It used to be that in the event of a major outage or hardware failure you would need to issue additional debug commands to the effect of "I know this isn't your approved SFP but please just try it," if you were trying to replace a first party SFP with a third party one. TAC would more or less laugh at you and hang up if you sought support.
I'm not sure if this product will _actually_ change any of that, but here's hoping.
This is common belief and even a dire warning when filing TAC tickets. However, unless the third-party SFP is the prime suspect, I have never experienced a TAC from any major networking vendor[1] refuse support, let alone "laugh and hang up," even metaphorically.
It's good SOP to keep at least a couple SFPs for each networking manufacturer on the shelf, but third-party SFPs are normally in the ballpark of 10% of the cost of OEM and tend to be manufactured better[2].
1. Mostly Cisco, Juniper, HPE, Fortinet
2. I've had a far greater failure rate on OEM SFPs than SFPs from third-parties like Fs.com and USCritical. That and they feel much less flimsy than OEM.
I bucket it into there being three options: genuine, clone, and good-clone.
We had a bad run with fs.com QSFP+s. Their SFP+s have been better to me, but reckon I have had a couple fail.
Atgbics SFP+s have been a reliable clone supplier for us. I don't think I have had any of those fail, and they have been my main vendor for a while now. You can order them programmed with personalities for Cisco, etc.
Part of the edge of fs.com is that it is so easy to place an order and get fast delivery. My main site is in another country to where I live, and I do a few trips a year. Several times they have made low-notice projects possible.
Turns out Mellanox/NVIDIA hardware are _really_ picky about their cards. We bought a box from FS that reprogrammed the compatibility firmware and they worked instantly (FS also offered to return and reprogram but we needed it fast).
This was a big shock after dealing with nothing but CAT5/6/RJ45 that has been stable and common for decades (?).
With the caveat that I'm a USian and my scale is even lower than yours (10 10gbit SFP+ modules in my apartment combination home, office, and lab, running trouble-free for the past three years) I've found 10Gtek to be a reliable supplier. You can order 10gbit SFP+ modules straight from them for 14USD per per module. Though, shipping costs straight from them is currently pretty terrible: $35 if you're spending less than $800.
Stores like Newegg will often meet or beat that per-module price and offer free shipping if you buy a bundle of four or more... but modules with the personality you want may not be in stock.
SFP programmers have been around forever and work great. This will solve the issue. The only really unique thing here is the form factor and price. I think the last time I looked at a programmer 8 years ago I seem to recall it was about 10x this price. I’m guessing cheaper ones have popped up out of China since then.
The nexus line being more modern in spirit also helps. Catalysts still reject non-cisco optics without a configuration line afaik.
A good rule of thumb is whether the equipment tries to vendor-lock you in.
Another example that comes to mind is at least one generation of Intel NICs (don't remember if it's the 5xx or the 7xx), where even the open-source mainline (!) driver will reject the optic without a driver argument passed to it when modprobe'ing it.
The two X520s that I have will refuse to work with non-Intel transceivers unless either you're running Linux and have set the 'allow_unsupported_sfp' option, or have edited the card's EEPROM to unset the "shut down unless the transceiver is a Genuine Intel part" bit. It's my understanding that very many Intel NICs are like this.
I remember [0] the Juniper switches that I used to have (before I switched to Mikrotik) refusing to work with anything other than Official Juniper transceivers.
[0] ...and may MISremember...
I know there are these XPS-GROUPON with "8311 firmware" SFP modules or something to bypass it but they cost $130+ and just wondering if there's something for <$50 before I pull the trigger.
Also
> 1000% lower pricing
What the hell does that mean? If some other vendor sells it for $1000, you sell it for -$9000?
https://hack-gpon.org/ont-wo-mac/
You would need the ISP to "adopt" your ONT into their network similar to what is observed with cable modems.
In short, a gpon network is not quite the same as rolling to Walmart or whatever and just grabbing a replacement cable/dsl modem.
