Discussion
Morning all,
I'm moving into a new gaff soon, which we've had cabled up with Cat something or other (not sure exactly which cat yet). But the ONT comes in to the front dining room, there's then a port to the living room, and one to each bedroom except the one that will be used as my office and also have my sim rig in, which has two.
We'll be having a 1600Mbps connection coming in, once the ONT is upgraded.
In our current house we're running off Zen's standard Fritz!box, which I'm planning on replacing with some Ubiquiti stuff.
In the dining room, where the ONT is, I'm planning locating the router, our Hue Bridge, and our PiHole, the router will also need to feed both ports to the office and one to the living room. Main reason for the office feed is to the sim rig, I'm aware wifi7 might be faster, but imagine that a wired connection would be more stable.
In the living room, we'll have our TV and XBox, which I'm planning on connecting via LAN rather than wifi. However, this seems like a good place to also have the WAP as it'll be the main area where people consume wifi and is also more central than the dining room/ONT location.
I also think that at some point in the not so distant future I'll be looking to have NAS somewhere, to me the dining room seems like the logical location for this.
To that end, I've selected a Cloud Gateway Fiber for the dining room, mainly as it has enough ports to supply what I want to. And then in the living room, as I need a few ports and wifi I've gone for a Dream Router 7. I figure I could have gone for a Flex Mini and something like a U7, but I prefer the more compact solution of the DR7 and I don't want to mount a U7.
I figure it would look something like this:
My questions are, as a Qbiquiti noob, can I have two UniFi Controller devices in the same network, or is it possible to set one to a slave mode? Secondly, is there a better way to do this which is also as compact?
I'm moving into a new gaff soon, which we've had cabled up with Cat something or other (not sure exactly which cat yet). But the ONT comes in to the front dining room, there's then a port to the living room, and one to each bedroom except the one that will be used as my office and also have my sim rig in, which has two.
We'll be having a 1600Mbps connection coming in, once the ONT is upgraded.
In our current house we're running off Zen's standard Fritz!box, which I'm planning on replacing with some Ubiquiti stuff.
In the dining room, where the ONT is, I'm planning locating the router, our Hue Bridge, and our PiHole, the router will also need to feed both ports to the office and one to the living room. Main reason for the office feed is to the sim rig, I'm aware wifi7 might be faster, but imagine that a wired connection would be more stable.
In the living room, we'll have our TV and XBox, which I'm planning on connecting via LAN rather than wifi. However, this seems like a good place to also have the WAP as it'll be the main area where people consume wifi and is also more central than the dining room/ONT location.
I also think that at some point in the not so distant future I'll be looking to have NAS somewhere, to me the dining room seems like the logical location for this.
To that end, I've selected a Cloud Gateway Fiber for the dining room, mainly as it has enough ports to supply what I want to. And then in the living room, as I need a few ports and wifi I've gone for a Dream Router 7. I figure I could have gone for a Flex Mini and something like a U7, but I prefer the more compact solution of the DR7 and I don't want to mount a U7.
I figure it would look something like this:
My questions are, as a Qbiquiti noob, can I have two UniFi Controller devices in the same network, or is it possible to set one to a slave mode? Secondly, is there a better way to do this which is also as compact?
I'm not sure what will happen if you put 2 controllers onto one network.
By putting a second router in, you may end with dual nat on the living room devices though. The xBox may not like Dual-Nat.
I'd replace the UDM 7 with a PoE switch and some form of WAP. There are many available - something like this may suit if you don't want ceiling mount:
https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/category/all-wifi/pr...
I've got a mixture of APs, based on where in the house they're installed. Some of my rooms are ancient, so the 'ceiling' is little more than limewash over the inside, others are more modern so I can use a ceiling mounted AP....
By putting a second router in, you may end with dual nat on the living room devices though. The xBox may not like Dual-Nat.
I'd replace the UDM 7 with a PoE switch and some form of WAP. There are many available - something like this may suit if you don't want ceiling mount:
https://uk.store.ui.com/uk/en/category/all-wifi/pr...
