New Network Design

[therealdkc]

Ah... okay. I see it now, sold separately. I had this in the Ultra box:

View attachment 66403
...but now I see there is option without AC adapter as well, $30 cheaper.



If your house is really this Wi-Fi transparent perhaps one AP per floor is enough. Not in the middle though and one on top of the other. Each one closer to the opposite end of the house. Basement and 3rd level on one side, 2nd level on the other. Play with the tool.

Is there a difference between the Ultra and the Flex 2.5 PoE that is meaningful from a network features perspective? The powering difference options and the SFP doesn't really mean much to me - at least I don't think. Unless that would make a difference in terms of the connection between the gateway and the switch? If I don't care about 10Gbit, then I could simply use a regular port to link the gateway and the switch. In that case, the Ultra w/ the 210W adapter seems the better choice compared to the Flex 2.5 PoE come a cost perspective. Am I reading that right?

The issue with the tool is that I don't know vertical coverages. I would be fine purchasing 4 of the U7-Lit units and placing them as proposed in the second heat map layouts I attached. I think that might be a good place to start and then later on, if the basement is problematic, I could always add a AC powered mesh unit, which I suppose would be the U6-Mesh because I won't have run any CAT6. I wouldn't want it just hanging from the ceiling.

 

[degrub]

i hope the washer and dryer and/or furnace are not in the utility room. The motors and starting relays are good tests of shielding of electronics and cables. They emit a burst of white noise ( all frequencies) every time they start.

 

[degrub]

Is there a difference between the Ultra and the Flex 2.5 PoE that is meaningful from a network features perspective? The powering difference options and the SFP doesn't really mean much to me - at least I don't think. Unless that would make a difference in terms of the connection between the gateway and the switch? If I don't care about 10Gbit, then I could simply use a regular port to link the gateway and the switch. In that case, the Ultra w/ the 210W adapter seems the better choice compared to the Flex 2.5 PoE come a cost perspective. Am I reading that right?

The issue with the tool is that I don't know vertical coverages. I would be fine purchasing 4 of the U7-Lit units and placing them as proposed in the second heat map layouts I attached. I think that might be a good place to start and then later on, if the basement is problematic, I could always add a AC powered mesh unit, which I suppose would be the U6-Mesh because I won't have run any CAT6. I wouldn't want it just hanging from the ceiling.

You can always use appropriately spec'd power injectors in place of POE ports on a switch. Just adds a couple cables and plug bar.

Have a look at the Azimuth plot for the AP to see the vertical radiation profile if available. It also should give you an idea of the reverse side radiation profile so you get a feel for possible overlap above (ceiling mount) and behind (wall mount).

You can at least have CAT 6 run in the basement to a ceiling box and cover it with a round flat plate if you are sheetrocking the basement ceiling or just a regular box blank plate.

 

[therealdkc]

i hope the washer and dryer and/or furnace are not in the utility room. The motors and starting relays are good tests of shielding of electronics and cables. They emit a burst of white noise ( all frequencies) every time they start.

No, they are on the upper in the laundry room

 

[therealdkc]

You can always use appropriately spec'd power injectors in place of POE ports on a switch. Just adds a couple cables and plug bar.

Have a look at the Azimuth plot for the AP to see the vertical radiation profile if available. It also should give you an idea of the reverse side radiation profile so you get a feel for possible overlap above (ceiling mount) and behind (wall mount).

You can at least have CAT 6 run in the basement to a ceiling box and cover it with a round flat plate if you are sheetrocking the basement ceiling or just a regular box blank plate.

I don’t really understand how to read the graphs on the Ubiquiti site. Good point about just running the wires to a box with a cover! Thanks man.

I have to pick spots on Tuesday so I think regardless I will run wire to all the spots indicated on the second layout so that if I need all the APs, I have spots for them.

 

[Tech9]

Is there a difference between the Ultra and the Flex 2.5 PoE

Well... the most obvious difference is GbE vs 2.5GbE, and the price. All other features are the same. The 2.5GbE port on U7-Lite is there for eventual 160MHz wide channel, but this is not guaranteed to work and not recommended. If this port is pushing you towards more expensive 2.5GbE switch - good to have, but not really needed. The user experience will be about the same. I suggested U7-Lite not because it's Wi-Fi 7, not because it has 2.5GbE port, but because it's cheap and you can have more APs without expanding the budget too much. More APs mean more even coverage around the house with better balanced Rx/Tx links to clients.

 

[therealdkc]

Well... the most obvious difference is GbE vs 2.5GbE, and the price. All other features are the same. The 2.5GbE port on U7-Lite is there for eventual 160MHz wide channel, but this is not guaranteed to work and not recommended. If this port is pushing you towards more expensive 2.5GbE switch - good to have, but not really needed. The user experience will be about the same. I suggested U7-Lite not because it's Wi-Fi 7, not because it has 2.5GbE port, but because it's cheap and you can have more APs without expanding the budget too much. More APs mean more even coverage around the house with better balanced Rx/Tx links to clients.

Cool that helps. I don’t think 2.5GbE matters to me and won’t for quite a while. I could do 4 U6+ (cheaper than U7-Lite) and then use the USW-Ultra-210 which is cheaper than buying the Flex 2.5 w/ adapter and that leaves me room to add the other two APs in the basement if necessary. It’s a shame that the Ultra 60W won’t handle 6 U6+ to save some money but not a big deal. I would run all this with a a Max which should provide plenty of hardware to run this and a base to grown into 2.5GbE if necessary. I think spending more on the gateway makes sense, though I could just get an Ultra and then by the time I’m ready to up the entire platform I won’t be stuck with the Max that may not be terribly effective by then. I think this is a reasonable starting point.

My plan is to run 4-6 PoE cameras but that would run into a separate switch then directly into a Blue Iris server so the only load on the UB side would be viewing feeds. I could run the VPN on the server to make the Ultra even more appropriate for this setup. Because of that I think 1GbE is fine as we otherwise just stream TV and do regular stuff. The odd time I’ll be moving files to the server for storage but that will be for short durations of time.

Does my reasoning for all of this make sense?

 

[Tech9]

Does my reasoning for all of this make sense?

To me - Yes. I have up to Gigabit ISP lines, run Gigabit network, my cameras are also on a separate network. UCG-Ultra doesn't have UniFi ecosystem features I don't use (Protect, Access), runs cooler than UCG-Max, VPN capabilities exceed my ISP upload speed. My main reason for switching to UniFi is multiple sites with single control panel. I have all networks with site-to-site VPN and UniFi makes it easy. Small size nice looking devices is a bonus, wife likes it. I had more capable on paper industrial look system before (Netgate x86 appliance, Ruckus APs), this is sort of downgrade, but works in a similar way for household needs.