They're strapped with SKU as is. Ubiquiti seems very focused on two main segments right now, which is growing enterprise switching and wifi, and their outdoor wireless gear, where (if memory serves from quarterly earnings reports) is now mostly concentrated outside the US.
My setup is definitely more on the prosumer side, but it's been so build out and inspect my network with their tools.
I've also had three instances where upon rebooting due to a power outage or a system update, my inbound firewall / port forwarding was just broken. UniFi simply did not pass packets to my server. Once again, a full reboot of every UniFi device on the network resolved it.
I really want to like UniFi, and I appreciate how much access I have to SSH in and figure out what's going on (and I did take tcpdumps and have a support case open), but it has definitely not been plug-and-play for me.
I'm using a UDR7, U7 Lite, a number of managed UniFi switches, and just recently added the U6 extender.
The primary case I have open currently is in regards to the port forwarding / routing breaking on some restarts.
Right. Just like 5Gbit PPPoE uplinks over VLAN. In fact there is no Ubiquiti router which can handle 1.5Gbit+ PPPoE for some reason. So, I have a mikrotik in front of UDMPM just to termiate PPPoE and I had to buy a IPv4 /29 subnet to avoid double not.
Everything just works, sure.
I am eyeballing the new NAS to play with soon.
My experience is very binary. I had some Mikrotik RF installs that Just Worked, and never needed attention. And some that were just problem children constantly demanding reboots.
Mikrotik code isnt the most stable beast in the world, but if you keep it at a certain point in time you are usually safe. But then that brings you back around to the security issues again.
How's that different from a Unifi AP? Unless they changed something in the past five, eight years, the software running on the AP is pretty much OpenWRT with the serial numbers hastily filed off. [0] Get a shell, and you get to download whatever to do whatever you need.
[0] Me coming to this realization is what lead me to switch over to OpenWRT. I didn't need any of the fleet management stuff provided by UniFi, and was constantly frustrated that the APs had to totally reboot whenever you changed nearly any setting on them. (I heard that they eventually fixed that particular shortcoming. Good for them, I guess.)
Their long-distance wireless and outdoor wireless are great, but their regular WiFI access points and software are at most adequate. They are not keeping up with the state of the art.
Does that mean that the performance is middling (making them -IME- equal to UBNT's APs), that they never have APs that use the very latest and greatest WiFi version, or both?
I think they've just given up on that sector, and they're focusing on more specialized outdoors/long-distance wireless.
I don't want to get into the Ubiquity ecosystem because it's typically all-or-nothing plunge. And I distrust complicated managed systems out of general principles.
They have several APs that have 2.5Gbit ethernet (one with a 2.5Gbit SFP+ cage), and one AP with a 10Gbit SFP+ cage. Additionally, all their APs run RouterOS, which means that you can bond links together to fairly-reliably get additional throughput. [0]
In regards to Wifi 6e and Wifi 7, it looks like Mikrotik takes quite a long while after a new Wifi version to release hardware that runs it. I expect your assertion that they've given up on 6GHz for home/small-office APs is incorrect.
[0] Yes, I've personal experience with using link bonding on Mikrotik hardware. As a knowledgeable someone would expect, it usually provides you with additional throughput proportional to the number of bonded links.
But I've just checked the Mikrotik hardware list, and I don't see indoor APs that are PoE-powered and have more than one Ethernet port. Maybe I'm overlooking something?
a) Who said anything about that? In the four comments prior to this one, that set of requirements wasn't brought up.
b) Yes, you are absolutely overlooking something. On the Products page, try expanding the "Features" widget of the "Product filters" section, checking the "PoE-in" option, and hitting the "Use filters" button. Even the AP I mentioned with the 10Gbit SFP+ cage has PoE in.
I tried again, and I see only mANTBox and NetMetal ax access points. Both are designed for outdoor deployment and would be very awkward indoors.
