Crosstalk Solutions

2021-06-08 · open the original ↗

• A cheap Sonoff RF bridge brings RF remote devices into Home Assistant. The host's build is the Sonoff RF Bridge ($15.99 on Amazon), a Sonoff PIR motion sensor ($17.19), any RF LED strip lights and Home Assistant 2021.6.2 on a Raspberry Pi 4, with HACS and a file editor installed. He calls the Pi great for learning but expects heavier users to move to a VM on a Synology NAS or an Intel NUC.
• Pair the bridge in eWeLink on a 2.4 GHz IoT network. His hardware version of the bridge does not support 5 GHz. It signals pairing mode with two short blinks and one long for 300 seconds. Each remote button and the motion sensor (added as an "alarm") is learned within a 60-second window. He turns off the app's alarm notifications, which fire on every motion event.
• The SonoffLAN integration links eWeLink to Home Assistant. Installed through HACS, it defaults to local-and-cloud mode, with cloud-only and local-only as options. The eWeLink email and password go in configuration.yaml. Because YAML is finicky about spacing, he suggests copying from his GitHub repository instead of the web page.
• A notification automation reveals each learned RF command's number. Commands are numbered from 0 in the order learned: his on button was 0, off was 1, the motion sensor 2. Scripts sending commands 0 and 1 then become dashboard buttons. An automation needs a unique 14-digit ID to be editable or switchable in the UI. He admits his blog post had wrong command numbers he meant to fix.
• His motion lights turn off 90 seconds after motion stops. The sensor is declared with device class motion and a 60-second timeout that restarts on each detection. A second automation waits a further 30 seconds after the sensor goes off before sending the off command. He calls both timings arbitrary and suggests tuning them.

2021-06-04 · open the original ↗

• The host's Starlink VLAN exists only on the switches, not the firewall. VLAN 574 ("STA" in leet speak) carries Starlink from his garage to an EdgeRouter X in his office. It is created in UniFi as a "VLAN only" network with that tag and does not exist on his Netgate SG-1100 pfSense firewall, since it needs no DHCP or routing. His other networks are the main LAN, guest VLAN 10 and IoT VLAN 107.
• An untagged port at each end puts Starlink on the VLAN. The Starlink PoE injector's data port plugs into port 5 of a USW Lite 16 PoE, set to a Starlink-only profile. All VLANs then ride trunk ports ("All" profile) through the attic and rack switches. Port 5 of a US-8-150W, again Starlink-only, feeds the EdgeRouter X's WAN. The link still showed 100 Mbps full duplex because of his separate Starlink fault.
• A trunk port carries one untagged network plus tagged VLANs. Anything plugged in lands on the untagged network, and VLAN-aware devices can also use the tagged ones. That is how one access point serves the main, guest and IoT Wi-Fi. A port untagged for a single VLAN gives its device nothing else, even if that device understands VLANs.
• Best practice keeps the Starlink VLAN off every non-trunk port. The host builds a "non-Starlink VLANs" profile (native LAN plus IoT and guest) and shows it applied to his U6-LR's port. That keeps a device on an ordinary port from joining VLAN 574. At home he leaves most ports on "All" because he controls all the equipment, but in an enterprise he would segregate further.

2021-06-03 · open the original ↗

• Crosstalk's own Cloud PBX, powered by ClearlyIP, is out of beta. It targets 2–20 seat businesses that want normal phone-system features without per-extension cloud pricing like RingCentral's or 8x8's. Crosstalk bills by minutes used and calls "unlimited minutes" plans a scam. Features include ring groups, queues, time conditions, call recording, a web call panel, and a softphone per user (browser or the Clearly Anywhere mobile app, set up by QR code).
• Service is priced per extension, plus numbers and minutes used. It is $5 per extension a month. Setup is $250 for the first two extensions and $50 for each additional one, plus $50 shipping. Taxes typically add 15–20% to the monthly bill. There is no contract, and Crosstalk phones carry a 2-year warranty.
• Crosstalk claims to undercut RingCentral by more than half over five years. It puts the saving at 55%. In the company's example of nine phones, three numbers and 4,000 minutes, upfront cost is $1,863 ($1,163 of it phones) and service $83 a month before tax. Year one totals $2,859 against about $3,022 for RingCentral at $27.99 per extension per month. After that it is $996 a year, so five years cost $6,843 against $15,114. The company claims an average saving of 50% or more.
• Onboarding is pitched as the main selling point. Crosstalk says it designs inbound and outbound call flows, configures and ships the phones ready to take calls, then guides the customer through number porting.

2021-06-01 · open the original ↗

• The host's Starlink injector won't hold a gigabit link to third-party gear. The service itself works, but the injector's data port auto-negotiates to 100 Mbps full duplex on a UniFi USG, a USW Lite 16 and an EdgeRouter X. On a Netgate SG-1100 it would not negotiate at all until he forced 100 Mbps full duplex. In his earlier Starlink-with-UniFi video the same port showed gigabit.
• Starlink support saw a fault alert remotely and replied within an hour. Their first reply flagged an alert suggesting cable or port damage and listed eight troubleshooting steps: photos of pins, bends, pinched or nicked cable, debris, and bypassing the router. The host infers from how fast this canned list arrived that other customers have hit the same problem.
• A slightly depressed pin in the injector looked like the culprit. Pin 8 on the injector's port sat a millimetre or so low. Prying it up with a paper clip, or just replugging, brought back gigabit and speed tests of 217, 206 and 175 Mbps in his office. It fell back to 100 Mbps after about an hour each time.
• Starlink is replacing the power brick; the fault persisted at recording. The RMA was under way and he was still at 100 Mbps full duplex and planned a follow-up video. He says he isn't upset because Starlink is a beta product, and praises its support as quick, right first time and friendly.

2021-05-28 · open the original ↗

• The EdgeRouter X is a cheap router with headroom for Starlink. The host says the ER-X processes far more packets than Starlink can push through it; MSRP is $59, and he has seen it on sale for about $35. On his test it showed Starlink's CGNAT address on eth0 and ran a speed test at about 80–85 Mbps.
• Setup is a standard ER-X build with Starlink on eth0. Factory reset with a paperclip held 10 seconds, connect a laptop to eth0 with a static address in 192.168.1.x, log in at 192.168.1.1 with ubnt/ubnt, then run the "WAN + 2LAN2" wizard with "use only one LAN" so eth1–eth4 act as one switched LAN. Then move Starlink's cable (the one normally in Starlink's router) to eth0 and the laptop to eth1.
• Move the LAN off 192.168.1.x, and never use 192.168.100.x. He changes the default because nearly every router ships with 192.168.1.x, which risks conflicts; he uses 192.168.42.1/24 with the DHCP server on. 192.168.100.x is off limits because Starlink uses it, and the static route to the dish will not work if the LAN overlaps it.
• A static route is needed to reach the Starlink dish interface. Without it, 192.168.100.1 (stats, stowing the dish, support tickets) is unreachable from behind the ER-X. Add an interface route to 192.168.100.1/32 with next-hop interface eth0 and distance 1.
• The default DHCP pool and DNS settings are worth changing. The wizard hands out an odd pool of .38–.243, which he resets to .100–.254, and the router is clients' only DNS server, so he adds 1.1.1.1 as a backup. He also sets system name servers 1.1.1.1 and 9.9.9.9, and notes the DHCP page can carry a UniFi controller's IP to help devices find a cloud-hosted controller.

