Ubiquiti UniFi Dream Machine All-in-One Router

Product Information

On the other hand, the AmpliFi family, represented by the HD Wi-Fi system or the Alien, is for the home environment. They are simple Wi-Fi routers, easy to use but with a limited feature set. UniFi and AmpliFi are two major networking product lines from Ubiquiti. They serve two demographics and have different architectures. UniFi can also be self-hosted on a Windows/macOS/Linux machine, but this is only recommended for users proficient with network administration, because it requires constant and precise attention. You’ll need to manually configure your network for sufficient communication between UniFi Network and all of your networking devices. Success hinges on your ability to continuously navigate various third-party software, firewalls and other networking devices. The UniFi family -- represented by the Dream Machine (UDM), UDM-Pro, the Dream Router (UDR), or UDM-SE... -- aims at business/pro/enterprise users. They are comprehensive consoles acting as the central controllers of various products, of which networking devices are only part of the picture. The biggest benefit of the UDM is the UniFi controller software, which you can demo here. UniFi lets you do things that most home networks either don’t do, or don’t do well. Most equivalent systems either have a dumbed-down interface, or don’t support easy expansion with additional managed switches or wireless access points. For all it’s faults, UniFi is still a locally-hosted consumer networking ecosytem, and there’s not much else like it.

Video surveillance is just as easy to set up. The appliance accepted our Seagate 10TB SATA drive without a murmur and instantly made it available for recording incoming video. After we’d added a UVC G4 Bullet IP camera to our account, we were able to view its live feed from the portal, enable smart detection and set up custom motion-detection events and recording actions.Also, perhaps this could be a great idea for another post from you where you can recommend the Unifi UPS and also which splitters and link it to your excellent PoE article which I just read as well. Also, would you recommend any specific splitters on the market? I’m always worried about buying something cheap that will fry my equipment at worst, or just degrade its life at best due to poor and ‘noisy’ power delivery. Generally, all UniFi controllers share the same basic features and settings, but their capabilities vary depending on the hardware specs and port configurations. Create new RADIUS profile. This will allows you to enable a RADIUS assigned VLAN for wired or wireless networks, and specify a RADIUS server if not using the UDM.

If you want to use them with a non-Ubiquiti device, such as a managed Multi-Gig switch, set the third-party device's SFP+ port in DAC or Auto (and not SFP+) mode. Else, no SFP+ copper cable will work.

Source: Harish Jonnalagadda / Android Central (Image credit: Source: Harish Jonnalagadda / Android Central) And using a router and a few access points is the best way to build a serious Wi-Fi network. Ubiquiti UDM-SE: A powerful network controller We were also able to use the iOS app to add the USW PoE switch to our account, and were blown away by its clever augmented reality (AR) feature: point your device camera at the ports and a live overlay immediately pops up, showing which ones are active and what’s connected to them. The UDM-SE features PoE (802.3af) and PoE+ (802.3at). It doesn't support the latest PoE++ (802.3bt), required by some latest Multi-Gig access points. But there's no point in supporting PoE++ when the ports themselves are Gigabit. As a network controller, the UDM-SE has 128GB of onboard SSD. But there's a tray in the middle to add a hard drive or SATA SSD of any capacity. This storage space is for its many functions. It'll hold the video footage for the Protect application or Talk's recorded conversations.

While the UDM doesn’t have all the flexibility of the older UniFi products, it makes up for that in being convenient and cost effective. If you went out and bought all the equivalents, you’d end up spending more and getting less in a few ways. The USG and USG-Pro can’t match the performance of the UDM. You still have the option to expand your UniFi network, even if the UDM is where you start. UDM Expandability The point is L2PT/IPsec is great when it works. And it does in most cases, which ultimately depends on whether the local network of the remote device allows it to pass through. PPTPStandalone Mode should only be used when configuring a small quantity of APs because they do not support seamless roaming. Instead, you will need to manually connect to each AP as you move out of range. Also, APs must have a wired connection to your network; wireless meshing is not possible. Finally, remote management is not possible because it is done entirely through the UniFi Mobile app while locally connected to your WiFi. One handy feature of the USG and UDM is the ability to add a remote access VPN. The UDM uses RADIUS and L2TP with IPSec for encryption. You can roughly follow these instructions to set it up. There are a lot of edge cases that I am not going to cover, but here’s how I did it: The UDM-SE (as well as the UDR) got the UniFi OS 3 treatment in November 2022. The UDM-Pro will likely get the OS later in 2023 but still be lesser in terms of power and ports.