I'm not sure what you've done to only see those two APs. Based on your confusing report, it seems like you're also looking in the "Wireless systems" category. Try the "Wireless for home and office" category.
If you try and fail again, please do post the URL of the page you're looking at.
I definitely see more options now. Still not super great (no 6E), but definitely viable.
In that same house switching over to Ubiquiti just worked, and worked well. I had the same setup (mesh nodes on every floor), but performance was substantially better (2-4x).
I've moved house, and now have wired APs on every floor, and get phenomenal performance. The management UI to see what is where / how its connected, and when something doesn't work is very good. It also enables things that were hard / difficult with other non-'prosumer' gear. Like I can have multiple WAN ports, and plug in a cellular modem, so that when my internet doesn't just work (which happens way too often) it auto-fails over to the cellular modem, and continues just working.
The reason I went with Ubiquiti in the first place was their Unifi Protect line of cameras, and again those 'just work' from the wireless small ones to domes / etc plugged into wired connections they all just seamlessly connect to my dream machine, and provides a great UI, and the data is on prem which I want.
The only thing Ubiquiti doesn't do the way I want is DHCP + DNS, so I have a seperate raspberry pi doing that.
After years of fussing around with either linux / pfsense / ... routing + firewall solutions, and different AP / meshing configurations the ubiquiti stuff is very hands off.
I don't really do more 'advanced' routing (other than maybe the unifi protect aka camera stuff it sounds like we're describing similar configurations), it's just that when I tried to achieve the configuration you're describing with Asus it was impossible, with TPLink it took a lot of fiddling / configuration and never 'worked right' (right meaning as well as I thought it should, though I've not tried TPLink in a primarily wired configuration) where as the ubiquiti stuff was plug and play and just 'worked right' (close to the speeds and reliability I expected both in a mesh mode and in wired).
The whole camera thing -- which is what really got me to pay the ubiquiti tax -- is another story entirely, I'm sure there are lots of other good options for self hosted IP camera solutions, but I couldn't find any ones I wanted to use, and again with ubiquiti it was super plug and play, and once I'd bought the UDM to do camera stuff and saw how well that worked I wanted to try the ubiquiti networking stuff, and it worked better with less configuration that the other alternatives I'd tried.
With infinite time and finite budget ubiquiti is not the right choice for home networks, with a sizable budget for home networking equipment minimal time investment and a preference for performance ubiquiti has worked out better for me than alternatives out of the box, and better for me after spending time tweaking and trying to optimize TPlink (meaning ubiquiti out of the box was better after trying to optimize TPlink).
If "not ubiquiti" works for you out of the box, or in the configuration you're already in then you're all set, and you're definitely not missing out on anything. If things aren't working out of the box and you're tired of fiddling with it, or your other goals aren't possible, and they are with ubiquiti maybe it's worth the investigation.
I also _hate_ how much I sound like an ad for ubiquiti. I'm really not, but I think I've spent more time writing these two comments than I've spent having to fuss around with my network equipment in years.
It's hard to not notice the ... ubiquity of praise for their gear over the years, but I haven't seen much clarifying what sets them apart. Maybe I should look at them like peak Apple but for networking gear?
When I was willing to spend time on this (home networking + cameras) I would have never touched this equipment. It was all open source / cheap stuff with BSD or Linux routers, random switches, home assistant raspberry pi's connected to USB cameras. It would take some time maybe not a lot, but enough, and it would break frequently enough due to some update somewhere or something.
I ended up going with TP-Link Omada and have been happy so far (a managed switch and wifi 6 WAPs). I am a bit concerned about their security track record given how bad their soho products are, so I ended up sticking with my opnsense router at the perimeter as the first line of defense.
I’m curious to hear what you think you’re missing out on with Omada.