2021-05-26 · open the original ↗

• Revive the old NVR first, to save resetting every camera. At a Newport, Oregon client, a UniFi Video NVR on a Shuttle PC he had built three to four years earlier was off and stuck at a BIOS prompt that needed F1. Booting it let him verify the camera password and take a backup, so he would not have to factory reset cameras on ladders.
• The UniFi Video backup restored into UniFi Protect cleanly. On a pre-built UNVR the restore imported only the cameras (no users), alongside two existing Protect cameras, and 19 of about 20 updated and came online. The stuck one finished after a PoE cycle from UNMS; a "failed" camera came back on a different port of the 24-port EdgeSwitch, leaving the client its replacement G4 Dome as a spare. He spent about 2.5 hours on site, the last hour training three employees.
• Each viewport and each camera belongs to one Protect instance. A viewport shows views from a single Protect server, so it cannot combine cameras from several systems. A camera records to only one Protect device: as of recording, the UNVR, UNVR Pro, UDM Pro or Cloud Key Gen2 Plus. As far as he knows there is no limit on the number of viewports.
• Smart detections work only on G4 cameras and the doorbell. Answering a viewer with G3 cameras considering an upgrade for that feature, the host says only generation-4 models (G4 Pro, G4 Bullet, G4 Dome) and the doorbell can do smart detection.
• A separate UNVR allows a camera VLAN that UDM Pro's Protect does not. To his knowledge Protect on a UDM Pro cannot be put in its own VLAN; he speculates firewall rules plus manual adoption might work but would lose auto-discovery. A UNVR and a UDM Pro run fully separate Protect instances: no shared drives, no user replication, no combined dashboard. To use the UNVR's capacity or RAID, uninstall Protect from the UDM Pro.

2021-05-20 · open the original ↗

• Almost any hard drive works; RAID choice trades capacity for redundancy. Ubiquiti has tested drives up to 16 TB, and the incompatible-drive list mostly covers drives whose screw holes miss the trays. By default one drive is no RAID, two are RAID 1, three or four are RAID 5; a newer "half of disks" option gives RAID 10 and a hot spare can be set. With four 8 TB drives, RAID 5 gives 24 TB and RAID 10 gives 16 TB.
• Setup forces a cloud account, so enable 2FA and isolate cameras. The wizard offers no local-only user, so the Ubiquiti single sign-on account should have two-factor authentication. He recommends putting cameras and the NVR on their own VLAN with firewall rules, so someone who knocks a camera off a wall and plugs into its cable cannot reach the main LAN.
• UniFi OS auto-updates do not update the Protect app. A separate application auto-update switch is off by default, so the device can show up to date while Protect has an update pending. He advises the official release channel in production, enabling SSH to fix a UNVR stuck "updating", and powering off from the interface rather than unplugging.
• His camera defaults: always record, 2-second trigger, 5-second padding. He sets overlays to time, date and camera name without the UniFi logo, and saves 5 seconds before and after motion. Motion zones skip a busy street, privacy zones black out areas illegal to film, RTSP feeds Home Assistant or other NVRs, and time-based purge meets legal retention limits.
• Roles live in Protect, but users live in UniFi OS. Camera roles (e.g. view only for one building) are made in Protect, then assigned to users made in UniFi OS. A Ubiquiti account gives remote access through ui.com; "local access only" users log in on the LAN. He suggests logging in as each new user and setting up default views for them.

2021-05-19 · open the original ↗

• G4 Dome night fog is IR light reflecting back into the dome. The host found a Ubiquiti article on G4 Dome night-mode issues: do not mount within 24 inches of objects or walls, keep overhangs out of view, and avoid wall mounting too close to the ceiling. His own camera sits within two feet of an eave without trouble.
• Cleaning and properly seating the bubble cover fixed his camera. He cleaned the inside of the dome with a lens cloth, lined up the numbered peg (his read "2") with the notch below the lens, pressed it fully in, twisted to lock, then cleaned the outside. Before, a person 35 feet away was invisible; after, visible though not recognisable. He suspects the poorly seated cover was the main cause.
• Moisture and a damaged rubber seal also cause fog. The same article lists water droplets on the outside of the dome, which may need periodic wiping where rain hits it, and a chipped rubber seal around the lens, which leaks infrared light. For client installs he now cleans and seats the dome as soon as he adjusts the lens.

2021-04-29 · open the original ↗

• Crosstalk sells its PBX systems in three deployment forms. The video is the company's own pitch: on-premises PBX on Crosstalk-supplied servers, hosted PBX for multi-site or home-user organizations with ongoing updates and backups, and a forthcoming Crosstalk Cloud PBX, still in beta, which the host pitches against RingCentral and 8x8 on price. All are built on the open-source Asterisk engine.
• Crosstalk's servers scale from 40 extensions to 500 phones. All ship with the FreePBX distro and a two-year warranty, extendable to five. The company says the 715 and 716 handle up to 40 extensions and about 10 concurrent calls, with built-in FXO/FXS ports, and the fanless 710 handles 100 phones and 30 concurrent calls. The 1U 745 handles 150 extensions and 45 calls with up to eight analog ports, and the 1U 760 handles 500 phones and 100 calls.
• Any two servers can run as primary and warm spare. According to the company, the second server stays synchronized, so it can take over if the primary fails.
• Crosstalk's branded phones come in three tiers. All have a two-year warranty, colour displays and gigabit pass-through, are VPN-capable, and run on either a power adapter or 802.3af PoE. The 230 is for break rooms and warehouses, the 250 has eight programmable keys for standard users, and the 270 has 10 keys and takes up to six Crosstalk 200 sidecars.
• The service covers call-flow design, E911 compliance, porting and cutover. Crosstalk says it handles Kari's Law and RAY BAUM'S Act compliance and project-manages the number porting. Customers get 30 days of post-deployment support, after which ongoing support is available without a maintenance contract.

2021-04-22 · open the original ↗

• The Wi-Fi 5 AP12 is the standout value in Aruba's range. In the host's benchmarks the AP12 ($141.36 on Amazon, 3x3 Wi-Fi 5) averaged 338 Mbps, third overall behind the U6-LR and EnGenius EWS850, and second on price-to-performance after the U6 Lite. He adds that Wi-Fi 6 is not needed outside dense client environments, so the AP12 suits a standard office.
• The 4x4 AP15 trailed both cheaper Aruba access points. It costs $192.50, yet it averaged 278 Mbps and ranked second from bottom in sustained throughput among all APs he has tested. His test clients are 2x2, so he would not expect 4x4 to help without many simultaneous clients, but the 3x3 AP12 still beat it in almost every test.
• The Wi-Fi 6 AP22 seemed held back by its channel-width setting. The AP22 ($159.99, 2x2) averaged 335 Mbps, roughly level with the AP12 and U6 Lite. Version 2.3's new radio controls offer only 20/40 or 20/40/80 MHz auto, and the host never saw it use 80 MHz, so he believes it could do better at a fixed 80. He tested with WPA2 only because WPA3 caused heavy retries on his Ubuntu 20.04 clients, on EnGenius as well.
• Two-factor login in version 2.3 makes Instant On recommendable. The host would not have recommended it without 2FA, though he reasons that a hijacked portal matters less here because Aruba makes no firewall that could open ports. Management is cloud-only with no local controller, and there are no licence or subscription fees. Version 2.3 also adds MAC-based authentication, DHCP reservations, port mirroring, PoE schedules and manually triggered firmware upgrades.
• Its pared-down interface suits MSPs who want cookie-cutter deployments. Instant On makes only access points and switches, and the host paired it with a Netgate SG-1100 pfSense firewall, with VLANs working throughout. The 1930 switch ($349) has 24 gigabit PoE ports with a 195 W budget and four 10G SFP+ ports. He found it loud and suggests swapping in quieter fans if noise matters.

2021-04-14 · open the original ↗

• The beta Starlink dish is geo-locked to its home cell. About three hours away, on the Oregon coast near Charleston (next to a Starlink ground station), it reported being outside its geographic location and would not connect after reboots. Once that happens the app locks you out and cannot even stow the dish; the host had to cut power for about 30 seconds first.
• About 20–30 miles from home it worked, but more slowly. There it delivered 20–35 Mbps down, 6–10 Mbps up and 25–30 ms ping, and one phone speed test showed 40.8/3.73 Mbps, against 80–150 Mbps at home. During a livestream it fell below 10 Mbps down and 2–4 Mbps up. The host suspects the high-voltage lines directly over the dish but says he does not know.
• A battery power station can run the dish and network. The dish drew about 90–150 W, and an EcoFlow EF Delta (received from EcoFlow about a year earlier) charged from 30% to 100% on AC in about an hour. He bypassed the Starlink router, feeding a UniFi USG, a UniFi 60 W 8-port switch, a Cloud Key Gen2, a mesh AP and a VoIP phone.
• Remote VoIP calls and livestreaming held up, with brief dropouts. The test VoIP call was clear, and the livestream of roughly 30–60 minutes had one satellite dropout of 15–20 seconds and one of about 5 seconds. A third outage, about a minute, was his laptop losing power. The host says this was not possible a year earlier.
• The host thinks Starlink makes starting a wireless ISP unwise. At about $500 plus $100 a month, he predicts 200–300 Mbps with sub-30 ms pings in perhaps a year. He thinks established WISPs charging $40–60 a month will be fine for a long while. He expects mobile Starlink for cars, RVs and trucks but sees ocean motion as a tracking problem for boats. Starlink had just become available in Australia.

