Selfhosted

I use their wifi APs because they make them really easy to configure and manage. But the management interface stays locked in a vlan without access to the internets. Because I don't trust their cloud affinity.

This also disqualifies their routers and firewalls for me. How can I trust a device which tries to phone home? So that area is covered by opnsense on a device with a sufficient amount of Ethernet ports.

Any device with a mass storage can act as a NAS - a single board computer + Linux + samba/ nfs/ scp/ sftp. I heard TrueNAS or OpenMediaVault are recommended as all in one solutions - I don't know them.

My whole work and home networks are all Unifi stuff. I absolutely love them. Way more reliable than anything else I’ve ever tried.

Just use switches and APs and I'm happy. Had 2 generations of AP and will eventually upgrade to the current ones, but am not in a rush.

I have no desire to expand beyond that, but the networking gear works well.

This is an opinion on the WiFi access points.

I took the unifi pill in 2018 on the advice of my devops coworkers that ubiquiti is set-and-forget. I also was sold on the unifi network controller I deployed and used until last month being easy to use and local only.

The single pane of glass to control and update the access points is nice. Wifi works OK. There are, however, several downsides:

• channel and power management are not automatic and tweaking WiFi settings with unifi is not intuitive.
• similar to your nas experience unifi advanced metrics are locked behind paying for other unifi equipment or an official controller.
• network appliance is built on mongodb and its performance is pretty abysmal (Up to 2.5GB memory to run it)
• ~~the network appliance is now discontinued and self-hosting the network appliance can no longer happen software-only, you have to use their "server os", which can't be run in a container.~~ edit: its been pointed out to me that running the network controller in a container is possible.

After the unifi Debian repo stopped updating properly, I decided to install openwrt on my APs.

Not only did it work well, but performance is now much better with openwrt.

I'm personally stepping away from brands that have their own ecosystems from now on, if I can help it. The enshitification is just too tempting for them, it seems, and it it's always at our expense.

Mikrotik for switches. Grandstream for APs. All been just working, and easy to set up. Good price as well.

I've been running the original Unifi Dream Machine (the can, not rack) since it released in 2019. Been pretty solid, no complaints; it replaced my trusty Asus RT-N66U w/Tomato firmware; I think the UDM has been deployed longer than the Asus at this point.

The single built-in AP on the UDM was getting a bit overwhelmed, so recently I bought a U7 Lite AP to help split the load a little better. Working great so far, but now I'm looking into adding an NVR for cameras.

I like my Unifi setup, I’m just scared of a rug pull.

Same here.

Can't say anything on unify, but what's wrong with ZFS in the homelab, especially if you know it already? I use ZFS on my Proxmox hosts and my TrueNAS.

I've fully invested into UniFi equipment and cameras. I love having a centralized dashboard for my entire network. Network wise you can completely disable the cloud functionality, but then it's not as easy to remotely manage your equipment. Depends on your security risk acceptance or privacy concerns. So far Ubiquiti hasn't given me any reason not to trust them...yet. NAS wise, I've been running TrueNAS for a few years and it's worked out great so far. I've been hosting container apps within TrueNAS more recently. B2 Backblaze for off-site backups. Unifi has Wireguard built right in and I have Tasker on my phone to auto VPN back into my network when I disconnect from my home WiFi. Overall, I'm happy with my setup. Not having the latest equipment sucks, but why upgrade for the sake of upgrading if everything still works?

At home, I have a shit ton of in-wall HD's behind TVs, a Dream Machine SE Pro. A 16 port and an 8 port POE switch.

At work, I have a Pro Max, a 24 port enterprise switch, and a handful of access points. I also have one of their door controllers with its attached video doorbell.

Their cameras aren't bad, but they're overpriced. I went full reolink and haven't regretted any of that. I use their protect nvr stuff at work, and while it works, it's not great. If you just want something easy to set up and go, it's good enough. If you want to do some really complicated, complex things, you're better off with frigate or blue iris.

Their VPNs a little bit light duty. I don't know if it's still the case, but when I did my setups there was no local DNS option. But that's easy enough to take care of.

I've been using their access points for a long time. They have been working quite well. I do have an old WiFi 5 AP that's starting to fail, but that's not too surprising considering the age.

I've just been running the controller with a local account. Hopefully they won't try to force me into using a cloud account.

Not so much to the content of your post but to your title:

Their web interface is nice, reasonably priced (not cheap) prosumer sort of gear. I have 2 APs and 1 router, 1 AP is flaky, it’s the 7 XGS which should be a high end AP. It gets pretty bad coverage with it and it’s flaky, randomly going offline once a week. RMAed it, replaced Ethernet cable, poe injector (ubiquity branded) and tried tweaking settings. Still happening

So to the subject, some good in the web interface but I will not buy again. That said, most network gear has some sort of jank in my experience, flaky, or just bad management interface, etc…

@early_riser I use #unifi for #switching and #wifi. I enjoy those products. I don't like their #NAS and #routing options.

I ran #pfsense for over a decade, but since the 2.8 release you can't do an offline install. So I switched to #opnsense.

A NAS is just a computer and TrueNAS is just Linux (ok, TrueNAS CORE is Bsd).

You can run zfs on any machine: they recommend loads of RAM for optimal performance, which you don't need at home (or at work, unless your job is running a data center).

You can choose from a number of FOSS NAS-specific operating systems, plus all linux distros (since you post here, I'd assume you either can or aim to administer a home sever?)... why would you go with a proprietary OS?

There are several FOSS operating systems for network equipment too (keyword "NOS"), but as far as I'm aware none that work on small soho/edge switches. OpenWrt runs both my router (mikrotik) and WAPs (tplink), but the two 8-port switches I have at home (also tplink) run their proprietary firmware.