that as best I remember). I never did have a mesh setup so didn't test that theory.

Yes, if you're using wireless meshing then the parent and remote APs must use the same 5GHz channel, because that's where their backhaul traffic happens. (Unlike some Asus models, UniFi APs don't have a spare radio for backhaul.) But if you have wired APs, I think putting them on nonoverlapping channels is a better choice. With 802.11k there's no reason why a client would have to search to find a signal on another channel.

The text you quoted about 802.11k/v/r matches my understanding of things. The thing it won't tell you is whether (or how well) the clients you have work with those features. The clients I have for which I care about roaming are almost all fairly-recent Apple gear, and they all seem to roam fine with all of those features turned on. The one non-Apple roaming device is a robot vacuum, which seems to have extremely bottom-of-the-line wifi hardware (2.4G only, 1x1 WiFi 4 per UNA). I rather doubt that it knows anything about k/v/r. But it doesn't seem to have a problem either as it trundles around the apartment. So for sure YMMV, but I encourage you to experiment.

 

[Tech9]

Because the Landing Page is enabled by default.

Enable Captive Portal and and click on this Hotspot Portal:

Go the settings (upper right corner, the gear icon) and disable the Landing Page:

Then turn off Captive Portal in WiFi and you're good to go. Business related option, your fault using it at home.

 

[Tech9]

The landing page is customizable. Leave a message to your guests "My WiFi is $5/min, my Wife collects the money".

 

[Tech9]

I've noticed that when you make certain changes, the system reinitializes components

Well... yes. If you change Tx power or channel on the fly the AP will display Getting Ready message for some seconds and Up to date after. If you change the DHCP range the clients will reconnect with the new settings. This is normal and expected. Remember your Asus router used to reboot completely on certain system changes? My uptime is since the gateway was powered up first time and updated the UniFi OS.

 

[Tech9]

Do you ever do a complete reboot of your system; the gateway and the ap's?

No. The first system has about 1.5 months uptime, the second about 20 days at the moment.

On previous discussion about the ap channels

Use whatever works best for your clients. Again, with 2x APs only you can do whatever you want.

 

[Tech9]

Speaking about "issues" - the WAN monitoring is very sensitive and triggers warning messages sometimes for no reason.

This one for example perhaps no one would even notice, but I have notification about it and have to clear the warning message.

If this happens to you as well and you want to avoid useless log messages - in Network Application main screen click on the Gateway image, go to Settings and change Internet Verification Server to your ISP gateway IP instead. Now the WAN connection monitoring will monitor your first upstream server only.

 

[Tech9]

Can't get rid of the Asus, eh?

Check the log and clear the old messages.

 

[Tech9]

The system has rogue AP monitoring, unauthorized DHCP servers, etc. automatic network protection features. If you removed the Asus already the warning may clear itself over time. Not sure, don't have that. Check the Ubiquiti forums for more information. There is Data Retention Period in Settings, System, Advanced. Perhaps setting it to the mimimum 7 days period will overwrite the logs.

 

[Tech9]

Some say the "Legacy" interface has a setting for "known" SSIDs around and it clears the warning. You can try that. I know what the Legacy interface looks like, but haven't played with it for years and can't give you exact settings locations. It's very similar to what Omada interface looks like, by the way.

 

[Tech9]

It is what it is. No returns, no refunds, no support number. Your problem now. Don't trust everything you read on Internet.