2021-04-06 · open the original ↗

• Omada costs about two-thirds as much as comparable UniFi gear. The host priced an ER605 router, TL-SG2210MP switch, EAP620 and EAP225-Wall on Amazon against a USG, US-8-150W, U6 Lite and UniFi in-wall AP. The UniFi set came to $795, and the TP-Link set saved $275. TP-Link supplied all the equipment free, and the video's product links are affiliate links.
• The host calls Omada and UniFi even, except on price, looks and security. He rates feature set, performance and support a wash, with TP-Link ahead on price. UniFi wins on aesthetics, since the EAP620 is far bulkier than the U6 Lite, and on security, because UniFi's cloud offers TOTP two-factor login and Omada offers no 2FA. He calls cloud 2FA mandatory if TP-Link wants to compete.
• The EAP620 benchmarked level with a UAP-AC-Pro or nanoHD. It placed fifth overall in the host's benchmark, fifth in iperf, sixth in OpenSpeedTest and fourth in sustained throughput, and fourth on price-to-performance. He calls performance a toss-up all the same, because Crosstalk does not run TP-Link in production and the gap may not be noticeable to users.
• Omada's controller software is mature and almost exactly a UniFi clone. Standouts include scheduled PoE (turning off VoIP phone ports outside business hours, which he had not seen in any controller), AP reboot schedules and bandwidth limits per client or per network. It also offers a DHCP fallback IP, site and controller migration and USB auto-backup. SIP ALG is on by default (he disabled it), and the captive portal needs the controller reachable by clients.
• The controller can be hardware, self-installed or TP-Link's cloud. The PoE-powered OC200 ($83.92) manages up to 100 Omada devices and the OC300 ($159.99) up to 500. Cloud access can be turned off and the TP-Link ID unlinked, which the host suggests for anyone wary of a cloud compromise reaching the network.

2021-03-30 · open the original ↗

• The G4 PTZ is worth its price only for actively staffed business monitoring. At $1,800 MSRP the host thinks it is priced about right for a business already on UniFi Protect, with staff such as a security guard steering it over a parking lot or warehouse; for a home user he calls it not worth it, and a Reolink 5 MP, 4x-zoom PTZ at $229 (a camera Reolink sent him) more realistic.
• Picture quality is the best in Ubiquiti's lineup, night vision included. The camera is 4K at 24 fps, f/1.5, with 22x optical zoom; in his testing he could read a fire hydrant's lettering and recognise himself at night across the street, about 100 feet away. He ranks the fixed G4 Pro a close second.
• PTZ control lags badly except on the Viewport. The Viewport HDMI output responds almost in real time but cannot control the camera; a PC lags, less so streaming at 720p; a phone on LTE lagged 5–10 seconds, so he over-panned repeatedly. Mouse click-to-centre and scroll-wheel zoom worked best, and tracking a moving subject such as a car's licence plate is very hard.
• Autofocus, missing microphone and sheer size are the main faults. At full zoom the focus often locked onto trees or the ground behind a moving person; there is no microphone despite the price; the pan servos are audible through a wall; and the 15 lb camera is so conspicuous he is taking it off his house, though he notes a business may want it seen.
• Most of his suggested fixes are software. He asks Ubiquiti for tap-to-centre PTZ on the phone app, faster zoom-out, a joystick accessory, a two-point patrol ("sentry") mode, and AI tracking that uses Protect's person and vehicle detections to zoom on a subject and return. Only the microphone needs a hardware revision.

2021-03-23 · open the original ↗

• OpenSpeedTest gives a local HTML5 speed test for LAN-only benchmarking. The host uses it in Docker for his access-point benchmarks. On a Synology NAS he runs the official openspeedtest/latest image on the host's network rather than a bridge, so it answers at the NAS's IP on port 8080; anything else already on 8080 needs the IP or port changed.
• Plain HTTP is acceptable for LAN testing. The container serves HTTP only. He says that is fine inside a LAN, since nothing sensitive passes and nothing leaves the network, but a web-facing install should use HTTPS, for example via a version wrapped behind an NGINX container with Let's Encrypt.
• A Raspberry Pi 4 makes a portable test appliance, booted from SSD. He boots from an M.2 SATA SSD rather than a microSD card so storage is not a bottleneck, installs Docker with the get.docker.com script, adds the pi user to the docker group, and adds Portainer on port 9000 before the OpenSpeedTest container. He does not recommend the Argon ONE M.2 case, citing a dead jumper and a promised replacement that never came.
• The Pi tops out around 700 Mbps down but full gigabit up. His desktop hit full gigabit both ways against the NAS, which has four aggregated gigabit NICs, but only about 700 Mbps down from the Pi, consistently across three Pis. He suspects a shared USB 3 bus, not the SSD, and treats that ceiling as the baseline: anything below it points to a problem on the LAN under test.
• He wants the Pi to report its own DHCP address. Because the appliance gets a different address on each client network, he asks viewers for a boot-time script, perhaps a cron job with a 60-second delay, that emails or texts its IP once it has one.

2021-03-11 · open the original ↗

• Password Pusher replaces emailing credentials with expiring one-time links. The host argues that passwords sent by email or ticket sit in clear text with a permanent trail. The open-source project, by a developer in Palermo, Sicily, hosted at pwpush.com, expires a link after a set number of days or views, whichever comes first, and can let the recipient delete it after copying.
• Self-hosting avoids trusting the central pwpush.com database. The GitHub project supports Heroku, Docker with a built-in or external Postgres database, Docker Compose, Kubernetes, Azure, OpenShift, or building from source. Once installed, it serves on port 5000.
• A $5-a-month DigitalOcean droplet is enough to host it. He used the Docker 19.03.12 on Ubuntu 20.04 marketplace image on the lowest plan, because the app is not resource-intensive. After updating packages, a single docker run command installed it in about 60 seconds; cloud hosting means no firewall ports to open at home.
• The default install runs HTTP only; production needs HTTPS. Adding HTTPS involves changing ports on the default web server, which he leaves out of the video. He still judges even the HTTP version far safer than clear-text email, and asks capable developers to contribute easy HTTPS, perhaps via Let's Encrypt, to what he calls essentially a one-person project.

2021-03-09 · open the original ↗

• The U6-LR now tops the host's access-point benchmarks. It is Ubiquiti's second Wi-Fi 6 AP, 4x4 MU-MIMO with OFDMA, at $179 MSRP. It averaged 520 Mbps in his iperf tests against 349 Mbps for the next best, 574.1 Mbps in OpenSpeedTest, more than 100 Mbps ahead of the U6-Lite, and just over 400 Mbps combined, about 50 Mbps ahead of any rival.
• The U6-LR outclasses the U6-Lite and nanoHD on paper. It transmits up to 26 dBm on both bands, with antenna gain of 4 dBi on 2.4 GHz and 5.5 dBi on 5 GHz against the U6-Lite's 2.8 and 3 dBi. It is also the first Ubiquiti AP he knows of to support 160 MHz channels. Ubiquiti claims 300+ concurrent clients, which he would never plan for on one AP.
• Its single gigabit port is the host's main design complaint. With single clients reaching 800–924 Mbps in his tests, he expects the gigabit port to bottleneck an AP serving many such clients. He suspects a 2.5 GbE port was left out on cost, despite Ubiquiti's multi-gigabit switches on the horizon.
• For business deployments, the host now prefers it to the nanoHD. His price-per-megabit figures were $0.29 for the $99 U6-Lite, $0.45 for the U6-LR and $0.60 for the nanoHD. He calls the U6-Lite comparison unfair, since the Lite is a 2x2 home AP. The nanoHD still edged the U6-LR by about 20 Mbps in his sustained-throughput test.
• The host doubts his sustained-throughput test. The four clients totalled only 292 Mbps there, and he suspects disk I/O on the TrueNAS server serving one file to all four. He calls the testing unscientific but run identically for every AP: UniFi Network 6.1.61 on a UDM Pro, defaults except a 160 MHz channel, which gives the U6-LR a bandwidth edge.

