*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***

[HEADRAT]

I have an issue where I have two HomePod (stereo) and an AppleTV 4K, when watching/listening I get a momentary pause in the audio (max of probably 1 second). The HomePods/Apple TV are all on the same AP, connected to their own 5Ghz SSD.

I've disabled everything I can think of, no Wifi AI, nothing fancy!

Controller = 5.14.22
AP-AC-Pro = 4.3.20.11298
UniFi Switch 16 POE-150W 4.3.20.11298

I bet if I enabled wifi on my Virgin Media Router and connected them to that there would be no issue, debugging why this stuff doesn't work is almost like a "full time job" In fact I just tried that for "giggles" and guess what, no drops in sound!! (I've raised a support ticket for what good it will do!)

I'm starting to lose the faith, in the last few weeks I've had:

Borked IW HD AP (support were basically no help)
Problems with HomePods (that can be fixed by basically not using the Unifi products)
Client historical data has been removed without warning from 6.0.13
Some rudeness from a Ubiquity member of forum staff about the above (basically failing to even acknowledge it's happened!)


Cheers

HEADRAT

 

[Bluecube]

To bring the saga to a close, on hearing about the "Cannot read property 'device' of undefined" issue, Ubiquiti have told me to RMA the UDM.

If anyone is wondering, Ubiquiti replaced the UDM. With the replacement I had to update the firmware to the 1.7 beta to get the UDM to access the Internet even through another router. Once this was done, the setup process was quite smooth. I was then able to access the Internet settings, turn on MER61 and use the UDM to replace my previous router. Since then it’s been solid though I would expect that for such an expensive device!

 

[Tute]

If you want to go down the unifi route the. I would start with a UDM as you need a modem and see where you get to. You can add further APs as needed. How big is your house?

It’s actally a flat spread over three floors but the bottom floor doesn’t need coverage, just the top two. I guess it would be nice having an integrated modem but using the supplied one really isn’t an issue. I just looked at the gamer’s edition because it seemed quite keenly priced and easy to use.

 

[doodah]

I guess you are in a bungalow? I think both of those AP's are 2x2 designs and with the kitchen AP using WiFi for its back haul it will ultimately impact the speed of the network.

Are you sure that when you join the ubiquiti network you are not on the kitchen AP rather than the lounge AP? Devices attached to the kitchen AP will effectively have half the normal bandwidth available as the other half will be used to communicate with the lounge AP.

On the access points, what channel width are you using for the 5GHz radio? If it is 40Mhz (VHT40) then try increasing it to 80Mhz (VHT80). This should give you more speed, although at the cost of less resistance to interference. The SH3 may be using 80Mhz by default, hence the higher speeds.

Thank you both. I had to reset and re-adopt all of it as I forgot my controller was on my last Windows install (HD upgrade). Increased the VHT to 80 and got 380/20 on my Note 9 standing right next to the living room AP. I have also had a play with the channels and power - a number of posts over at the Unifi forums suggested keeping the 2.4 radios at 20 for VHT, channels 1/6/11 (one AP is on 1 and the other on 6) and low for transmit power. VHT already set to 80 for the 5.0 radio, both APs are on channel 40 and the suggestions said try low and medium for transmit power.

@b0rn2sk8 - in a maisonette, both APs are on the 1st floor (essentially the ground/lower floor for us), the living room AP covers most of the house including the floor above. The kitchen AP covers that room and the garden as the signal gets quite weak here from the living room. I am looking at the connected devices map right now and every device in the house is connected to the living room AP, funnily enough even the kitchen Mac which sits right next to the kitchen AP. So does having the kitchen AP connected wirelessly impact the performance of the other AP? I have eyed up a cable path from the living room to the kitchen which could be done without much fuss.

Need to make a backup of the controller and just found about hosting the controller on a Google cloud platform? Any one here tried it?

 

[b0rn2sk8]

I’m still a little confused, are the APs mounted on the top floor or are there floors above? I only ask as the signal ‘behind’ AP isn’t great, they are designed to project the signal down and out in a mushroom shape.

Unless you need real-time data logging, I would just use the app.

The kitchen AP being connected wirelessly will impact the performance of devices connected, especially when the main AP is only a 2x2.

2x2 WiFi is pretty slow in the real world, and is falling well behind what internet speeds are now available to cable and full fibre connections. When you then have to take away some of that bandwidth to serve another AP it will impact the maximum speed you’ll be able to achieve on a client device. It’s worse on the second AP, you’ll effectively get half the speed on the kitchen AP to account for the ‘hop’ you make on a mesh network. 1x1 for the device, 1x1 for the connection to the AP. That’s very a simplified version of what happens but I hope it makes sense.

Using WiFi as the backhaul is better when using a main AP with a 4x4 antenna. Most client devices are also 2x2 so there is a lot more spare capacity. You could be maxing the connection on your one device and using other devices at the same time and there wouldn’t be any impact. Where as on a 2x2 if your maxing one device, any other device connected and transmitting will reduce the speed of the device trying to max its connection.

That said, for things you actually do on a phone, WiFi is perfectly fine. Nothing really comes close to saturating the bandwidth available. Even updates are normally limited by the phones ability to decompress the data rather than the internet speed.

Proper high bandwidth devices like second APs, desk top computers and games consoles should really be wired if possible.

 

[doodah]

Our front door is on the ground floor and you take some stairs up to first floor to get to the house. Kitchen and living room are on this first floor. One of the bedrooms is one the floor above (second). So both APs are on the first floor, ceiling mounted - firing down to the ground floor which is a separate ground floor flat. Behind for the living room AP would be my bedroom and behind for the kitchen AP would be a wall/outside as it's mounted at the top of the wall - not the ceiling.