I've got a mixture of APs, based on where in the house they're installed. Some of my rooms are ancient, so the 'ceiling' is little more than limewash over the inside, others are more modern so I can use a ceiling mounted AP....
Thanks for the input all.. I'll go back to investigating the switch/AP combo 
I'm not concrete on port assignments on the devices, they just seemed logical to me uneducated brain, I was planing on using SFP+ to RJ45 transceiver modules and hoping that Ubiquiti would allow me to just use them as LAN ports.
I'm not concrete on port assignments on the devices, they just seemed logical to me uneducated brain, I was planing on using SFP+ to RJ45 transceiver modules and hoping that Ubiquiti would allow me to just use them as LAN ports.
Edited by MikeGTi on Monday 22 September 15:58
Wait one - a quick Google turns up this Reddit post with people saying you can re-purpose the 10G SFP WAN port on the DR7 to be a LAN port and thus avoid the double NAT agro.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1j1hdy7...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1j1hdy7...
Regarding your connection to the living room, your SFP would need to be an ethernet connection if you're using the in wall stuff which Ubiquiti will sell you a 10G for ~£60 but your Dream router would be limited to 2.5 unless you buy another 10G and even then, it's only 10G between these two devices, you're limited to 1600Mbps WAN speed so you're probably better to use your ethernet ports at 2.5G, in which case, I'd just run it from the POE+ port and stick a WAP on the other end of it. I'm not entirely convinced you'd get 10G between the two devices over ethernet either, regardless of what they say the speed of the SFP is...
I know the UDM Pro Max can support a primary/secondary but I believe it's more for dual WANs and not sure if lower down the range can support this.
I know the UDM Pro Max can support a primary/secondary but I believe it's more for dual WANs and not sure if lower down the range can support this.
Harpoon said:
Wait one - a quick Google turns up this Reddit post with people saying you can re-purpose the 10G SFP WAN port on the DR7 to be a LAN port and thus avoid the double NAT agro.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1j1hdy7...
This is what I was planning on https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubiquiti/comments/1j1hdy7...
scott_evo said:
Regarding your connection to the living room, your SFP would need to be an ethernet connection if you're using the in wall stuff which Ubiquiti will sell you a 10G for ~£60 but your Dream router would be limited to 2.5 unless you buy another 10G and even then, it's only 10G between these two devices, you're limited to 1600Mbps WAN speed so you're probably better to use your ethernet ports at 2.5G, in which case, I'd just run it from the POE+ port and stick a WAP on the other end of it. I'm not entirely convinced you'd get 10G between the two devices over ethernet either, regardless of what they say the speed of the SFP is...
I know the UDM Pro Max can support a primary/secondary but I believe it's more for dual WANs and not sure if lower down the range can support this.
Re the speeds, my connection will only be 1.6Gbps in to the UCGF anyway, so I'm not that concerned about which port's used, but it would be nice to have spare RJ45 ports if I could bung a SFP-RJ45 transceiver in to the SFP and free them up.I know the UDM Pro Max can support a primary/secondary but I believe it's more for dual WANs and not sure if lower down the range can support this.
Your PiHole might not need 2.5 GB ethernet (!), which would allow you to free up some high-speed port space. Or connect via a simple managed/unmanaged gigabit switch to allow more gigabit ports. Surely not all of your kit needs 2.5G/10G connections?
I think it's always helpful to have a few spare gigabit ports near your central switch.
I think it's always helpful to have a few spare gigabit ports near your central switch.
If wifi7 isn’t a necessity then the U6 mesh is a option with a switch to match.
https://eu.store.ui.com/eu/en/category/all-wifi/pr...
Again I’d also recommend the use of 1Gbe switches when you need to expand, there’s a real limit to what can use 2.5Gbe, most home automation/IoT still use 100Mbe, saves some cash when building a unifi platform.
https://eu.store.ui.com/eu/en/category/all-wifi/pr...
