Top 13 Unifi Network Setup Tips - Planning and Optimization
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- Опубліковано 2 чер 2024
- Setting up your new Unifi network can be a difficult process - especially if you are new to Ubiquiti. I have outlined my top 13 (yes a weird number) tips for anyone setting up their network for the first time. Use these tips to help keep your setup simple, but optimized.
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Setting up VLANs and Firewall Rules: • NEW to UNIFI VLANs?? ...
VLANing in Switches: • Configure VLANs on Uni...
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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:54 Tip 1
5:00 Tip 2
6:12 Tip 3
8:11 Tip 4
11:17 Tip 5
14:01 Tip 6
15:53 Tip 7
19:32 Tip 8
21:15 Tip 9
23:20 Tip 10
26:56 Tip 11
28:39 Tip 12
35:30 Tip 13
Wow, lotta great info. I’m doing this right now segmenting my network and I’m going to watch the vlan video You have next. Your very knowledgeable. Thanks so much.
Thank you so much for watching!
Great video! Thanks for all the tips
Thanks for watching... I really appreciate the feedback.
Great video. Thank you. Keep up the good work.
Thanks so much!. I appreciate the feedback. More coming
Great video!
Thanks!!
Hi Tim, thank you very much for the great content. I‘m currently building my new house and try to secure my outdoor Ethernet ports, which I use for my reolink cameras and also my abus Facexxess. So I’m definitely looking forward to more in depth Vlan content.
Greetings from Germany.
Make sure you check out my "lets make some VLANs" Video, and my "VLANs on a Unifi Switch"... Those will show you how to secure that part of your network on Unifi gear... but will work with different types of cameras
Thanks for the video. As a newcomer it is well presented and easily understood
Welcome my friend. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks for the video. Would it be possible to post a video that explains RSSI settings for wireless?
I don't typically mess with the RSSI settings with my setups. I think that is typically reservered for larger deployment settings, but I could be wrong... I work closely with Unihosted and they did a blog post on the subject... maybe you will find it helpful: www.unihosted.com/blog/unifi-minimum-data-rate-control
I use a single ssid with multi passwords directing traffic to the correct network LAN/IOT etc. It has a few limitations but it works for me
Thanks for sharing... I talk about that in my "Lets make some VLANs" Video... I just learned pre-shared keys don't work with 6Ghz yet... A nice way to ensure less SSID's for sure!
@@ethernetblueprint that is one of the limitations yes
Great advice, but I think that there is still no advice regarding, for example, static addressing of network devices such as switches or APs and placing them, for example, in a separate vlan intended only for network devices.I encountered a problem when devices received addresses from DHCP and randomly disappeared in the network, and this is a huge problem in the case of, for example, main switches.
Thanks for commenting... I hear what you are saying. The challenge I face here is that most everything you are talking about is based on user preference. I don't know that there is a right or wrong answer to your setup questions. It is kind of like having a patch panel in your rack vs not having one... Many say you're stupid if you don't have one, yet I dont use them very often in my builds and have had great success.
Personally, I have my network equipment on its own Mgmt VLAN and everything is set to DHCP. I have never had a switch drop from the network with this setup before so I haven't had a need to statically assign my IPs for those devices. I do like having it on a different VLAN than where my typical day to day traffic is though... If you ever want to know my preference on something, I'd be happy to share it with you.
I've had my Ubiquiti network for about a month , so I have more or less got mine setup .
There are a few thing which you know should be there but was hard to find like how to reserve in a DHCP IP from mac address .
WOW a single 48 port switch a bet that complicated thing having just one switch and cabling to all areas , I did the simple version , a UCG ultra to downstairs switch with a trunk port to a upstairs switch with a trunk to the loft and the garage , so only 1 cable acting as trunk links .
I agree... Unifi does hide simple things that should be easier to find. I also had to look for IP reservations and make sure that "Fixed IP" was what what I thought it was... With my home, I had all my cables home run down to the basement where my switch is located so there just hasn't been a need for any additional switches in my home. However, I see setups like your more times than not in other homes I help out...