2021-02-18 · open the original ↗

• Starlink works with your own router; theirs is optional. The host unplugged the Starlink Wi-Fi router, ran a 100-foot Cat5e cable from the power brick into a UniFi USG and got a DHCP address straight away. He says the same applies to a retail Netgear, a UDM Pro, EdgeRouters or pfSense. He used an on-site Cloud Key Gen 2 rather than a cloud-hosted controller in case the satellite link proved intermittent.
• As a UniFi secondary WAN, Starlink failed over with no dropped pings. He created a new network of type WAN ("WAN2", IPv4 via DHCP, load balancing set to failover only rather than weighted) and assigned it to the USG's WAN2/LAN2 port. With firmware current as of 15 February 2021, he pulled the Xfinity cable and a persistent ping to 1.1.1.1 showed no interruption.
• Starlink runs over CGNAT, which rules out port forwarding for now. The USG's WAN2 showed 100.68.134.85 while the public address appeared as a 143.x address. As far as the host knows, no port forwarding is possible today, perhaps until IPv6 arrives. He would be "very surprised" if VoIP worked well over it but left that test for a later video.
• Speeds were good but latency was uneven. Fast.com showed 97 Mbps. Speedtest.net gave 83.46/28.59 Mbps at a 153 ms ping, then 120.79/14.06 Mbps at 26 ms, and 82.8/15.6 Mbps at 31 ms over a UniFi AC Mesh access point. Pings sat mostly at 20–40 ms with spikes to 117–136 ms. The host attributes the spikes to gaps in satellite coverage (shown on satellitemap.space) and expects them to shrink as more satellites launch.
• Starlink's price is justified for rural users and business backup. At $99 a month, the host argues, it is not meant to compete with $59–69 cable. Its value is for people whose only option is roughly 3 Mbps DSL at $60–70 a month, and as about $1,200 a year of backup that is independent of terrestrial cable. He saw no slowdown in heavy rain, and the power brick drew 85 to almost 150 W.

2021-02-16 · open the original ↗

• The EnGenius EWS850-AP edged out the U6 Lite overall, for far more money. The host's combined benchmark, an average of iperf3, OpenSpeedTest and sustained-throughput results, put the outdoor EWS850-AP (about $330) at 348 Mbps and the $99 Ubiquiti U6 Lite at 336 Mbps. He calls the two "about almost exactly the same." The nanoHD scored 300 Mbps, the EnGenius ECW230 214 Mbps and the UAP-AC-Pro 202 Mbps.
• The priciest unit, the EnGenius ECW230, underperformed despite its specs. The $499 4x4 Wi-Fi 6 access point came fourth in iperf3 and OpenSpeedTest and last in sustained throughput, where the 4x4 Wi-Fi 5 nanoHD swapped into the same mount the same day ran about 2–2.5 times faster. He re-ran the test several times. He notes that Wi-Fi 6 is more about aggregate throughput in dense environments than about speed to any one client.
• Which access point won depended on the test. The EWS850-AP led iperf3 at about 350 Mbps, which the host credits to higher-gain external antennas. The U6 Lite led OpenSpeedTest at about 450 Mbps. The nanoHD led sustained four-client downloads at over 300 Mbps. He calls the method "not entirely scientific": four low-end Wi-Fi 6 clients in fixed spots around his house, pulling from a NAS connected at 10 Gbps.
• On price per megabit, the U6 Lite was the clear value. By the host's calculation it costs $0.29 per Mbps, ahead of the nanoHD ($0.60), the UAP-AC-Pro ($0.73), the EWS850-AP ($0.95) and the ECW230 ($2.33).
• Crosstalk will stop deploying the UAP-AC-Pro. The host has installed hundreds of them, but at $147.99 it finished last overall. The nanoHD, another Wi-Fi 5 access point about $30 dearer, clearly outperformed it, so he is "sending it off into retirement."

2021-02-11 · open the original ↗

• Beta hardware cost $549 and arrived within a week. The host, in Oregon, paid $499 for the dish plus $50 shipping and received it four or five business days after his beta invitation. He says service is mostly limited to the upper latitudes of the US and Canada, with $99 pre-orders open elsewhere. He did not know the monthly fee at recording, having heard both about $50 and about $100.
• Setup took under an hour, including filming. The cabling comes pre-wired with click-lock connectors and is configured through a phone app. The dish took six or seven minutes to find its satellites and re-aimed itself north-northeast. The host believes it draws around 90 W, too much for standard PoE. A $24 pole mount and a flat "volcano" roof mount are sold separately.
• The dish needs clear sky; an obstruction crippled speeds. Starlink calls for about 100 degrees of clear sky. With the host's house in the field of view, the first tests gave about 9 Mbps down and 9 Mbps up. After he moved the dish roughly 50 feet toward the fence, it reached 78.3 Mbps down and 23.4 Mbps up at a 35 ms ping.
• Wired and Wi-Fi speeds were the same at these rates. The router's aux port linked at 1 Gbps. Wired runs ranged from 40/14.4 Mbps at 90 ms to 76.8/16.6 Mbps at 20 ms. Average pings were 29 ms to 1.1.1.1, 70 ms to 4.2.2.2 and 20 ms to 8.8.8.8. An iPad over Wi-Fi got 87.9/15.4 Mbps, and 1080p YouTube felt like regular broadband to him.

2021-01-28 · open the original ↗

• An adjustable rotary stripper removes the jacket more accurately than wire strippers. The host uses a Monoprice tool whose cut depth is set by a screw to suit the cable's thickness. He then snips the nylon string and, on Cat6 plenum, the plastic pair separator as close to the jacket as he can, taking particular care where a cable already run through a wall leaves little slack.
• A dedicated untwist tool is the one purchase he most recommends. Its centre channel untwists each pair and its side channels pull the wires straight, which he found much quicker than doing it by hand and wishes he had bought years ago. Before inserting the wires into a connector, he lines them up and makes one straight cut across the ends.
• Pass-through connectors with a matching crimper make male ends easier. He uses Platinum Tools' Cat6 pass-through connectors, which let the wires feed out the front, and the Platinum Tools crimper trims them as it seats them. The order he uses is white-orange, orange, white-green, blue, white-blue, green, white-brown, brown, and he re-checks it after insertion because the wires often shift.
• Keystone jacks are his preferred female end for their versatility. He uses Cable Creation's CL0081 Cat6 keystones (a 20-pack), which have the B pinout printed on a sticker, and a 110 punch-down tool. Keep the blade's cutting side on the outside: he has severed wires by reversing it. If the trimmings don't come away, punch again. One jack fits 24-port patch panels, 1-, 2- or 4-port wall plates and surface-mount boxes.
• Test every finished cable; the method suits any category. His Pocket Ethernet tester pairs with a phone app to show the wire map and a TDR length reading; his test cable read 3 ft, which he thinks is about the tester's minimum. He says that once the wires are exposed, Cat5e, Cat6, Cat7 and shielded or outdoor cable are terminated the same way.