Again I’d also recommend the use of 1Gbe switches when you need to expand, there’s a real limit to what can use 2.5Gbe, most home automation/IoT still use 100Mbe, saves some cash when building a unifi platform.
I’d put a U7-In Wall in the living room using the 2.5G POE port on the gateway to power it, the in wall also provides the 2 wired connections you need for the XBOX (only has a 1G nic) and the TV (probably a 100M nic).
To free up the port on the gateway I’d connect the pi-hole and hue hub to a flex mini switch connected to the fibre.
To free up the port on the gateway I’d connect the pi-hole and hue hub to a flex mini switch connected to the fibre.
Craikeybaby said:
Are you using Zen's digital voice? If so that only works with the Fritzbox. Which scuppered my plans for updated hardware.
You're sure?Unlike gigaclear they tell you the sip settings so you should be able to use any standard devices with it.
https://james-batchelor.com/index.php/2024/11/01/z...
silentbrown said:
You're sure?
Unlike gigaclear they tell you the sip settings so you should be able to use any standard devices with it.
https://james-batchelor.com/index.php/2024/11/01/z...
Thanks, I was going on what Zen told me, but that guide could be helpful in future.Unlike gigaclear they tell you the sip settings so you should be able to use any standard devices with it.
https://james-batchelor.com/index.php/2024/11/01/z...
neilus said:
I d put a U7-In Wall in the living room using the 2.5G POE port on the gateway to power it, the in wall also provides the 2 wired connections you need for the XBOX (only has a 1G nic) and the TV (probably a 100M nic).
To free up the port on the gateway I d connect the pi-hole and hue hub to a flex mini switch connected to the fibre.
I think I'd go with this as well if you want an ultra-lean setup, that's literally just two components, use the POE+ 2.5Gb port on the UCGF to power the U7 In-wall and you have the two ports then in the living room plus Wifi7 in a compact wall-mounted package.To free up the port on the gateway I d connect the pi-hole and hue hub to a flex mini switch connected to the fibre.
I certainly wouldn't put two gateways on the same network, one won't manage the other, they'll show up as two separate sites within the management plane and it will create far more hassle than its worth. You'd be using the second one as a dumb switch/AP combined.
If you did want to put the UCGF plus a AP in the lounge instead of the dining room, you can do this by creating a port-based VLAN for the link between the UCFG WAN port and the ONT. I've done this in situations where the ONT was downstairs near a bunch of hard-wired clients and AP but the router needed to live upstairs, with only one physical cable between the floors.
You'll have no problems running multi-gig ethernet over any modern cable <100m. 10Gbps is more fussy but this is when more can be less, as if its some Cat7/8 BS you need to terminate it very carefully and ground shielding to get stable 10Gbps. I've had 10Gbps ethernet over 60m of modern Cat5e unexpectedly and yet it was completely stable. Since replaced with fibre, but it was interesting to see.
If you buy the SFP+ RJ45 module Ubiquiti supplies a part that does 1/2.5/5/10Gbps, so any issues with the cable and you might end up with 5Gbps instead. (the 2.5 and 5Gbps standards were designed to provide these speeds over legacy Cat5/6 cables rather than 10Gbps which requires much more rigorous standards).
I have approx 70m of 'Cat7' to my study, properly terminated and grounded and its rock solid at 10Gbps but it took a lot of faffing, fibre would have been easier but I specifically wanted to power the Flex 2.5 POE and AP on my desk remotely from a UPS equipped rack in my garage, and that's paid off recently when the RCD supplying the room has started tripping intermittently throughout the working day. In hindsight I wouldn't bother buying anything other than 6a again.
Edited by theboss on Wednesday 24th September 10:02
Yorkshire_Biker said:
I've no idea what I have just read, but it seems very interesting and something I should be considering when I have my house re-wired. Some of it made my brain hurt though. Good work nerds.
If its a full refurbishment put ducts in place wherever possible, duplicate every cable run, and don't get up-sold on cable standards.Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff