[Cialug] Century link fiber

[Nathan C. Smith]

I'm an avid Unifi wireless user and agree with everything John says below.  I've had a few bad access points and two that met their demise when I juiced them with the wrong flavor of PoE.  Also, an Edgerouter Pro that went belly-up after a firmware upgrade.  I used to be a rabid pfSense fan but I can get two Edgerouters for what I used to spend on a good pfSense box, though they aren't exactly apples-to-apples without the IDS (as John notes).

I prefer the Edgeswitches and Edgerouters to Unifi because up until not long ago there was not good control over the switches with regard to VoIP QoS and VLANs.  The Edgemax line still has the best best fine-grain control for policing and QoS and routing protocols and esoteric stuff like multicast and LDP.

The UNMS system is in development and coming along for Unifi-like SD-WAN/LAN type management of Edgerouter equipment and I would rather spend once on Ubiquiti than perpetually for something like Meraki.  I don't mind the lack of pro support.

Back to the topic of CenturyLink:  I have a C1000Z by ZyXel, is there anything better to get to move up to 80 Mbps DSL?  No fiber in our area.

Does it seem to anyone else like CenturyLink has stepped up their game (and the requisite cheats: "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" anyone?).  I think it is great they are delivering fiber to the home.  I only wish it was a company you could trust.  I think Mediacom has made some serious strides too.

-Nate

-----Original Message-----
From: Cialug [mailto:cialug-bounces at cialug.org] On Behalf Of John Moder
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2018 8:09 AM
To: Central Iowa Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Cialug] Century link fiber

I would agree early on (3 years ago), Unifi was a little touch and go.  Features were much more limited, and the Controller GUI was not near where it is today. My Biggest complaint back then was lack of QC, and you’d have to be very careful patching as it would break stuff all the time.  Today its much better, they have a more formal release process, and for the most part if you stay on stable releases, it is fairly painless.

As far as the switches, in my opinion they are some of the best POE switches I have dealt with, and while most POE switches are fairly noisy, these are not above average.  A couple years ago there was a fan issue on the 24 port 500 watt models. That said, I never had any issue with the 30 (varying models) in production now and over the last 3 or so years.

As far as something between the Pro4 and the USG, I disagree there, first the USG is a very capable device, and I wouldn’t hesitate installing it in an environment that is Sub 10 Users. Beyond that, yes, the Pro4 is the next step, but it is very reasonably priced, and as far as the “Ports” go, do note that the SFP ports are “ether or” ports, meaning WAN1 or SFP1, WAN2 or SPF2, not both.

My Wish is something between the Pro4 and the XG. The XG is their 10Gig Firewall, and is about $2500.  I’d like to see a $300 firewall that can handle a full GB WAN with IPS/IDS turned on.  Right now the Pro4 will do that (And depending on traffic so will the USG), but with IPS/IDS on, it clamps to 250Meg.  A recent Firmware upgrade has upped that to a theoretical 450Meg, but UBNT hasn’t changed their doc’s yet, and I wouldn’t position it to a client that way.  In the end, I don’t need 8 SFP ports or a fancy display on a firewall, I need the silicon that can handle IPS at 1 GB… So, I’d be happy with a Pro4 Chassis with some higher specs.



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