2021-01-26 · open the original ↗

• A cheap cloud VPS is enough for a small hosted controller. The host installs UniFi controller 6.0.43 (current as of recording) on Ubuntu 20.04 at Vultr, whose $5-a-month tier he says suits a few sites with a couple dozen devices, or testing. He recommends paying $1 a month for auto backups in production. His Vultr referral link gives new users $100 of credit, and the same steps work on DigitalOcean apart from creating the VM.
• Lock SSH to key-only login, no root, on a non-standard port. He changes the root password, which is still needed for sudo, and creates a sudo user with a copied key pair. He sets PermitRootLogin and PasswordAuthentication to no, keeping the root session open until the new login works. The private key is moved off the server, converted to .ppk in PuTTYgen, and SSH moved from 22 to 2222 (he says a high port such as 29999 is better).
• Admin ports should only accept your own WAN IP addresses. With UFW, he allows the SSH port, 9090 (Cockpit) and 8443 (the UniFi GUI) only from authorised WAN IPs. He opens 3478/UDP (STUN), 8080 (inform), and 80 and 443 for Let's Encrypt to everyone, and 8880/8843 only if a guest portal is used. He warns that enabling the firewall with wrong rules locks you out.
• Some housekeeping is optional and some prevents later failures. He sets the time zone and installs NTP, and adds a 4 GB swap file, which he calls optional and debated. He installs haveged, which once sped up UniFi's boot, though he is unsure it still matters. A monthly cron job runs apt autoremove (359 MB freed here) so /boot never fills, which he says causes problems.
• UniFi needs a separate script to use the Let's Encrypt certificate. Certbot with the Apache plugin issues the certificate for the server's FQDN, which must have a DNS A record on a domain you own. Developer Steve Jenkins' import script, edited for the hostname, Debian/Ubuntu and LE mode, loads it into UniFi. A daily cron job re-runs it after each roughly 90-day renewal, and the host expects an A rating from SSL Labs.

2021-01-05 · open the original ↗

• The kit is a complete computer built into a keyboard. It is a Raspberry Pi 4 with its ports moved to the back. The $100 (MSRP) kit includes the keyboard unit, a USB-C power supply, the official mouse, a roughly 250-page beginner's guide, a micro SD reader, a 3 ft micro HDMI cable and a 16 GB card preloaded with Raspbian. Inside are 4 GB of RAM, a 1.8 GHz quad-core 64-bit CPU and wireless. On the back are Ethernet (the host is unsure it is gigabit), two unlabelled micro HDMI ports, two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port and GPIO. It has no power switch.
• It plays HD video well but is no media PC. It is claimed to play 4K video, but the host found 4K playback stutters, so he would not use it as a 4K media PC. Full-screen 1080p YouTube played fine, although it was sluggish to get started compared with a desktop PC. Setup took him through a first-boot partition resize and a wizard covering locale, the default password, screen black bars and Wi-Fi.
• He recommends it as an all-in-one beginner's learning computer. He finds it friendlier than a bare Pi board, which needs a case and other parts gathered separately: this needs only power and a monitor. He suggests it for learning to code and the GPIO, or for email and web browsing.

2020-12-30 · open the original ↗

• Wi-Fi 6 is worth buying new, but rarely worth a forced upgrade. The host says its gains are in capacity in dense environments, not speed to one client: a home with 20–30 devices will see little over Wi-Fi 5, one with 50–100 might. He would go Wi-Fi 6 for a first UniFi purchase, to replace pre-802.11ac gear or ISP-supplied Wi-Fi, or to replace access points three to four years old.
• The rated aggregate throughput is one no client will ever see. The 1.5 Gbps figure is 1.2 Gbps on 5 GHz (2x2 MU-MIMO) plus 300 Mbps on 2.4 GHz (2x2 MIMO) added together, and the U6-Lite's only uplink is a single gigabit Ethernet port, so the host says even a perfect environment will not reach it.
• The U6-Lite reuses the nanoHD's form factor, but it is indoor-only. At $99 MSRP (U6-Lite-US), it takes the nanoHD's mounting bracket and skins, runs on 802.3af or 48 V passive PoE at 12 W maximum, and is rated -30 to 60 °C, but it has no weather seal. Ubiquiti recommends ceiling mounting for dense client loads and wall mounting toward the area you need covered for range.
• In the host's tests the U6-Lite beat the 3x3 UAP-AC-Pro throughout. Testing one access point at a time in the same wall position, with four Intel AX200-based clients, he measured it about 50–100% faster in iperf. Some Windows clients got more than twice the throughput on OpenSpeedTest, and four clients downloading at once together reached 213 Mbps against roughly 163 Mbps on the AC Pro.
• Aggregate throughput collapsed when four clients downloaded at once. A desktop that reached about 650–700 Mbps alone was one of four machines totalling only 213 Mbps when all pulled files simultaneously, with all clients on 802.11ax. The host suspects the overhead of scheduling packets to several clients on a 2x2 access point, and expects the 4x4 U6-LR to do better.

2020-12-11 · open the original ↗

• UniFi Access needs a UDM Pro and an 802.3bt switch. As of December 2020 the UDM Pro is the only platform that runs it. The Access Hub draws up to 40 W because it powers the readers, a G3 Flex camera and a 12 V lock, and only a few UniFi switches supply 802.3bt; the host used an XG 6 PoE. He tested on UDM Pro firmware 1.8.3 with Access 1.2.25.
• The $499 starter kit is the sensible buy, at one per door. It holds the hub ($199 alone), the Pro reader ($299), the Lite reader ($99) and 20 cards ($40), and one hub serves only one door. The host's own estimate is $1,000–1,500 per door with labour and lock hardware, excluding the UDM Pro and switches, which he thinks is in line with other access control systems.
• Doors keep working when the hub loses the controller. The host unplugged the switch from the UDM Pro, and cards and visitor passes still opened the door, so access rules live on the hub. Swipes made while it was offline were stored and uploaded once it reconnected, so a UDM Pro reboot or maintenance window does not lock users out.
• The security weak points are physical and network, not software. The hub must be locked away because flipping one wire between NC and NO opens the lock, and a maglock opens on power loss, so it needs battery or generator backup. A UK security consultant who wrote in warned against maglocks on fire-linked exterior doors and favoured door strikes. The host adds a segregated VLAN with no internet access.
• The host rates it a strong first release for small sites, not enterprise. He would use it for a retail store or small office with a few doors, given the network expertise to segment it. His gripes are software: holidays are all-day or nothing, so no half days; expired visitor cards are not returned to the pool; and editing existing users in the portal failed for him.

2020-12-08 · open the original ↗

• Replacing ISP equipment came first; an extra access point fixed the dead zone. At a family friend's house the host put the Comcast modem in bridge mode behind a UDM, which left one lower-level room without Wi-Fi. A roughly 120 ft outdoor cable run along the existing coax to a spare UAP-AC-Lite took just over three hours and gave 66 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up where there had been nothing.
• Off-the-shelf Wi-Fi 6 desktops were scarce and overpriced for testing. Best Buy had none with Wi-Fi 6. At Costco the host bought a Lenovo Legion T5 for $699, down $200 from $899, with a GTX 1660, a 256 GB SSD and a 1 TB drive. He later regretted it, after finding two spare PCs and ordering Wi-Fi 6 PCIe cards, since he says Wi-Fi 6 USB adapters did not yet exist.
• The host hires out large cabling jobs to licensed electricians. He says he is not certified in low-voltage electrical work and handles only small runs himself. His kit for those includes a Platinum Tools pass-through crimper he rates highly, a rotary stripper for outdoor Cat6, a spare access point, a cheap gigabit switch and a USG. He prefers screw-in cable clamps because nail-in ones work loose over time.
• A nanoHD in a hot attic should stay within its rated temperatures. The host mounted one on a rafter at home and cites a rated range of 14–158 °F, against an attic he expects to reach 120–130 °F in summer. A pre-made 10 ft cable fell about a foot short, so he made one up to a keystone patch panel instead.

2020-12-03 · open the original ↗

• A Raspberry Pi 4 no longer needs beta firmware to boot from USB. The host says much of the online guidance, which calls for a beta bootloader, is out of date. An up-to-date Raspbian install can be copied from the microSD card to a USB 3 drive and set to boot from it.
• Use an SSD or SATA M.2 drive, not a thumb drive or NVMe. A flash stick is little more reliable than the microSD card it replaces. The M.2 enclosures he shows, including the Argon One M.2 case, accept SATA M.2 drives but not NVMe. His first Argon USB 3 jumper was faulty, and an ordinary short USB 3 cable worked in its place.
• Copy the card to a blank drive, then set USB boot order. Delete any existing partitions on the target in GParted, clone the card with SD Card Copier, and choose Advanced Options > Boot Order > USB Boot in raspi-config. Then shut down, remove the card and power on; the Pi waits about 20 seconds for the card before booting from USB.
• Update the Pi before copying, or the boot-order setting fails. The boot-order option returned an error until the host ran apt upgrade, which also moved it from Boot Options to Advanced Options. Anything installed on the card after the copy, such as hdparm, is missing on the drive and has to be installed again.
• External storage was far faster than microSD in a quick hdparm read test. The microSD card read at 44.5 MB/s, a 2 TB Seagate USB SSD at 108 MB/s, and a 128 GB SATA M.2 drive at 347 MB/s. The host calls this a rough before-and-after check, not a rigorous benchmark.

