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Comment by eltoozero | Hacker News Reader

I deploy a lot of Unifi APs and run them off a controller hosted in AWS which I fire up when I need to monitor or deploy.

Be aware with Unifi gear there is no onboard configuration or UI beyond busybox shell via SSH and a basic command line tool. They are intended to be deployed using the Unifi controller which once setup can be shut down, but will be required again to change passwords, etc.

Unifi is definitely at the top of my list for multiple AP deployments, I still prefer MikroTik for edge devices though.

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For other potential adopters:

> Be aware with Unifi gear there is no onboard configuration or UI beyond busybox shell via SSH and a basic command line tool. They are intended to be deployed using the Unifi controller which once setup can be shut down, but will be required again to change passwords, etc.

To clarify, this applies to the edge AP/repeaters. I know for sure every router I have purchased from Ubiquiti has had an onboard/hosted web management UI.

That said, you can install the UniFi management portal on a local machine and serve it on demand from a laptop. Or, as you (eltoozero) have done, host it remote.

And finally, you can also buy their "Cloud key" device which acts as a host for the web management portal.

> https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-key/

Last I looked the edgerouter had the UI built in but the Unifi security gateway did not.

Ah good to know! I would guess this is because the security gateway, cloud key, and APs are all part of the "UniFi" line so they are all meant to be managed by the cloud key/management portal. That said, I wonder if the UniFi switches similarly don't have on board management (it sounds like a no)...

Once nice thing is you can one run controller app in a docker image, useful if you have an unraid setup or similar. A lot cheaper than buying their little cloud key.

> Be aware with Unifi gear there is no onboard configuration or UI beyond busybox shell via SSH and a basic command line tool.

This used to be the case, they now have a app for Android and iOS which will setup and manage APs even without a controller.

I believe you loose some of the functionality, like captive portals on guest networks, but 99.9% of people don't need these things.

I run a handful of Unifi AP's, I've been running the control panel on a vm on my server for a while, but I really like your idea of running the controller on AWS.

I also love the MikroTik router with wifi I have back home though.

Running the controller is AWS is good for large installations, but as a Java app, it eats memory, which can be expensive on AWS. For smaller installs, it works fine to just run it as-necessary from a local machine.

They have a phone app that also can do this now, apparently.

Not quite, the phone app talks to a controller which configures the AP. You still need to run the controller (Java app) somewhere if you want to change settings or monitor the APs.

Also not quite, you can configure some basic settings with the phone app and without a controller. Not all features are available though with only the app. You need to reset the AP if you want to add it to a controller later on.

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