Ubiquiti network or all-in-one router?

[BeachGuy]

Anybody have thoughts on Ubiquiti products or network setup (Unifi, EdgeRouter X)? Is an all-in-one wireless router a better option?

 

[Tech9]

Home All-In-One routers are made for home use. They are cheaper, user friendly, mostly plug and play. Work good enough when one access point is needed serving 20-30 wireless devices. Business routers, switches, access points offer different features and cover different requirements. Usually more expensive and not that user friendly to setup. There is no universal “better” solution. It depends on the needs.

How many businesses and public places you have seen with home routers hanging off the walls? How many of your friends run Cisco, Aruba or even Ubiquiti or TP-Link Omada at home? Must be some difference, no?

 

[BeachGuy]

I agree there's definitely a difference. I've read some articles that say it's better to invest in business network hardware (better than all-in-one). I'm talking small business, not IBM.

 

[Tech9]

Business systems have better hardware and software quality and are more flexible, but also more expensive and more networking knowledge is required to setup. Not a good option for average home users.

 

[drinkingbird]

I agree there's definitely a difference. I've read some articles that say it's better to invest in business network hardware (better than all-in-one). I'm talking small business, not IBM.

I've used Ubiquiti and found it to be very good. You have to run a controller but it doesn't have to run all the time if you don't care about collecting long term stats etc. It runs on windows or linux.

 

[BeachGuy]

Thank you both. I'll probably stick to all-in-one. As Tech9 says it's probably best for the average homeowner. Maybe one day I'll delve deeper into networking.

 

[drinkingbird]

Thank you both. I'll probably stick to all-in-one. As Tech9 says it's probably best for the average homeowner. Maybe one day I'll delve deeper into networking.

Yeah I'd say if you don't have a need for VLANs, more advanced routing/firewall, or several APs, there probably isn't a benefit.

 

[coxhaus]

I would say the several APs are the big one. You have to live with slow wireless with the all-in-one router. My thinking is you want an AP in all big used rooms if you want top wireless speeds. This may be more so as we move more into the higher frequencies in the 6 GHz range.

 

[drinkingbird]

I would say the several APs are the big one. You have to live with slow wireless with the all-in-one router. My thinking is you want an AP in all big used rooms if you want top wireless speeds. This may be more so as we move more into the higher frequencies in the 6 GHz range.

No, too many APs is a bad thing. An AP in every room is not what you want.

Plenty of AIO routers can exceed 1G easily on wireless so I would not consider them slow by any means.

 

[coxhaus]

I would want APs in heavily used rooms as the overall wireless is better. Connection rates are much lower through walls, at least my walls.

You need to adjust the power levels for multiple APs in one home. You will end up with higher connection rates when using multiple APs. And higher throughput when using different channels on those APs because all APs can transmit at the same time on different channels.

I also run these APs through a Cisco L3 switch so they switch fast. When you get a broadcast that slows a network the other networks keeps talking through a L3 switch. It is not like when a L2 switch receives a broadcast and all internet traffic stops. The more devices you have the more this stands out. Windows PCs do a lot of intercommunication on a network besides broadcasts.

 

[drinkingbird]

I would want APs in heavily used rooms as the overall wireless is better. Connection rates are much lower through walls, at least my walls.

You need to adjust the power levels for multiple APs in one home. You will end up with higher connection rates when using multiple APs. And higher throughput when using different channels on those APs because all APs can transmit at the same time on different channels.

I also run these APs through a Cisco L3 switch so they switch fast. When you get a broadcast that slows a network the other networks keeps talking through a L3 switch. It is not like when a L2 switch receives a broadcast and all internet traffic stops. The more devices you have the more this stands out. Windows PCs do a lot of intercommunication on a network besides broadcasts.

You are totally lost.

 

[Tech9]

I run 4x APs in my EU house and 4x APs in my NA house. EU house is 5 times smaller brick and concrete. NA house is common wood sticks. It depends on the environment. Both setups work great in their specific environment. Wi-Fi needs planning. Copying someone else's setup may or may not work.