2020-11-17 · open the original ↗

• Pull lightweight polyline first, then pull the cable with it. The host, who calls himself a novice at fishing walls, failed to push two Cat6 cables up an insulated exterior wall with both the magnet puller and the rods; the cables came off the rod and he skinned a knuckle. Polyline tied to the magnet shuttle slid through the insulation easily and then pulled the Cat6 behind it.
• A wall cavity's capped top blocks any pull into the attic. Pushing rods up from his office only hit the timber the host describes as a 4x4 capping the cavity, and roof and HVAC ducting made it impractical to drill down into that exterior wall. He moved the cross-connect about six feet over to an uninsulated interior wall that he could reach from the attic.
• Drill down from the attic, then drop the shuttle in free fall. He bridged the joists with plywood, drilled a 3/4-inch hole through the top timber, and dropped the magnet shuttle on about eight feet of polyline. He found it from the office with the magnet, drilled there, and pulled the Cat6 down to a keystone wall plate.
• The attic now holds a UniFi USW Industrial switch. The host chose it to cope with his attic's winter cold and summer heat, mounted with a 1U 24-port Cable Matters keystone patch panel on a backboard he built. The cable tested good and the switch adopted into UniFi, giving him a point to fan Cat6 out across a house that is wired mostly with coax.
• The magnet puller impressed him most; the camera rarely helped. The tools were sent free by TechToolSupply.com. The host rates the MagnaPull "the star of the show" and thinks the 30-foot push-pull rod kit could have done most of the same work. The Wi-Fi Cable Ferret camera worked but was of little use in his walls; he leaves its verdict open.

2020-11-03 · open the original ↗

• This video advertises Crosstalk's own hosted FreePBX service. The host calls it a "craft" hosting service: Crosstalk says it does not cram systems onto overloaded virtual machines. It also says it will first discuss whether hosting suits a business at all, and tells some customers it does not.
• Cloud hosting suits businesses with phones at several locations. The host says one hosted server lets sites share a phone bill and dial each other by extension. If one site's internet goes down, the others carry on and can take its calls. Each site still keeps its own numbers, 911 service, auto attendant and outbound routes.
• Crosstalk Cloud 50 costs $75 a month; Cloud 100, $120. The phone counts are sizing guides, not caps: Cloud 50 suits up to 50 phones and Cloud 100 suits 50 to 100, and the 51st phone does not stop calls. The host concedes other providers charge less and says the premium pays for support.
• Each server ships hardened, with full admin access and backups. Crosstalk sets up a firewall, a Let's Encrypt certificate for HTTPS and the Sysadmin Pro module, and adds the FreePBX Endpoint Manager on Cloud 100 only. Customers get both the web GUI and SSH. Backups are VM snapshots plus an off-site FTP copy of the configuration only, so voicemails and call recordings are never stored off-site.
• Updates are tested before they reach customers; there is no contract. Crosstalk says it tests new FreePBX module releases on its own servers, under version control, before rolling them out with Linux updates. It claims a 100% uptime guarantee, and rentals are month-to-month. It also advises on SIP trunks, its own Crosstalk SIP among them.

2020-10-28 · open the original ↗

• YubiKeys are faster to use than phone authenticator apps. With Yubico Authenticator open on the desktop, the host double-clicks a code, touches the key and pastes from the clipboard, which he estimates cuts 25–50% off each 2FA entry. The video carries a YubiKey affiliate link; he says he bought his YubiKey 5 NFCs in 2018, before joining the programme, and switched after a Yubico engineer walked him through them.
• Hardware keys beat SMS and app codes for businesses. The host calls SMS 2FA insecure and dependent on connectivity. Authenticator apps mean supporting employees' personal phones and migrating codes to new devices, and multi-device tokens (Authy) multiply copies of the "something you have". A key has no battery and needs no network.
• FIDO standards go beyond what one-time passcodes can do. He describes FIDO U2F (password plus a key touch, the usual website case) and FIDO2, made of CTAP (key to device) and WebAuthn (browser to site), while saying he is not an expert. He demonstrates U2F on Dropbox with an optional key PIN, a long OTP string on Vultr, and a security-key login on GitHub.
• Keep a second key, but TOTP backups must be set up manually. A QR code loads only one key, so he copies each site's secret key into both YubiKeys by hand; U2F sites accept several keys natively, often up to about five. He keeps the spare in a safe, puts a Tile tracker on his keychain, and says to always save backup codes.
• One key holds 32 TOTP and 25 FIDO credentials. The host uses fewer than 20 TOTP slots. For Windows sign-in: Yubico Login handles local accounts, Azure AD supports FIDO2 (he advises a PIN rather than passwordless), on-premises Active Directory uses smart-card mode, and Microsoft accounts with a key prompt for it at login.

2020-10-19 · open the original ↗

• The G4 Bullet upgrades the G3 Bullet's resolution and housing. It is 1440p (2688×1512) against the G3's 1080p, with an aluminium-alloy body, IPX4 and IK04 ratings, an operating range of −20 to 40 °C, 802.3af PoE only (no 24 V passive), and UniFi Protect only. MSRP is $199 against $149. The host says the G3 was the camera Crosstalk sold most, around five times any other, back when it sold UniFi Video systems.
• In daylight the G4 and G3 Bullets look about the same. With all three cameras set to a 6,000 kbps bitrate, the host found little difference in sharpness between the two Bullets. The roughly $450 G4 Pro (4K) gave a much wider field of view and more saturated default colour. He cautions that his footage was re-encoded to 1080p for YouTube.
• The G4 Bullet's onboard IR is far better than the G3's. On his night test the G3 showed ghosting and went dark beyond a few feet, which he says makes the G4 worth the extra $50. The G4 Pro's onboard IR was much clearer than either Bullet's, but at about 25 feet he could not recognise a person on either G4.
• The host recommends adding an external IR illuminator to the G4 Bullet. He sets the camera to switch to night mode without its own IR LEDs and lets a $35–40 illuminator light the scene. That setup, just under $250 in total, matched the G4 Pro's night clarity and brightness in his test. The Pro still wins on resolution and field of view, for example for reading licence plates.

2020-10-13 · open the original ↗

• MoCA adapters turn a house's existing coax into Ethernet. The host's 1990s house has coax to most rooms, so he used a two-pack of MoCA 2.5 adapters ($179, 4.7/5 on Amazon) to reach his garage. Each adapter has two gigabit ports and runs on 5 V micro-USB. MoCA 2.5 is backward-compatible with 2.0 and 1.1. The video carries Amazon affiliate links.
• Simple inline wiring makes the adapter a single point of failure. In a point-to-point setup the cable service runs through the adapters' in/out ports, and the adapters are not passive. If the garage adapter loses power, which is not on a UPS there, the whole house loses internet.
• The host recommends coax splitters so internet bypasses the adapters. A two-way splitter at each end sends one leg to the cable modem and one to the adapter's MoCA port. That keeps the modem path and the MoCA link separate on the same wiring, so a dead adapter cuts only the garage LAN. Splitters cost a couple of dollars and can fan out to more adapters.
• He measured about 95 Mbps across the MoCA link. The figure was the same on a speed test and on iperf: full upload, but about a sixth of the expected download. He offers no explanation and calls it ample for one or two access points and cameras needing 5–10 Mbps. A G4 Bullet streamed 1440p over the link, which reported a 1 Gbps port connection.
• Change the adapter's default password and IP address. The adapters ship at 192.168.144.200 with admin/admin, so you reach the GUI by giving your PC an address in that subnet. He set a strong password and a static IP on his own LAN. Network changes take effect only after a reboot.