1st viewer and comment. Subscribed!
Wow... Thanks! Welcome aboard!
I see you have a Firewalla Purple in the mix, how exactly are you using this? I'd love to use it to get the reports, but not sure I want to place it in the middle of gateway and UDM Pro as it's another failure point.
I plan on doing a video on Firewalla soon. I really like the device. In my current setup, I have it just sitting on my main network monitoring my kids devices. It plays a pretty small role in my house... but they can do ALOT. I have had good luck with them as routers and by putting them inline. Just like anything, they have their limits on what they can handle so that would need to be weighed in the mix. They have a couple Gold options that are much more powerful... but cost more obviously.
I totally disagree with changing the channel width to a larger number; especially if you are in a dense WiFi environment with a lot of neighbors broadcasting near you. If you are in a space that has limited interference, then using wider bands MAY increase your speed, but most times won't. IoT devices uses very little bandwidth and changing that to a wider channel width is just inviting issues with interference with other devices. You should instead look at changing your Channel numbers to be 1, 6, and 11; if you have to more than three access points, (let's say you have four access points), have two of the farthest away from each other share the same channel number on 2.4 GHz. But don't set all of your access points to the same channel. This will cause interference between your own access points, especially if you increase the channel width. On 5 GHz channels, there are plenty of non-overlapping bands (just don't use the ones used by local radar systems) that you can give each access point its own individual channel number. You can also go into the Radios section and see what channel numbers are being used near you.
Thank you for weighing in. I agree with your logic and am pretty sure we are stating the same thing. I do believe I mentioned the downside (or I think I did... but I do alot of takes, LOL) that in dense environments like apartments, there can be some interference from the neighbors if you increase the channel width.
I would never set the APs to the same channel... What I was saying was to manually assign the channels to your APs using the methodology you mentioned to alleviate overlap. One thing I think we can both agree on is that it is the environment dictates the settings... The settings I discussed here do work in a majority of homes/neighborhoods without interference or problems.
Its a big issue. I've had a unifi setup for 7years my usg3 is on its last legs and if you can't get replacements there's no point having an excellent eco systemz as you will be without a service for months . Unifi isn't sorting out it's supply problems yet keeps bringing out new products but you can't get them it's ridiculous .
Hey! I have watched almost all your video's since I am setting up a network as a complete noob and they are honestly amazing!
I just had some questions about my personal situation and was wondering if there was a way to connect with you directly? I tried looking for an instagram but I could not find any.
Please let me know if!
Sure thing... Email me at tim@ethernetblueprint.com and let me know you were in my comments... I will do my best to try and help you!
I have a question. So, we plan on building a new construction home and will have AT&T fiber. I am not tech savy, so when we get cable drops, do we get cat6A wiring, or is there specific fiber wiring if you have fiber? Also, can you set up smart lighting in the home with system. I have been watching your videos, and a unifi system sounds like a good way to future proof your home. I just want to make sure I get everything correct when we talk to custom builders. Where I live, we can't get basements due to being at sea level, so a comm closet would be best to store the rack for the system.
Typically the handoff from your ISP to your equipment (even fiber) is an Ethernet connection. No special wire needed. Make sure that you have your builder install ENT tubing from outside your home where the fiber will come in to your rack location. Let me know if that didn’t answer your question. As far as smart lighting goes, yes you can do smart lighting. Lots of ways to do it. I’m planning on installing a Lutron Caseta Hub and controlling my lights that way. Depending on the number of smart switches you need, it could get pricey though. I’ll be g
Buying mine soon and will be doing some videos on them. However, like I said, there are lots of ways to do smart lighting. Feel free to email me at tim@ethernetblueprint.com if you’d like. So you have my guide from ethernetblueprint.com? It’s great for starters in your shoes. From a wiring standpoint anyways.
@@ethernetblueprint Thank you sure much! I will make sure to do that. I will try to come up with a floorplan that will include a communications closet for all the equipment. I look forward to the lighting video in the future!