Ubiquiti has had plenty of bad security issues as well I'm afraid, but fundamentally one of the advantages of both is that with a self-hostable controller and VLAN isolation you should be able to minimize your attack area pretty well from both the LAN and WAN. No remote dependencies at all. But like you I run OPNsense at the edge, you do at least have to trust their firewall and such if you want to go full single-pane.
Well, [0] mentions that they left the ER firmware alone for two years. They also don't sell the ER hardware anymore.
Looking at the changelog in combination with the comments on the news item about the new release, it looks like there are many bugs left unfixed. If this analysis is correct [2], nearly nothing was changed.
That smells an awful lot like abandonment.
> ...VLAN issue unacknowledged and unfixed... were both wrong.
This subthread [3] disagrees with you. As someone who has suffered through multi-quarter "struggle sessions" [4] with UBNT engineering staff about broken basic functionality, I can totally believe a report that UBNT claims something has been fixed when it's very much not fixed.
[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794857>
[1] <https://community.ui.com/releases/EdgeRouter-3-0-0/33ee3852-...>
[2] <https://community.ui.com/releases/EdgeRouter-3-0-0/33ee3852-...>
[3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44756915>
[4] Complete with round after round of them saying "Hey, we fixed it! Try the latest beta!", and me replying "No, you didn't. Did you run my 100% reliable reproducer that I've given you? It sure looks like you haven't because that reproducer still reproduces the problem.".
TP-Link stepped in and have been working hard on Omada being a direct competitor. It's clearly inspired liberally from UniFi but that's A-OK by me, it's healthy for both to be going head to head. In my experience it had somewhat fewer features, particularly initially, and they definitely don't cover the full breadth of cool and useful niches that Ubiquiti does either. But what there is has worked well and been more reliable for me, particularly in a mixed environment. For example Omada worked perfected day 1 with automatic L3 controller discovery using a simple DHCP Option 138 set on my OPNsense unit pointing right at my controller FQDN. It was easy and built-in to supply a proper certificate for the Web GUI. I never got either of those to work with the UniFi controller. The switching has been rock solid reliable and the WiFi more performant, better coverage, and features like PPSK were added way before Ubiquiti did and have a much better interface.
However, Ubiquiti does seem to perhaps be turning things around a bit. Their router hardware is no longer garbage, even if it is of course far less then you can do yourself. From what I can see in simple ongoing tests they do a better job on the software side for router features now as well, so if you're all-in on both systems for the total single-pane experience UniFi might once again be better. Their announcement of the "UniFi OS Server" 3 months ago (in Early Access) and publicly last month was both a surprise and heartening. Rarely does one see companies that start down the path of lock-in reverse course at all. If they make it possible to run all their various controller applications on your own hardware I'd definitely start to add more back into my mix.
So if you've got decently modern Omada hardware (and you probably do because not like it's been around that long, in terms of networks anyway) I'd be in no massive rush to switch to UniFi unless you see some key specific things you'd like. If you think you ever might want to roll your own other infra same thing even harder. But if you're thinking about a bunch of upgrades anyway then worth keeping an eye on and looking carefully at the various feature mixes each have.
And that's a really statement that makes me super happy to say, because I think each is now driving the other, which is really healthy for this ecosystem!
I was more just curious if I was missing out on something great (or if I ever decide to upgrade to WiFi 7+)
Still 100X better than the competition though. My UDM has worked wonderfully with support for dual IPs and seamless failover
I was quite a lot happier after the switch, as I didn't have to hassle with UniFi and my APs stopped needing roughly-monthly reboots.
All my switches are MikroTik. My SFP+ modules are MikroTik, Ubiquiti, and some 3rd party ones from before I knew better.
I've had modules that will only run at gigabit in one switch but will give me the full 10 gb in another. I've had modules that refuse to work in one MikroTik switch but will happily work in a different MikroTik switch. I've just had a world of pain.
I've got everything basically working after months of fiddling and I'm inclined to just not… touch… anything.
* I will note that the 10gb sfp+ modules from 10gtek on a Mikrotik just don't work.
