MikroFi megathread - Mikrotik & Unifi - ultimate home network
RFD is littered with posts about what "router" to buy. I figured I would start one on what I recommend and a place for people to talk about it, especially after the Ubiquiti deal that came up recently.
There’s tons of permutations with Ubiquiti and Mikrotik. My personal preference is a Mikrotik router paired with a Unifi A. Mikrotik routers are insanely powerful, frequently updated, and relatively cheap. The UAP-AC-LITE is also cheap, and plenty for most houses. With Power over Ethernet, it’s easy to deploy in a central location in your house without worrying about where to plug it in – just get your network cable to where you want to mount it and you’re good to go!
The router has a wizard built in if you are a typical user, with port 1 plugged in to your cable/dsl modem, and the rest for your home network. There’s plenty of resources out there on how to configure it, but I have one setup at my parents as well, and it runs for months on end with no issues. It handles UPNP for automatic port forwarding. Manual port forwarding will require a hint of technical ability, but it’s a cookie cutter recipe you follow over and over.
The UAP no longer needs Unifi Controller software if you don’t want – you can set it up using their Android application and forget about it. More advanced users will want to run the controller, either on a PC or in the cloud, to set some advanced options.
In the end, you’ll get a great network. Plenty of speed, and more importantly, very stable. And it's likely to cost you much less than a high end consumer router, which won't be updated after a year. No more “try unplugging the router” to fix things.
(The setup is flawless for the typical parents situation - netflix, plex, web browsing... I can manage their WiFi remotely if there’s an issue (ie. Forget the password)… everything just works.)
My current recommendation (Jan 2021) : Mikrotik Hex S (RB760iGS) + Unifi UAP-AC-LITE. RB760iGS has an SFP port to run Bell fiber directly and bypass HH3000.
There’s tons of permutations with Ubiquiti and Mikrotik. My personal preference is a Mikrotik router paired with a Unifi A. Mikrotik routers are insanely powerful, frequently updated, and relatively cheap. The UAP-AC-LITE is also cheap, and plenty for most houses. With Power over Ethernet, it’s easy to deploy in a central location in your house without worrying about where to plug it in – just get your network cable to where you want to mount it and you’re good to go!
The router has a wizard built in if you are a typical user, with port 1 plugged in to your cable/dsl modem, and the rest for your home network. There’s plenty of resources out there on how to configure it, but I have one setup at my parents as well, and it runs for months on end with no issues. It handles UPNP for automatic port forwarding. Manual port forwarding will require a hint of technical ability, but it’s a cookie cutter recipe you follow over and over.
The UAP no longer needs Unifi Controller software if you don’t want – you can set it up using their Android application and forget about it. More advanced users will want to run the controller, either on a PC or in the cloud, to set some advanced options.
In the end, you’ll get a great network. Plenty of speed, and more importantly, very stable. And it's likely to cost you much less than a high end consumer router, which won't be updated after a year. No more “try unplugging the router” to fix things.
(The setup is flawless for the typical parents situation - netflix, plex, web browsing... I can manage their WiFi remotely if there’s an issue (ie. Forget the password)… everything just works.)
My current recommendation (Jan 2021) : Mikrotik Hex S (RB760iGS) + Unifi UAP-AC-LITE. RB760iGS has an SFP port to run Bell fiber directly and bypass HH3000.
Last edited by enko on Jan 1st, 2021 7:17 pm, edited 4 times in total.
