Six years ago in 2018, Apple discontinued their AirPort line of networking hardware. This was a bittersweet day for me, as I could still remember buying my first “Hershey Kiss” AirPort base station in 2003. At the time, WiFi was a pretty new concept to the consumer class, as the majority of people still had dial-up internet. those of us on the cutting edge who had DSL or Cable, wanted that speed, without wires. Apple provided us with a solution that was easy, functional, and seamless. At the time, many friends and family asked me what I was going to do with wireless internet, when I could just sit at my desk in front of my computer. Mind you, computers were still large boxy affairs. Even the iMac at the time had a cathode ray tube monitor inside it. Laptops weren’t cheap, and certainly not the norm. To all of my colleagues, I simply smiled and said “Internet in the bathroom!” Yes, I know. I was ahead of my time.
Fast forward 15 years, and the landscape had changed dramatically. Now, you couldn’t show up for your first day of college without a laptop. They were and still are, the standard offering to corporate employees the world over. And then, consider the cell phones, the Nintendo Switches, the Internet of Things, and the multitude of connected devices we take for granted. Then, factor in the internet. Everything was faster. Dial-up was gone, data plans on your phones, in. DSL, also pretty much gone. Cable, the standard. But also Fiber internet was on the scene, providing insane speeds. We’d also seen a shift to gigabit ethernet, as well as much larger file sizes, and streaming content delivery. Yes, everything was different.
By this time, we were seeing a multitude of networking options, as opposed to 15 years ago. So, when Apple did away with AirPort, I went looking to try and see what was new.
We first landed with Linksys hardware. It had decent antennas, and the software offered “some” customization, but it was rather pedestrian, and didnt really serve our needs. Not to mention, living in a 100 year old house with plaster walls (I think there’s chicken wire in there too, in some places), we had dead zones all over. My office, our downstairs bathroom the entire basement (made of cement), we simply couldn’t get a coherent signal to the entire house. And don’t even think about the backyard. You might as well be in the middle of nowhere. Changes needed to be made.
About this time, Mesh networking started to pop up. At my lovely wife’s request, we purchased a Google Mesh system. Regret was almost instantaneous. You could ONLY configure and manage it with a phone. Hand-Off between base stations was atrocious, and the whole mesh thing? it only worked in the most basic setups. If you wanted to get creative with your setup, you had to turn mesh off, and hope for the best. More times that I could count, we came home to find the internet down, which meant two hours of resetting and rebuilding the entire setup, just to get Netflix working again. Finally, after yet another round of reset and rebuild, I came to the conclusion that changes needed to be made.
As I sat at my desk, I realized that I was thoroughly nonplussed by just about all of the consumer level hardware on the market. It all offered about the same features and functionality, just in different packages, that were designed to look nice on someone’s coffee table. I said to myself “I wouldn’t recommend any of this stuff in a corporate environment, why would try and use it in my own home?” Obviously, thats what I’d been trying to do. Now, I didnt need a gigantic rack mounted setup, taking up a whole room in my house, but I knew I needed to do better. I knew what I wanted, and I knew what I didn’t want. My list of “do-wants” was pretty straightforward:
- scalable
- setup and management from computer and/or mobile device
- troubleshooting and remediation from computer and/or mobile device
- remote management when away from my location
- multiple network ability
- VLAN ability if I chose to play around
- the ability to assign IP addresses
- the ability to block ports, services, and Mac addresses
- traffic logging
- bandwidth usage tracking, at the global level, and the device level.
- some form of alerting system for when things don’t work, or match the parameters I specify
This shouldn’t be too hard, right? I also knew what I didn’t want. Limitations I didn’t want a manufacturer telling me what I can/can’t do, and what is/isn’t within my purview. I’ve rebuilt multi-thousand dollar computers, servers, and devices for a living. I’m smarter than the average bear.
In all of this, I began hunting. It was time to look at enterprise class hardware, but on a budget. And thats when I found Ubiquiti, and their Unify line of hardware.
Now, to be sure, when I bought my Linksys setup, it cost me a hundred bucks. When I bought my google setup, it cost me two hundred fifty bucks. Now, I was looking at a setup of 3 WAPs, and using a Mac mini as a controller. The WAPs alone were $450. Thankfully, I already had the Mac mini (it’s running a backup server, thats a story for another day). Was I really about to spend almost $500 on a networking solution for my house? Yes. I was ready to jump down that rabbit hole. I was tired of fighting with the internet. I gritted my teeth, cried a little as I pulled out my credit card, and ordered my hardware.
A week later, I received 3 gorgeous, white AC Pro WAP’s and POE injectors. I spent an entire weekend snaking ethernet cable all over my house, and hiding it in plain sight, I then dropped the controller software on my Mac Mini, set everything up (that was another couple hours), and we were off to the races.
Immediately, our speeds were better, our handoff was good, we had multiple SSID’s (one for us, one for IoT, one for guests, one to annoy the neighbors), and so many of our previous issues, like the system dying and needing to be reset, were gone. And I could log into the Unifi portal on my computer, or the app on my phone, and see everything! Glorious. But let me warn you, dear reader. Enterprise hardware is a slippery slope. It can suck you in. And suck me in, it did.