2020-10-07 · open the original ↗

• The UniFi Lite switches are light-duty PoE switches. The USW-Lite-8-PoE ($109 MSRP) has eight gigabit ports, four of them 802.3at PoE+ at 30 W each. The USW-Lite-16-PoE ($199) has 16 gigabit ports, eight of them PoE+. Both share a single 60 W power budget, which the host says suits phones and cameras drawing 4–5 W each. Neither offers 24 V passive PoE.
• The host prefers the Lite 8 to the older US-8-60W. Both cost $109 with the same PoE layout; he favours the Lite for its easier snap-on wall mount and newer looks. For heavier PoE loads he points to the US-8-150W ($199), which has PoE on all eight ports, 150 W, two SFP ports and 24 V passive.
• The Lite 16 has no direct UniFi equivalent. It is a desktop, non-rackmount switch. The rackmount alternative is the Gen 2 USW-16-PoE at $299: 1U, a 1.3-inch touchscreen, the same eight PoE ports and two SFP ports.
• Buy the UniFi switch if your network already runs UniFi. The host compares a $79 unmanaged TP-Link 8-port PoE switch, a $135.49 layer-2 managed Cisco 8-port PoE switch and a $137.99 managed Netgear with SFP. The competitors offer PoE on all eight ports but no UniFi central or remote management. He judges both Lite switches reasonably priced.
• Adoption took under 60 seconds, with firmware newer than his controller. The controller found the switch automatically; SSH with ubnt/ubnt is available for manual set-inform. The switch shipped with firmware newer than the host's controller (5.13.32), which offered a downgrade; he was holding off 6.x because of reported issues. The topology map wrongly showed his NAS on the new switch at times.

2020-09-29 · open the original ↗

• The "everything you need" starter kit is not standalone. As of recording, a UDM Pro is the only device running UniFi Access software, so one is required; the hub also needs 802.3bt (PoE++) power because it drives the lock, readers and a camera. The host found this out after preparing a 16-port Switch Lite that cannot supply it.
• Extra doors needing a Pro reader are cheaper as whole kits. The kit is $499 against $637 for the parts separately (hub $199, Access Reader Pro $299, Reader Lite $99, 20 NFC cards $40). That is roughly the hub plus the Pro reader, so a second kit brings the Lite reader and cards free.
• The hub keeps door control away from the door, which the host rates a security plus. Each hub controls one door and wires to mag locks, powered or unpowered strikes, or a siren through side contacts, and it powers each reader over its own Cat5e/Cat6 run. He contrasts integrated units such as an Axis reader with built-in strike, which could be hotwired if pulled off the wall.
• The hub has separate reader ports, and the host cannot explain why. It has ports for the indoor NFC/Bluetooth Reader Lite, the weatherproof Reader Pro and a camera (a G3 Flex in the diagram). He guesses at different power needs or doors scanned on both sides, and assumes Bluetooth means phone-app unlocking.
• The host thinks the Reader Pro reuses Ubiquiti's FrontRow camera design. That is his own speculation from the matching form factor; he does not know whether Ubiquiti sold the product off. This video is an unboxing only, with setup and configuration left for a follow-up.

2020-09-25 · open the original ↗

• NVMe caching matters for application servers, not backup-only use. The host recommends the DS220+ or DS620slim, with no NVMe slots, for plain backup. He recommends the DS420+ (four bays, not expandable) or DS720+ (expands to 7 drives) as starter application servers for Docker, VMs, Plex or Surveillance Station. He rates the DS1520+ (five bays, up to 15 drives with two DX517 expansions) a strong mid-range home NAS.
• A starter DS1520+ build came to $1,384. Synology sent the unit free, and the host gives its price as about $650. He bought three 8 TB Seagate IronWolf drives at $215 each and one Samsung 970 EVO NVMe at $90. Filling all five bays and both NVMe slots adds about $530, for roughly $2,000.
• A single NVMe drive gives a read cache only. The host had not known this before buying his drives. The first drive is read-only cache, and a second adds a write cache; the pair is neither mirrored nor striped. So he advises fitting both slots to fully deck it out, depending on how write-heavy the workload is.
• Four-port 802.3ad bonding works only once the switch side is set. After the NAS bond was created it kept answering pings but reported a failed 802.3ad connection until he set ports 17–20 to aggregate on his Gen 2 UniFi 24-port switch. It then showed 4,000 Mbps, and desktop backups ran at near the PC's 1 Gbps wire speed.
• Pi-hole in bridge mode was more trouble than putting it on the LAN. The bridged container sat on a 172.17 subnet, which needed a gateway and static route in pfSense. It went down for about two hours when the NAS IP changed and the gateway was not updated, so he plans to recreate it on his main LAN.

2020-09-22 · open the original ↗

• The BeaconHD only extends an existing UniFi network. The UAP-BeaconHD-US is a wall-plug 4x4 MU-MIMO mesh unit, not a standalone access point, so it needs an existing UniFi AP or Dream Machine. The host found no European version online, though he hints that something similar sits in Ubiquiti's early-access beta store.
• Adoption took about two minutes on a hosted controller. The unit found the host's hosted UniFi controller by itself and needed only a click to adopt. Next to his Flex HD, it reported a −40 dBm uplink and an estimated 540 Mbps transmit/receive rate.
• It markedly improved his G4 Doorbell's weak Wi-Fi in his own test. The doorbell had been at 60–70% signal to the upstairs Flex HD. With the Beacon about 25 feet away it reached 93%, and a G3 Micro reached 100%. The mesh uplink read 47% (270/324 Mbps) before a firmware upgrade to 4.3.20 and 97% after it.
• The host finds UniFi's per-client Wi-Fi experience figures inconsistent. A client showed 100% while the Beacon's own uplink showed 96%. He suspects the client figure counts only the hop to the Beacon.
• At $129 it undercuts a wired access point. The host compares it with a NanoHD at about $179 and a UAP-AC-Pro at about $139, before the cost of cabling either. He likes it and says he will watch for wireless problems among nearby clients.

2020-09-18 · open the original ↗

• Crosstalk's previous pick, Bria Enterprise, is costly and cloud-dependent. The host says Crosstalk has sold and recommended CounterPath's Bria Enterprise for its easy install and admin provisioning. But it costs $29 per year per mobile device, and every user's SIP credentials must be entered into CounterPath's cloud portal, where a breach could expose tens of thousands of them.
• The host, whose store sells it, rates Clearly Anywhere better. ClearlyIP launched it for Android and iPhone at $9.99 per user per year, a launch price grandfathered for the life of the licence. Built on the PJSIP stack, it installs on any number of a user's devices, which all ring alongside a desk phone.
• Provisioning stays inside FreePBX, with no third-party cloud holding credentials. Users log in with FreePBX User Control Panel credentials and a domain, or scan a QR code from a ClearlyIP UCP widget. The host suggests a softphone-users group in FreePBX group permissions for central administration.
• Its features go beyond calling, with one firewall prerequisite. It supports BLF quick dials and SMS shared and synchronized across a team's phones, plus video calling, multi-channel call recording and scheduled do-not-disturb. It hands calls from LTE to Wi-Fi seamlessly. Push notifications require the FreePBX responsive firewall to let ClearlyIP's push servers authenticate.
• The host sends 911 to the cellular carrier through number rewriting. He says softphone emergency calls fail to convey location under Kari's Law and the RAY BAUM'S Act regime. His main gap is the lack of company-wide BLF templates, which he has heard are coming but without a date.