 

[coxhaus]

You are totally lost.

Only in your mind due to your lack of understanding.

An L3 switch gives you higher throughput and you are nuts if you don't run one in a large network. Small network you can get by, but it is always better to run good infostructure that can scale. If you run VOIP phones in your network, you need to be running a L3 switch to control priority to voice traffic.

 

[drinkingbird]

Only in your mind due to your lack of understanding.

An L3 switch gives you higher throughput and you are nuts if you don't run one in a large network. Small network you can get by, but it is always better to run good infostructure that can scale. If you run VOIP phones in your network, you need to be running a L3 switch to control priority to voice traffic.

No issue with running an L3 switch, that's literally the only part of your post that makes an ounce of sense. Though it is not necessary for most.

Broadcasts do not stop all traffic (or any traffic for that matter). L3 switches still have broadcasts (obviously divided into multiple domains if you're using multiple segments with VLANs). Putting an AP in every room of a residential house is going to cause more problems than it fixes. Even if you run different channels, you will have overlap and your devices will not know which AP to connect to, even if you adjust power and use things like minimum RSSI/roaming assistant.

You do not need L3 switches just because you have VOIP phones. L2 switches can do QoS and prioritization just as well as L3 ones and typically it is not even needed if you aren't saturating your LAN connections. Your average home/low cost L3 switch will have higher latency and jitter than an L2 switch and could actually cause your VOIP traffic to be worse, not better. This is even the case with lower end enterprise L3 switches.

From many of your posts it is clear who has the lack of understanding.

 

[Tech9]

Putting an AP in every room of a residential house is going to cause more problems than it fixes.

Depending on conditions. If done properly and when needed it works very well. There is no universal advice.

 

[drinkingbird]

Depending on conditions. If done properly and when needed it works very well. There is no universal advice.

I agree every situation is different but needing an AP in every room is a fringe situation. If someone doesn't know how to set and balance things properly, they'll probably end up using one AP all the time anyway. Even if you get things perfect, some clients are just stubborn.

I had one device years ago that would constantly get kicked off by Ubiquiti minRSSI and just keep reconnecting to that AP even though the signal was unusable and there was a strong signal from another AP. If I shut off the weak AP, it would eventually connect to the strong one (then have the opposite issue when I moved around).

 

[Tech9]

needing an AP in every room is a fringe situation

I agree for North America with typical wooden houses around, but not for Europe for example. As I mentioned above I'm also using 4x APs in a brick and reinforced concrete bungalow style house under 2000sqft. All on the same control channel 36 @80MHz wide, controller managed, 20mW power (1/10 of allowed). It works very well with high throughput and adequate roaming. Wall attenuation is about -30dBm. No fringe situation there.

 

[coxhaus]

My connection rates are much higher with more APs. Your problems may be your problem.

I think using QoS on the vlan in a L3 switch is a better idea than using QoS with layer 2. Layer 2 CoS class of service. Very limited. Layer 3 is much better.
I would think it you had say a 600 PCs and 15 or 20 switches using all L2 switches would suck for voice traffic. You would have bottlenecks in different switches at different times. There is not enough control for the traffic.
Any way this is what I have seen in the past.

And yes, I agree the Cisco small business L3 switches are not like the big boy Cisco L3 switches that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The small Cisco L3 switches that I run are fast enough to segment voice traffic and prioritize it, so they are good for smaller networks in my way of thinking. There is a little overhead for L3 vs L2 because L2 is at lower level in OSI model. Once you start loading down networks, L3 is the way to go from what I have seen.

Here is the Cisco way.

https://www.ciscolive.com/c/dam/r/ciscolive/emea/docs/2020/pdf/BRKCRS-2501.pdf

 

[drinkingbird]

My connection rates are much higher with more APs. Your problems may be your problem.

I think using QoS on the vlan in a L3 switch is a better idea than using QoS with layer 2. Layer 2 CoS class of service. Very limited. Layer 3 is much better.
I would think it you had say a 600 PCs and 15 or 20 switches using all L2 switches would suck for voice traffic. You would have bottlenecks in different switches at different times. There is not enough control for the traffic.
Any way this is what I have seen in the past.

