Monthly Archives: July 2017

UniFi Network kit – awesome stuff!

Recently I got fed up with yet another router (with integrated wireless) provided by my ISP. In the last 5-6 years or so I have gone through like 6 of those – having horrible experience with each and all of them. Well…..to be fair – they all worked as expected as a router but the wireless function was just a joke. Most of these were different versions of Thomson provided by Siminn (my ISP at the time). Before all this I had always been using a Linux based router (and even OpenBSD and FreeBSD at some point!) along with a standalone access point but due to limited time and other things going on I didn’t feel like spending time building yet another one (and my second trusty WRT54G had just died) so I just started using the router from my ISP to get things going again.

I moved to another apartment in November and got yet another router from my ISP (but this time I finally got a fiber connection!). Again – the wireless signal was horrible in some of the rooms so I started checking out some new equipment.

My friends have been raving about the stuff from UniFi – the EdgeMax routers and the UniFi APs. So I decided to try it out.

This stuff is brilliant! Luckily I have an old Linux box hooked up in a corner where I can run the UniFi software for the wireless access point. The configuration is very simple and the pricing of those APs (and the routers) is a joke. I got a single UniFi AP-AC-LR and it just rocks.

Then I configured the EdgeRouter….for a kit that only costs 99$ (or something like that) this thing is just awesome. I’m late to the game but this little dude can route 1 MPPS which you don’t normally find in such a small box (or at least when it was released). Guess I won’t have to worry about that on my 100Mbit connection 😉

The GUI is pretty self explanatory and if you have ever worked with a Cisco/Juniper kit you will find your way around the CLI quickly as well.

So – for around ~200$ I finally have a home network that I don’t have to worry about!

For the next phase I am thinking about getting a NGFW…..still debating if I will go with a small Fortigate, Juniper, Palo Alto or just a UniFi Security Gateway – it would be awesome to be able to inspect SSL!

 

Bgrds,
Finnur