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Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

If you have a 1500+ sqft house, want an easy setup & excellent coverage, and want pro-level capabilities, try a Ubiquiti UniFi setup. Troy Hunt did this and is converted: https://www.troyhunt.com/ubiquiti-all-the-things-how-i-final...

If you've got less square footage (or don't need top speeds everywhere), want to spend less money, and want something really easy to set up, try Ubiquiti AmpliFi. Here's Troy's writeup on that: https://www.troyhunt.com/how-i-finally-fixed-my-parents-dodg...

Personally, I am amply served by a quad-core HP thin client ($70 on eBay) running pfSense (w/ Intel server NIC, $25 on eBay) and a Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-AC-LR ($75-90 used on eBay). My living space is 1500 sqft. Internet speed is 150Mb/s up and down, and I get that speed of WiFi nearly all over the house. Total cost was less than $200.

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Given the posted article is about the poor security posture of most home routers, has anyone inspected ubiquiti?

I gather they have a bug bounty which is a good start, but so do Netgear and their routers are still full of bad vulns.

It is worth remember that unlike those home routers, Ubiquiti's EdgeOS is based on a production major network os, Vyatta, (as is VyOs), and therefor has a lot more scrutiny and bug fixing than those other things, which are often even more complicated by the lack of foss hardware or standardized ways to do things (many routers are stuck on whatever the manufacturer put on it in the factory). I'm sure Ubiquiti's code is probably ripe for fuzzing, etc, but a well configured EdgeOS device I would put against any cisco, cumulus , extremeos, routeros, junos, pfsense, ipfire, etc device any day. The main benefit of something like Ubiquiti being asic offload that wouldn't exist if you did something like pfsense on cots x86.

The real irony of how vulnerable these devices are, is that often they are based on tech that is foss that has updates to fix those issues but has been carefully packaged up inside a blackbox the consumer doesn't get to control and therefor doesnt get those updates.

Once again, why we need a "right to root".

For national security!

> Ubiquiti's EdgeOS is based on a production major network os, Vyatta, (as is VyOs), and therefor has a lot more scrutiny and bug fixing than those other things

Apparently you’ve not really looked at EdgeOS. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/16/ubiquiti_networking...

Vyatta was acquired by Brocade in 2012. Ubiquiti forked after that.

EdgeOS was really based on VyOS... which was based on Vyatta, which was still being used on major production systems even before the brocade acquisition. I have used it in prod myself. I should have said VyOs but still, the point gets across to those not looking to nitpick.

Yes, nice advertisement and before I read this article I'd have agreed but the bad news is I just verified that my 2 EdgeOS products don't have NX support. Heck, one of them uses the Cavium processor mentioned in the PDFs.

I got finally frustrated with the flaky WiFi reception at my parents-in-law's and bought a UniFi AP for them. I am very satisfied - the WiFi reception is now either 5/5 or 4/5 in every room, while the previous Asus WiFi router had no reception in some rooms.

But I was rather surprised by the lack of almost any configuration options in the UniFi. No dedicated WebUI, just a few basic configuration options (SSID + WPA2 password) in the mobile app.

Do I need to procure a Windows machine and download the Windows app to configure and take full advantage of the AP? What extra options can I set up with the desktop app in addition to the basic configuration options in the mobile app? As said though - it works really well as it is.

The desktop app serves up the same web UI that the UniFi Cloud Key does. So you need either the cloud key or a computer on which to run the web app (even a Raspberry Pi is reportedly capable of serving it; I just fire it up on my Macbook Pro when it's time for an update or config change).

There is a dizzying amount of information and options in the web UI, but it's designed well so the basics are well-presented and accessible.

The UniFi Cloud Key is basically a piece of hardware akin to the Raspberry Pi, but only serving that purpose. The UniFi Controller software is written in Java so it will run on any machine which runs Java. You can even run it in Docker. You can also use SSH to connect to the AP.

The UniFi line is rather easy to configure with the UniFi Controller. The EdgeMAX line can utilise UNMS (which can be run in a VM or Docker) for configuration but also HTTP(S). EdgeMAX devices are much more powerful, allowing fine-grained configuration via SSH when HTTP(S)/UNMS doesn't suffice. For UniFi line you should be OK with the UniFi Controller software.

TL;DR: The UniFi line has a lower barrier of entry.

Something else of note: it appears Ubiquity wants users to be able to use UNMS for UniFi products in the future. That's good news because right now you need 2 controller software for 2 product lines from the same company.

I've happened on a similar solution after years of testing --- pfSense in a VM (with a dedicated NIC) on my NAS + backup box, and two Ubiquiti AC Pros. By far the fastest, most robust, and easy to configure system, plus nice benefits like pfBlockerNG (similar in functionality to a Pi Hole) and OpenVPN. Tutorials and documentation are generally pretty good for pfSense and UniFi is extremely intuitive.

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