@@ethernetblueprint I tried putting in the website to send an email, but the page did not load.
You have to include the www.ethernetblueprint.com for it to load. The hosted platform I use requires that for some reason...
A tip I would recommend is a separate SSID for IOT and make it only 2.4GHz. Many IOT devices are incompatible with 5GHz networks and can get confused if they’re on a dual band network.
I’m kind of surprised to see you’ve completely turned off band steering for everything
I have only had rare cases where I had to create an isolated 2.4Ghz SSID... But I have had to do that. One was for a Hot Tub control and some "cheaper" smart home gear does not like the dual bands... However, I find that with band steering off, it solves this issue most of the time... And my devices that use 5Ghz do a good job of choosing it. I typically go the other way and create a 5Ghz only for my wifi devices that I need to choose the faster frequency. That serves my better than letting them make the choice on their own... All good points though.. Its case by case.
Hello, thanks for sharing your knowledge.
I have 4 U7 Pros and two of them disconnect for a few seconds and reconnect, this happens almost every day. Do you think I should change the network cable or do you think it could be something else?
Thank you.
What do you have powering them?
@@ethernetblueprint The Dream machine Special Edition, I haven't bought the switch yet.
Unfortunately, That device only has 2 POE+ ports and the rest are standard POE which won't work with the U7 Pros that require quite a bit of power. That is why 2 of them are powering off. You will want to make sure the switch you get has POE+ and move 2 of the APs over to that. Good Luck my friend!
@@ethernetblueprint Thank you !!!
@@ethernetblueprint, I already installed a 24-port switch and the APs no longer disconnect , I also bought 4 cameras but the UDM "Protect" stuck in "starting. Please if you could help me, I've been searching for hours and I already put a ticket on the official website and they don't answer me.
Thanks in advance
Wish there was the option of manually adding your own icon for those missing from the built in list.
me too , the other one I want is a white country list so you can block all but your country .
You can add with no icon and it sends a message to ubiquiti that they have a hole in their coverage. Doesn’t let you get creative… but…. It does solve the problem of those missing from the list.
you aren't alone in that... hopefully they add a more expanded country blocking option in the future.
IPV6 is usually "on" by default, but I've watched a few of your videos and IIRC, you pretty consistently have it disabled. Can you comment on why, and when you recommend that? I had seen some info about some devices (I think it was simplisafe) that do not work well without IPV6 (and that surprised be in the first place, but I haven't had time to further research it). Thx.
Good question. It is really just a preference of mine. I have had things break with IPv6 enabled and I have had situations where it was necessary to make the solution where. For me personally (and I am not saying its the "right" way to do this), I will typically have it off by default and turn it on when a service or product requires it. So I guess to answer your question, it has just been my preference.
Tip 12 - I leave IoT network at 2.4g only. Save the 5g for main network
Thanks for weighing in. I'm glad that works for you. For me, I have my TVs on the IOT network and want to ensure they can operate on the 5Ghz channel...
You beat me to it!
I mostly started with VLans because of that. Some devices (Worx robot mowers) wouldn't connect if 5g were enabled on the same SSID, so I introduced a 2.4g-only IoT VLan+SSID.
I might create another VLan+SSID for 5g IoT, but I need to set up Radius to be able to have more than 4 VLans with my network equiment.
18:20 about changing icon for a client device it will sadly also replace the vendor name with the one associated with the icon selected.
A Tuya lightbulb does not get any good icon but when selecting an icon liking like a bulb the vendor name will be changed too correspondingly, which really defeats the gain in changing icon.
I didn’t realize it did that. Another example of “smart” not really helping. Thanks for the comment.
@@ethernetblueprint I reached out to Ubiquiti about this issue
Id be curious as to what they say...
How do you get your main OS Settings panel to be dark mode? Once I click on "Network" all those pages are dark mode, but the main/root panel is not... can't see how to do that
I just clicked the little dark mode selector by my Profile icon on each page... I manually selected dark mode on each page... Network, Protect and the OS page...
