re: UniFi home network question

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Y’all talking about dropping a grand or more

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You're passionate about this I spent $400 bucks to cover my home with U6's. I'm getting 600-700 Mbps, is this not fast enough for 2014 speeds? I'd rather buy a "consumer commercial" system and be done for 5-6 years.

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Meanwhile plenty of us are happy with our "decade old" tech

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I don’t want to sound like Bill Gates with his 1981 “640K ought to be enough for anybody,” but I remember (and early adopted) 802.11g. There was a dramatic increase in throughput and noticeable performance with 802.11n also for everyone in every scenario, basically.


But 802.11ac has done very little for the way most people use devices, honestly. If you’re line of site from an AP and can’t run a cable, benchmarks look good. And if you spend all day on that device downloading large files (streaming doesn’t apply here), you’ll be better off. But people want APs in cabinets, hidden behind things, and to walk around freely with their devices to use 0-20mbps (on 5-10 different devices). Further, it’s actually, to a fair extent, “messed up” a lot of implementation of IoT stuff. Can you argue it’s easy to split bands, use separate SSID, and avoid certain IoT devices to only use “better” ones ? Sure. But is that really practical? I would argue that for the average consumer out there that it is not.


Would I recommend buying 802.11n-only capable devices? Of course not. Part of the reason, of course, would be that no one uses the other advancements (modern UI, MIMO bands generally limited, etc). But if you could get a 3x3 802.11n UniFi (or other ‘prosumer) brand) AP for $50, I would be highly likely to use it. But no one makes it. And I don’t really blame them, either.

Each subsequent release of WiFi standards has similarly had little impact on the real world use other than:
Wireless bridging between APs to bring a solid signal to everything and be controlled by one app




Now, if I were building a stadium, movie theater, running a public network for a downtown area that held festivals, I would have a very, very different view of what each WiFi standards has done. But even in a typical office setting, infinitely expandable wireless N APs are infinitely more useful than 3 “modern” devices that you spread around and talk wirelessly to each other if you have any nuance to what needs to be where.



I mentioned I do have a couple wall APs above. One is a 6 device. My devices perform no better, no worse with it. For $20 I may buy a newer chip model than the older tech. But until something breaks, my decade old tech will run well beyond what anyone in my house will use it for for probably another decade, and it will be upgraded one piece at a time when that’s not true or disaster hits.

Well hell, between this thread and working from home some more during the holidays I've been looking at my UniFi Network stuff a bit more.

Don't WANT to start a new thread and maybe Dallas can enlighten me on to how my network is screwed up.

Pay for ATT fiber 300/300 plan.
Have a BGW320 on my desk that if I hard line off of it to my laptop I get close to advertised speeds run on a google speed test.

Normally I have it run to a USW-Lite-8-PoE in my attic that Powers 3 different UAP AC IW on the edge bedrooms of my house and a UAP AC Lite in the attic that covers the majority of the middle of the house.
Have a drop in Media nook behind TV with its own little USW Flex Mini and then the rest of the ports coming off it come back through to my office wall plate and have personal laptop and work laptop hardlined off the switch.

Hardlined off the UniFi Switch I only get about 90/90 speeds, Hardlined to the ATT Modem/Router I'm getting close to 300/300, and Speed test on ATT's site to the modem is closer to 400/400.

What's up with the slowdown going through my UniFi stuff?

To be clear, I never have any issues with it and have great wifi coverage and consistency.

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I think I spent approx $500-600 for dream machine and extra 2 AP.

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I just totaled up my purchases from Amazon mostly and UI.com and I'm $450 in for stuff thats been rock solid for 5 years now.

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his strongly suggests that you have a bad link/cable/termination which is causing the speed to be negotiated at FE 100mbit rather than gigabit. If you're running UniFi network controller you may be able to see which port is connected as FE rather than GbE

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That’s exactly what it was.
Just so happened that the port that was the uplink to the switch is FE for some reason, swapped those around in the little 3 gang wall plate in my office and it fixed it right up. Need to figure out why that connection is bad at some point but that definitely fixed that problem.


Thanks Kork

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This strongly suggests that you have a bad link/cable/termination which is causing the speed to be negotiated at FE 100mbit rather than gigabit. If you're running UniFi network controller you may be able to see which port is connected as FE rather than GbE

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Agree that cable is the most likely culprit, but you need to go into both the AT&T firmware and the UniFi firmware and try to force 1000/1000 connection instead of auto negotiate before running a new cable.


ETA- though in reading the response, it was the cable. Such is life.
If they’re cables you made, use a tester to make sure all the pairs are working. If you don’t have a tester, just pull one end off and reterminate it. If that works, great, if it doesn’t, do the other. If that doesn’t fix it, then you either suck at terminating cables or something chewed the wire (or broke it while pulling it through walls)

I appreciate all the comments. I’m building this network as more of a hobby than anything else. I’ll probably have more questions to pose to y’all in the future.