Not long after our base setup was done, I wanted more. I wanted network speed testing, port forwarding, to share my plex server with my Mom, and so on. I needed to buy a Unifi gateway. It would replace my cable modem. I could now return it to my provider. I happily bought the gateway, and reveled in my new features, and not paying every month for my modem! But lo, for there’s more. In our quest for perfect internet, we yet again started testing, and found dead spots thanks to the house. We upgraded devices, and wanted Wifi 6. We invested in new base stations. But things weren’t perfect yet. We couldn’t see “everything.” All of our cheap-o ethernet switches had to be replaced with managed switches with POE (Power Over Ethernet).
So now, here we are with 3 WAP’s, a managed controller, and four managed switches. Our internet was now upgraded to fiber (to the house, no less!), and we can see everything wired, and wireless. Things are roaming through the house, the system updates itself, every night its checking channel density, and updating its channel selection to provide optimal throughput. Everything is working swimmingly. or…is it? Nope. Its not. There’s still that dead zone in the downstairs bathroom. And the basement still has cold spots. But look! Wifi 6 WAP’s are available! We upgrade one of our AC Pro’s to a Wifi 6 pro, and move the AC to the basement. Problem solved! We now have consistent internet throughout the house, and everything is working beautifully.
But remember. I mentioned that this was a rabbit hole. And rabbit holes have many, tunnels.
Over the course of this time, our lovely home had seen its share of porch pirates, garage break-ins, someone rifled through my car, another person stole tombstones from our front garden (we decorate for Halloween year round), and so on. Initially, when we started upgrading the house, we bought a Nest thermostat. It felt like Apple tech, and was very well made. So over time, we bought nest indoor and outdoor cameras. They recorded 24/7, and were of good quality. But then Google bought nest. All of a sudden, the new cameras didn’t work with the old software, the old cameras didn’t really work with the new software. Features were missing, and the integration wasn’t as good. We were feeling let down by this security system that wasn’t so secure. And then, we found something new.
Nest launched their line of Protect hardware. Cameras, doorbells, Network Video Recorders. It was all very cool, some of it very expensive. But what about the usage. We’d been burned before by cameras that promised to do everything, and delivered close to nothing (I’m looking at you, Eufy). They all wanted to record ONLY when it suited them. We wanted to scrub through 24 hours of footage! I watched numerous YouTube videos of the Unifi Protect hardware. Satisfied I was making the right choice, I settled on the G4 Instant cameras as they’re Wifi, and the CloudKey+, as it could become the controller for my entire system, eliminating the need for the Mac mini. But, after all this money, was I about to spend another 800 bucks? I resigned myself to this, and said yes. “I was all-in” on this setup. My credit card weeped, and I bought more stuff.
Not surprisingly, the CloudKey+ setup quickly, and took over controlling my everything. I promptly removed its rotational hard drive, and put in a 4TB SSD. I replaced (read as: ripped out) all the nest cameras, and put up the Unifi cameras. Several hours later, I was staring at luscious real time video, that was not charing me a monthly fee. But, it gets better. I was able to use the system to setup smart monitoring. The system identifies cars, packages, people, animals, and the like. Now, instead of scrubbing through the overnight footage, I could just look at all the motion events of people. Genius! My camera and security problems were looking solved. Except….
That stupid Ring doorbell I got on Prime Day 3 years ago. We chose not to setup their service and shell out even more money to a monthly fee, for something DoorDash doesn’t even use. But wait! Now, Unifi protect offers a doorbell! With TWO cameras! One for the porch, and one for packages on the doormat! Heaven! And there’s satellite ringers you can pair and put in different places in your house? Awesome! It’ll only cost 450 bucks? waitaminute. I’m about to spend $450 on a doorbell system, to go with my $800 camera system, to go with my $1300 networking system. My Internet of Things is about to top out at $2550? Am I insane? Possibly, but let’s review.
I’d already spent $1600 on hardware across Google Linksys, Ring, and Nest.
I’d already spent $3600 on monthly subscription fees over a cumulative ten years on these items.
Thats a grand total of over $5200 in ten years. That works out to about $43 a month.
So, if we look at those numbers, and I take the $2550 worth of Unifi hardware, and split that out over a $43 a month cost. I’ll break even in 4.9 years. after that, I’m ahead, as I’m not paying any subscription fees. If we spread it out over ten years, it works out to about $21 a month. In the long run, I’m saving money, by going with a Unifi system, and bringing everything under one umbrella.
Yes, I begged my credit card for one more sacrifice, and I bought the stupid doorbell.
It arrived on a Tuesday. The camera was delivered to my office, and I wasted no time in opening the box. What a glorious marvel. Way nicer than that ring piece of junk. Excitedly, I packed it back in the box, and put it in my backpack. At the end of the day, I couldn’t get home fast enough. No sooner was my motorcycle in the garage, than I was running toward the front door with a crowbar. I pried the Ring doorbell off the side of the house, and ripped out its wiring. I bored new holes for the new doorbell’s power cable (USB-C!), Wired everything up, and connected it to power. My phone dinged, and the Unifi app asked to adopt the camera. Seconds later, it was part of my eco system. I pressed the button, and my house echoed with its wonderfully generic doorbell chime. My house was now, well, unified.
And at this point, dear reader, you may be wondering why I’ve led you down this garden path of Unifi hardware. Well, this story is partially that. It’s how I found a good ecosystem, and am very pleased with the setup I have. But at the same time, it’s a tale of competing ecosystems, wasted money, and Apple leaving that specific market. In the future, I may add more to this setup, I may update to faster access points, who knows. But what I do know is this:
I finally have a consistently functional, and reliable networking setup, security camera setup, and doorbell. I open ONE app on my phone, and everything is there. And it’s lovely.