@@ethernetblueprint yeah I don't have that... the root IP is white with the unify os version and update schedule ... no way to change that on mine on desktop. iOS app is all dark mode tho. weird.
Auto updates I have learned over time is a heck NO. It will break things. Maybe just home user is ok but for me running serval locations remotely is a for sure NO. I have been with Ubquiti sense 2005.
I understand completely. I don't have a complicated enough network to have too much break, but I have been a part of those types of breaks before... Not fun! Thanks for watching.
Is it wise to have both firmware updates and console updates both set for 3am if they both try to update one of them may restart and cut the internet when the other is half way through which could be bad
I would recommend staggering a bit. If you’re doing automatic, I’d say console at 3 and device firmware at 5. But your situation would dictate that.
@@ethernetblueprint yes I have mine staggered but I noticed in the video they are both set to 3am
I haven't run into any issues with mine being set like they are... but I should probably have them staggered.
I'm planning on getting the eero 7 will it play well with Ubiquiti?
You may have to tell me what setup you are shooting for here? What Unifi devices will you have in the mix? how are you planning on connecting this together? Then I can share my opinion...
@@ethernetblueprint udm pro max switch, udm se or the new one if it gets released.
So you are planning on having a UDM Gateway for your router)and a Pro Max Switch for your switch and the Eero Pro 7 for WiFi? I am sure that technically you could make that work, but the eero 7 is a router, switch and Wifi device... all in the same device. I don't think you would see much benefit to incorporating it into a Unifi network. Why would you not look at using Unifi Access Points for your WiFi?
Unless I am missing something...
@ethernetblueprint eero offered me a discount and one eero max 7 has the range of 2 or 3 ubiquiti points
Should work... and congrats on the discount... You would just need to put them AP mode to take advantage of the Unifi back end... I don't know much about the Eero 7 Max, so I don't know what capabilities you will have... like VLANs...
I only use 2.4 for my Iot devices
Make sense
As do I, but my one network is doing both 2.4 and 5G. The IOT devices just connect on the 2.4 side... I haven't had a need to create a 2.4G only network for my IOT devices to connect. Just turning off band steering takes care of it... but that is me!
@@ethernetblueprint I don’t have my device yet but the band steering you’re speaking of, I get what you mean by that it’s interesting that’s an option, but does that mean you get to choose what band what device connect to?
Interestingly Port 9 on the UDM-SE cannot be renamed, at least not when used as WAN uplink.
I think that’s more of a WAN setting than a port setting.
@ethernetblueprint could you elaborate and where on the scale from wishful thinking to known fact would you place the "i think"?
I'm pointing to an inconsistency in the UX not covered in your video, maybe omitted, maybe overlooked?
To my best knowledge, Unifi doesn't allow you to name your WAN ports.
Here is what I tried to test this:
I set my port 10 to WAN2 port in my UDM Pro and it mimic'd the same behavior as port 9. I even looked in the Unifi Legacy interface to see if you could there. Same result. So my assumption is that Unifi does not allow the renaming of any port that is setup as a WAN port.
I also connected to my UXG Lite that I have hosted in the cloud and it, too would not let me name the WAN port on it. I'd be happy to fire up one of my Unifi Express Devices to make sure it behaves the same if you like. Just let me know.
@@ethernetblueprint i wonder how come.
... but i just saw that it is possible in the Unifi mobile app!
Please help client option not open
Not sure what you mean?
Need my UCG-Ultra and my USW-POE-8 to arrive so I can ditch the linux VM that runs my AP and the VM gateway/firewall.
Awesome. I know you’ll like them.
I bought the AP 6e to replace my wifi of my Asus AX10000 … surprisingly my Asus wifi is much faster the the U6e on 5ghz … what a disappointment…
Bummer man... maybe try some of the channel width settings. Lots of other reasons to go with Unifi but I get it. Thanks for sharing your experience.
I am self tought and very loud with regards to UBNT and their Apple wannabe antics but I manage a lot of UniFi networks all over Australia and know a lot of the pit-falls.
Tip 1- First things first, you are using a UDM (all the dream crap) product that is only suitable fro home and SOHO use. These do not allow splitting things like cameras, VOIP and network management on their own VLAN's which is standard. Putting whole sh!!-show on same network is not cool.
Tip 2- Limiting SSID's off common WAP is to reduce lost time frames with excessive broadcasting of each and assciated devices.
Tip 3- Auto-Update for home yes, business, be very careful. I have lost so much time and money fixing networks after UBNT do their usual habit of releasing half-baked poop updates/firmwares.
Tip 4- Yes, do backups often if you make changes or have a network with critical needs. This backup you showed is for Network ONLY. Console backup does the lot including running applications.
Tip 5- Naming is good but you also just didn't have all the colums turned on that tell you a lot more info.
Tip 6- Yeah, fair enough. Good time to check VLAN and isolation settings while there.
Tip 7- I don't agree, UniFi is pretty sad at identifying devices now. Especially with devices faking/spoofing fake MAC's for privacy BS. When you get sites like I manage with well over a thousand clients, you get tired of all the Red Hat linux machines and androids falsely ID'ed.
Tip 8- Sending newbies intot he firewall rules is NOT for beginners. UBNT are known for not using correct industry terminology and features. Use the security option tick boxes and tunr on security and network isolation features. Leave manul rules for later and advanced needs. Too many times I have to troublshoot networks and it was caused by someone watching some YT video tutorial.
Tip 9- DNS Sheild works and best fro newcomers. Honeypots as well.
Tip 10- Yeah, email is suggested for most. It keeps in your email rather than a push notification that disapeers shortly after. Small sites, yeah but bigger sites or number of clients, email ONLY.
Tip 11- Yep, Auto till you learn. This comes back Tip 8, leave alone till your UniFi-kung-fu is good.
Tip 12- Yes, leave BS turned off. Multicast and Broadcast Control is advised to to be on unless you have a specific need. Remember Tips 1 & 2, same effect when noise on network ends up on the wireless slowing down everything. Industry standard is 20/40 for 2.4/5GHz. Don't be that wanker who runs 40 on the 2.4GHz as you just killed half to two-thirds of the band. 2.4GHz band is for connectivity, not throughput. No, UniFi sucks at power and channel control. These should be planned and set.
Tip 13- MDNS traffic is the biggest killer of UniFi networks. Limiting its spray/spread highly advised. TURN ON the Flow Control setting for UniFi switches. Off will see networks go to crap quickly when busy and the first victim in the UniFi network is DHCP going to crap.
While I don't necessarily agree with everything you mentioned on here and have always promoted Unifi for home/SOHO network deployments, I do appreciate you taking the time to share your opinions on the matter. I have worked with Unifi quite a bit in simple home deployments and the tips stated here have served me and my customers very well. It sounds like you have extension knowledge in larger deployments where some of these Tips may not apply. I wish you well. Cheers!
@@ethernetblueprint Cheers.
Really disappointed with my UDR. Wired and Wifi both reach max 300 mbps. I pay for 500 mbps fios.
Something seems off there. Thats not the max throughput of that device - especially wired. I’d keep looking. I have personally used the UDR in homes and this should not be the case.
@@ethernetblueprint after days of trying things, a factory reset fixed it, who knew
I have had things like that happen too. I'm glad you were able to fix the issue. Sorry it took a factory reset!
Is you a Smurf?
I was that day... Ugh (head slap)
Funny thing is you sound so paranoid about the internet but the sad thing is so f true.
Yeah... There is some scary stuff out there... I find it best to have some built in protection in place.
Cool video, but the audio is just terrible and non consistent.
I am working on that. Still a newbie at this...
Why not just use AI for the task
AI for what task exactly?
@@ethernetblueprint baseline of settings and services or tell it what you want
INTRO was too long, I gave up
I do include chapters so you can skip the things that you don't want to watch...