Edit - thanks for the explanation . Fortunately the only device that should be using the kitchen AP is the Mac, and I only use that to stream from the HTPC and YouTube. Every device in the house manages well with the current set up.

 

[Nick1881]

I'm currently running pfsense with Ubiquiti switches and APs. I'm doing a lot of gaming and noticed I seem to have poor hit registration in COD, I Googled and read about bufferbloat and pfsense being bad for it, I've setup CoDel but it still doesn't seem much better. Would I be better moving to an Edgerouter 4, hoping to improve gaming performance and also it would be nice to have full Ubiquiti.

 

[Caged]

What's your ISP?

 

[Nick1881]

What's your ISP?

Virgin Media, currently on 350mb.

 

[Caged]

Have you tried just plugging the Hub in modem mode into whatever you're playing CoD on? I'd be surprised if pfSense with a specific configuration designed to avoid bufferbloat was the issue here compared to it just being Virgin's network.

 

[Nick1881]

Have you tried just plugging the Hub in modem mode into whatever you're playing CoD on? I'd be surprised if pfSense with a specific configuration designed to avoid bufferbloat was the issue here compared to it just being Virgin's network.

I've managed to improve my bufferbloat score on dslreports speedtest by tweaking CoDel, but I've also bought a ER-4 off the MM to try, apparently they are much easier to setup.

 

[WJA96]

The ER4 won’t integrate with UniFi - you need a Unifi Security Gateway (USG) or Unifi Dream Machine (UDM).

 

[the-evaluator]

The ER4 won’t integrate with UniFi - you need a Unifi Security Gateway (USG) or Unifi Dream Machine (UDM).

It's worth pointing out to @Nick1881 (tagging isn't working?) that if he gets a UDM then he'll need to use the UniFi controller that's running on the UDM, it can't be adopted to an external controller.

 

[Nick1881]

Didn't realise it would run a different interface, still worth a try though. My controller currently runs on my server. I will have a play later in the week once it arrives.

 

[ChrisD.]

It's most likely to be VMs network, they're not exactly known to be free from jitter and good for gamers.

 

[Andy_82]

I've been using Unifi AP and pfSense (with FQ-Codel setup) on vm 200 and have no issues with buffer bloat, Don't play any games though and my pc is wired. If you're worried about bufferbloat test with thinkbroadband and DSL reports, run a ping -t in cmd prompt at same time to check.

 

[doodah]

I’m still a little confused, are the APs mounted on the top floor or are there floors above? I only ask as the signal ‘behind’ AP isn’t great, they are designed to project the signal down and out in a mushroom shape.

Unless you need real-time data logging, I would just use the app.

The kitchen AP being connected wirelessly will impact the performance of devices connected, especially when the main AP is only a 2x2.

2x2 WiFi is pretty slow in the real world, and is falling well behind what internet speeds are now available to cable and full fibre connections. When you then have to take away some of that bandwidth to serve another AP it will impact the maximum speed you’ll be able to achieve on a client device. It’s worse on the second AP, you’ll effectively get half the speed on the kitchen AP to account for the ‘hop’ you make on a mesh network. 1x1 for the device, 1x1 for the connection to the AP. That’s very a simplified version of what happens but I hope it makes sense.

Using WiFi as the backhaul is better when using a main AP with a 4x4 antenna. Most client devices are also 2x2 so there is a lot more spare capacity. You could be maxing the connection on your one device and using other devices at the same time and there wouldn’t be any impact. Where as on a 2x2 if your maxing one device, any other device connected and transmitting will reduce the speed of the device trying to max its connection.

That said, for things you actually do on a phone, WiFi is perfectly fine. Nothing really comes close to saturating the bandwidth available. Even updates are normally limited by the phones ability to decompress the data rather than the internet speed.

Proper high bandwidth devices like second APs, desk top computers and games consoles should really be wired if possible.

I'm having a right pickle about going forward. I definitely need a switch and wouldn't mind a USG, plus a controller would be a bonus. Ended up coming across the USG or one of the Edgerouters (with some suggestions saying the EdgeRouter X SFP could be used as dumb switch). But then I came across the UDM which does it all so I could hard wire my HTPC, possibly my main rig upstairs, the AP in the kitchen (though would need to use the PoE injector as the UDM doesn't do PoE), have a controller so I don't have to run it on my PC, have all the IDS/IPS bells and whistles with good throughput and have a 4x4 AP in the living room. I could sell my AC Lite and second AP-LR, swapping the Lite in the kitchen for the other LR. Just one thing..........................all I see are lots of people moaning how unreliable the UDM is .

 

[WJA96]

It's not the UDM that's the issue. It's the UDM-Pro. The UDM is pretty robust.

 

[Bluecube]

I had a hell of a time getting my UDM set up. I had to return it, install a beta firmware on the new UDM and only then did I have a working router. The necessity of having a working internet connection to just login in to the router is incredibly backwards IMHO.

Having said all the above, I’ve not had any issues since then. The WiFi signal isn’t exceptionally strong compared to my previous router (Asus AC88) but in your case I don’t think that’ll matter.

 

[WJA96]

The WiFi signal isn’t exceptionally strong compared to my previous router (Asus AC88) but in your case I don’t think that’ll matter.

This is a common misconception about signal strength and coverage. By default something like an ASUS will grab a target client with a TINY chance of being able to get any kind of decent throughput. You can configure a Unifi Access Point to do that but out of the box they are configured to reject clients with exceptionally poor signal responses. The reason for this is simple. They sell additional access points and they expect you add an access point to maintain the user experience. If they don't have those extra access points then it seems they would rather you had no WLAN at all than a bad wireless experience. And for the price of one of those ASUS or Netgear Manga monster routers you can typically get a UDM Base and 1 or 2 AP-AC-Lite access points to do the coverage properly.