These 10gtek fiber modules on the other hand have worked flawlessly so far. [2]
This Mikrotik module would not establish a 10 gb link with my Thunderbolt dock no matter what I tried. Works fine with my servers though so I swapped it out.
I've pretty much resigned myself to just buying the full brand Ubiqitui SFP+ adapters [4] for converting to copper.
I recently purchased [5] to run to my living room, but I have not found the time/energy to do the run.
1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KFBFL16
2. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BP4M8LV
3. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078SNK1MY
4. https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/accessories-modules-fibe...
I have the 8 port 10Gb + 1 Gb from mikrotik and the UTP SFP's run stupid hot because they have to drive a cable at GHz speeds. The fiber and DAC (direct attach cable) SFPs are cool to the touch by comparison.
Weird. For the past three years, I've had 10Gtek 10gbit SFP+ optical modules in all of my Mikrotik switches [0] and they Just Work.
My switches are the CRS326-24G-2S+, and the SFPs were the "generic" versions. I wonder why yours were so troublesome.
[0] ...and (after fixing their eeproms) my Intel x520 NICs...
It's one of the reasons I switched to running fiber even to desktops at home; it's like 1/10th the heat output.
It depends, but for typical networking I'd say Ubiquti is actually offering better pricing here (outside of 10G LR) - and I'm saying that as someone who has sold 10s of thousands of FS modules to customers.
| FS | Ubiquiti
-----------+------+-----------
Programmer | $369 | $49
10G SR | $25 | $12 ($20)
10G LR | $34 | $59 ($85)
25G SR | $49 | $29 ($49)
25G LR | $74 | $69 ($119)
100G SR4 | $99 | $39 ($69)
Side note for the HN crowd: For ridiculous homelab 100G shenanigans look for Intel 100G-CWDM4 on sites like Ebay. They go for $4 and work with SM LC fiber from 0-2000 meter runs, making great DAC replacements (cheaper+thinner replaceable cabling). They run great, I've had 8 going for a year. Even if all 8 failed tomorrow and I bought 8 more that's still cheaper than a single 100G SR4 from FS. You can pair these with used 100G NICs for ~$100, making a 100G direct connection between 2 machines ~$250 after shipping+tax.
I'm so happy my current employer chose sfc :)
Ubiquiti's 10GB LR of $59 is for a 2-pack, not per-module. So that still comes out cheaper than FS for the sale duration at least. Not by a lot, granted, but still cheaper.
Assuming 2.5W typical consumption, $0.18/kWh rate. More like $8/year if you are in a high rate area!
It remains to be seen if UB's pricing (particularly $50 on the "Wizard") is just temp to get their foot in the door. I suspect it is; and we'll see the price increase later.
I used to use Ubiquiti gear a number of years ago, but left when they started moving into an Apple-esque "prosumer" direction with corresponding price increases. That, and the constant bugs.
Ubiquiti's G3 Instant entry level camera was launched at $30 in 2021; which is $55 adjusted for inflation, but they're actually selling it for $80. The G4 Instant is $99 and G6 Instant is $180(!). Keep in mind this is their cheapest, entry level, offering in the camera space.
Whereas if you contrast these prices with a Reolink E1 Pro which is $55 (with free shipping) and superior to the G4 Instant in every metric (lens quality, pixel count, PTZ, ONVIF support, et al). This essentially makes this a space that Ubiquiti is no longer interested in competing in.
https://www.flexoptix.net/en/fo-fb-5.html?option875=1
If you're buying at scale you can get a Flexoptixs box for free, long as you promise to write a review. At least, you used to be able to.
I have two ISPs, one with IPv6 (Starlink) and one without (Frontier).
I want to use Frontier for all IPv4, with IPv4 failover to Starlink, and I want to use Starlink only for IPv6.
UniFi networking won’t let you configure this, and I’m not going to SSH in to my UDM to manually set routes, that will be lost at next boot.