And yes, I agree the Cisco small business L3 switches are not like the big boy Cisco L3 switches that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The small Cisco L3 switches that I run are fast enough to segment voice traffic and prioritize it, so they are good for smaller networks in my way of thinking. There is a little overhead for L3 vs L2 because L2 is at lower level in OSI model. Once you start loading down networks, L3 is the way to go from what I have seen.

Here is the Cisco way.

https://www.ciscolive.com/c/dam/r/ciscolive/emea/docs/2020/pdf/BRKCRS-2501.pdf

Your throughput may be lower, or your connection rates could be even higher with less APs properly spaced. Or maybe you have all concrete walls and it is warranted. But it is not prudent to suggest everyone put an AP in every room. I don't have any problems, my throughput hits the peak of what AC is capable of (except wireless to wireless since my 1900 doesn't have the horsepower for it). Anything I'm doing large transfers with, at least one end is hardwired so no issues there.

Using QOS on a VLAN on an L3 switch happens at L2, no different than an L2 switch. There are additional QOS things you can do at L3 but COS/TOS is applied by the VOIP phone, and the switch is simply configured (typically by default) to prioritize that traffic at L2, to pass it upstream, where an eventual router also prioritizes it. L2 is the first place to apply QOS in a typical LAN environment in order to have prioritization, otherwise everyone is fighting for bandwidth until they hit the L3 interface. If you're segmenting your L3 switch into multiple VLANs with multiple ports in each, hate to break it to you, but your QOS is probably being done at L2.

Obviously if you have 600 clients you shouldn't be putting them in the same L2 segment/broadcast domain, you have a distribution tier (pair of L3 switches or routers) with an access tier (L2 switches, each with one VLAN/subnet, sometimes two if you are running VOIP out of band). But that's not what we're talking about here, if you have 600 clients, snbforums and SOHO AIO routers are not for you.

I was not talking about Cisco SMB switches, those are not much better than SOHO stuff. Even their lower level enterprise L3 switches like Cat 3K series (and the Cat 9k that are replacing them) are not excellent at consistent low latency and jitter. Those are in the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars new. Luckily most audio and video applications are programmed these days to adjust for and deal with latency and jitter fluctuations and deal with it, so as long as there is not severe saturation somewhere, QOS typically isn't even needed at all (in the home environment anyway).

If you want the best latency, the Nexus 3548 is an amazing switch, can do L3, NAT, VLANs (no QOS though) at around 250ns. If you get rid of L3, NAT and VLANs it drops to about 150. Even with QOS it is only in the 1-2 uS range. The switch is only about $15k but unfortunately the 10G SFPs are absurdly priced even at the 92% discount we get. And of course if you use a non-Cisco SFP, it disables the ultra low latency and you jump up to a few uSec through the switch.

L3 adds plenty of overhead on top of L2 but that really has nothing to do with QOS or performance, all of that is done in hardware. But routing is slower than switching, even in an L3 switch.

Your belief that L3 switches are needed because broadcasts "stop all network traffic" is completely misguided. Especially since you still have broadcasts. Even if you put every device in its own VLAN or router interface, there are still broadcasts. If you really want to design for the future and have a professional network, look into CCNA or Network+ or something like that to gain an understanding of the fundamentals. Once you have that, everything makes a ton more sense. Or do it for a living for a few decades like I have, you start to think like a network device and it makes even more sense.

 

[drinkingbird]

I agree for North America with typical wooden houses around, but not for Europe for example. As I mentioned above I'm also using 4x APs in a brick and reinforced concrete bungalow style house under 2000sqft. All on the same control channel 36 @80MHz wide, controller managed, 20mW power (1/10 of allowed). It works very well with high throughput and adequate roaming. Wall attenuation is about -30dBm. No fringe situation there.

Sounds like you're a good candidate for LiFi. Just wear sunglasses.