I had a great stint with OpenBSD on an older Pentium 4 Dell tower a few years back. For basic firewall rules, I had line-rate performance on my NICs. But for a home network I'd love to have something more energy efficient.
[1] https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-eq14-n150?variant=...
As much as I like opnsense, I choose Ubiquiti still when I need something cheap that I need to rely on.
Often Cisco/etc will refuse support cases if you aren't using their optics, if the switches/routers even work with them in the first case, which isn't a given as often they'll refuse to work with non branded optics.
Really just a money grab by the big network vendors.
This box allows you to flash the firmware on the optic to say its from whatever brand you want (Cisco, Dell, Aruba, Juniper etc) so that you can get it to work in that companies switch/router.
For most SMEs, the brand of optics makes no difference. Maybe keep a few legit branded ones around for debugging and when you need to raise a support case. But otherwise, the generic ones flashed to look like branded ones work just fine.
As others here have pointed out, Cisco reserves the right to do this but doesn't do it in practice. They don't even have a realistic chance to _detect_ a Cisco-programmed FS SFP, since it simply identifies the same as a genuine Cisco module.
If your case was directly related to the SFP (“I can't get a link on this fiber port”), then yes, they could probably refuse it. But if your case is about basically anything else on the switch, they won't care.
I have zero doubt they will. But also you prove nothing and are doing yourself and the vendor a disservice if you fake it. There’s no telling what your 3rd party transceiver is doing incorrectly. Better to get one single supported sfp and get that fixed which will probably fix your other issue too.
FS is so big they’re probably fine. Another option is to get one supported sfp, find if it’s encoded to an oem part, then buy and install the oem part directly. Easy to twist the arm of your var to do this.
If I report an IS-IS problem and the root cause is an OEM SFP on a completely unrelated port, then the design of the switch is pretty awful. :-)
That's not the only difference. I have had situations where I ran equivalent optics side-by-side, and then touched one and it was hot, and touched the other and it was not hot. They do contain different components. In the case of that test - the atgbics SFP was cool, and the other clone unit was hot. My dealer was able to get me in contact with someone technical at atgbics (the cool-running unit) who explained the difference, "The DSP might be say 13nm where more modern more expensive ones are 5nm."
But you definitely do not need to pay for "genuine" optics to get high-reliability optics. You just need to shop around the clones - atgbics is a clone.
Also, reading "Just insert any brand’s SFP or QSFP module, select Copy, and insert any UI module to write the profile." suggests that this only works to reprogram UI optics
The programming boxes (Ubiquiti's and others) get the Rx/Tx power from the DDM (Digital Diagnostics Module) built into most SFPs - it exposes the power levels from the receiver and transmitter inside the SFP and dumps it onto an SPI bus in a standardised way which is read by the box.
> Just insert any brand’s SFP or QSFP module, select Copy, and insert any UI module to write the profile.
It's pretty common for SFP rewrite boxes to only allow writing to that particular brand's SFP modules. It's partly a sales tactic, but also often vendor "genuine" optics will ship with a write-protected EEPROM (requiring a passcode) that stops them from being written to.
If you're after something a little more "open", Reveltronics[1] make a barebones version along with software for brute-forcing EEPROM keys.
I certainly don't need or want their rack augmented reality... 'feature'? fad? And their clunky web UI is both limiting and slowing me down. Thanks, I'm perfectly fine with a console and simple LEDs.
I find it mind-boggling that you can hardly buy _RAM_ anymore without programmable RGB LEDs, but that managed switches do not come with a per-port RGB LED to let me mark VLANs or cables that need replacements or whatever. Come on! A nice little square all around the port, please. Instead, we get the QR code plus an app that needs to talk with the cloud.
And does it only write to SFP modules from Ubiquiti (looking at you FS BOX)?
Another tool you can use for this (without a nice UI) is the SFP Buddy: https://oopselectronics.com/product/SFPB