2020-09-14 · open the original ↗

• Two 90° sectors beat one 120° sector across the port mouth. A 120° sector would only skirt both sides of the port, where sector signal is weakest. So the host splits 180° between two Rocket 5AC Prism Gen 2 radios on AM-5G20-90 sectors, GPS-synced because they share a pole. This is an unpaid overview for a viewer, Demetrius, at Kos port in Greece.
• airLink estimates 300 Mbps per station; the host expects 150–200. He plans 40 MHz channels to NanoBeam 5AC Gen 2 stations on the port's light poles, every 10 m and about 6 m tall, with the AP about 20 m up on the internet building's roof. The roughly 300 m distances over water give clear line of sight. He calls 100–150 Mbps per station ample for boat Wi-Fi.
• Client coverage favours 2.4 GHz, and one stretch stays weak. UAP-AC-M-Pro access points share each station pole because 2.4 GHz penetrates boats better. A stretch along an ancient wall has only hand-reachable lamp posts, so it gets about −60 to −70 at 2.4 GHz and likely no 5 GHz. He buys two five-packs for nine sites, a spare included, for about $20 less than singles.
• The head-end choices hinge on power types and future cameras. The host chose the Netgate SG-3100 ($399, 2.4 Gbps firewall) and the US-8-150W because it powers both 24 V passive and 802.3af. The Cloud Key Gen2 Plus costs about $18 more than the non-Plus and could add Protect cameras on the sector pole. Each station gets a roughly $50 Altelix NEMA enclosure with two piggybacked PoE injectors.
• The whole design prices at $4,956. That includes an RF Armor UCM-4T four-way sector mount and an optional $100 RF Armor USK9025X shield. The shield cuts interference between the side-by-side sectors and seals the Prism against port weather, and a $10 UGAH-234 holds the GPS antenna.

2020-09-03 · open the original ↗

• The UniFi Design Center plans a whole UniFi deployment on a floor plan. At design.ui.com, the host scaled a floor plan of the Dunder Mifflin office from the TV show by setting a doorway to 3 feet. He drew outer and inner walls because they drive the Wi-Fi and camera coverage estimates.
• The host doubles the switching for redundancy rather than max one switch. He fits a UDM Pro for an office under 50 connections with surveillance, plus two USW 48 PoE switches, later upgraded to two Pro 48 PoE at $1,099 each. The design needs exactly 48 ports, and auto mode would give one switch. Split half and half, either switch can carry the office while a failed one is replaced.
• The host deploys fewer drops than the tool's two-per-person assumption. He mostly uses four-port workspaces per desk cluster, plus two each in two offices and four in the conference room and break room. Running spare cable during the install is cheaper than adding it later.
• Two NanoHDs cover the office, and dome cameras cover only entrances. 5 GHz coverage shrinks but still reaches where needed. Five G3 Dome cameras watch every door and stairway entrance rather than employees, though he notes flat-mounted domes may need bullet or G3 Micro cameras for angled views.
• The tool's topology and bill of materials need correcting by hand. Cables can only home-run to the rack, not daisy-chain from a workspace, and the bill of materials adds 96 patch cables. It estimates three 1,000-foot boxes of cable, where the host expects about four once runs go through walls and ladder rack.

2020-08-28 · open the original ↗

• The G4 Doorbell is Ubiquiti's first smart-home device since mFi. The UVC G4 Doorbell for UniFi Protect lists at $199 MSRP and was sold out at recording; it records 2 megapixels at 30 frames per second, has a polycarbonate enclosure, entrance lighting and a display, and is rated IPX4: spray from any direction is fine, sustained water pouring over it is not.
• Installation took the host about 30 minutes, not the advertised 15. He counts five or six minutes finding the breaker and the time spent filming, and puts a typical install at 15–25 minutes with only a Phillips screwdriver; the hardest part was pushing stiff old doorbell wires back into the wall, and the unit works out which wire is which itself.
• The quick-start guide includes a chime-box step Ubiquiti's video skips. The kit ships a wiring block for the interior chime box; the host first tried without it, then fitted it anyway. The app warns that enabling the chime-box setting without a chime box "can cause serious damage to the device", and the setting also affects power usage.
• The doorbell's interactive features work only through the mobile app. The Protect app found it on the same Wi-Fi as his UNVR, flagging a weak signal. A ring pushed to his phone, and a custom message can show on the display for one minute; two-way talk worked from the app but not from the web live view, and the speaker was hard to hear over traffic and wind.
• The host reserves a verdict but calls the price reasonable. He guesses $199 is in line with Ring-type doorbells without having checked. In Protect it supports RTSP and logged a UPS driver's ring as an event, and he says a separately sold $29 doorbell power supply is coming, letting it run without the doorbell wiring.

2020-08-04 · open the original ↗

• Moving house and travel caused the channel's longest gap in five years. The host went 24 days without a video while moving over four days, flying to Wisconsin for ClearlyIP FreePBX training and taking a vacation; he saw the Detroit airport at roughly 10% of its usual crowd and planes 50–75% full, and promises a return to two videos a week once settled.
• A rental cabin's broken internet cost him six or seven vacation hours. The Lake Tahoe cabin had AT&T DSL of about 6 by 2 Mbps, which died; AT&T denied the outage the rental company claimed. The owners were mid-switch to Suddenlink, whose modem needed its MAC address authorized; he spent about four hours on hold, and the company acted only when he threatened to move cabins.
• The host expects no UniFi Video 4, by his own speculation. He reads Ubiquiti's end-of-life notice as promising security updates, bug fixes and new G3 camera support for UniFi Video 3 installs, with no new features. Tying Protect to its own hardware (Cloud Key Gen2 Plus, UDM Pro, UNVR) is easier for Ubiquiti to QA, he argues; users lose run-anywhere installs, though he likes Protect.
• He is tearing down the old site's gear to reuse it. The kit coming off includes a solar-powered mesh access point, a NanoStation AC point-to-point link, a G3 camera, a UAP-AC-LR and a UniFi Switch Industrial, which he plans to put in his new house's hot attic to distribute Cat 6.

2020-07-30 · open the original ↗

• Viewer votes decide the Worst Server Room 2020 winner. Every comment and every like on a comment counts as a vote, and the finalist with the most total votes wins; voting closes August 14, 2020 at 12 p.m. Pacific (the captions also say "midnight"), with the winner announced in the next video.
• The prizes are vendor-sponsored, by Ubiquiti and CanaKit. Grand prize, valued at $1,564: a UniFi Dream Machine Pro, USW-16-PoE switch, UAP nanoHD and UAP FlexHD access points, and G4 Pro and G3 Flex cameras. First runner-up ($577): a Dream Machine, USW Flex switch and UAP FlexHD. Second runner-up: a CanaKit Raspberry Pi 4 8GB Starter Max kit.
• The five finalists share the same faults: unmanaged cable and floor-level power. Martin P's rack has at least seven unterminated cables and a coupler; Carlos N's has wire management buried under cable so thick the switches and server backs are unreachable; Greg S's Siemens HiPath 4000 room trails cable across the floor to servers on the ground. Power strips and UPSes lie loose on the floor in several.
• The host judged Greg S's entry not staged. He says staging that much mess would take too much effort and the room looks like it was filmed as found.
• Jack M's "load-bearing ethernet" entry is a real cleanup job. His firm was hired to clean up a small business's basement server room. As he narrates it, a single cable is holding a leaning switch up on a cardboard box, a Linksys router appears to be in use, two UPSes have dead batteries, the rack is made of wood, and a switch throwing errors feeds copper-clad aluminium cable from a PoE switch and injector.

2020-07-06 · open the original ↗

• The 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 is for power users and specific workloads. The host says light projects such as Pi-hole need no more than 2GB, so most builds can save money on the 2GB or 4GB board; the 8GB version joins a line launched a year earlier in 1, 2 and 4GB, with the 1GB since discontinued.
• The host rates CanaKit's two 8GB kits as complete starter bundles. The Starter Pro kit has a power adapter with switch, HDMI cable, fan, heatsinks, a 32GB microSD with NOOBS, a card reader and a black case. The Starter Max adds a second HDMI cable, a white case and a 64GB card. His kit links are Amazon affiliate links that pay the channel.
• Extra RAM mainly helps by caching files and enabling RAM-based operation. Citing MagPi issue 94, the host lists a larger file cache, a RAM disk (e.g. 4GB, lost on reboot), and the OverlayFS option in raspi-config, which makes the OS read-only with changes held in memory, suited to kiosks that keep their data in a cloud database.
• Memory sharply cut a photo-compression batch job's run time. In MagPi's benchmark it took over 13 hours on a 2GB Pi 4, about 2.5 hours on 4GB, and under 1.5 hours on 8GB; the host calls this an unrealistic use but proof of RAM's advantage over storage.
• 8GB makes virtual machines and dual-user workstations conceivable. The host suggests two Pi-hole VMs at 2GB each, leaving 4GB for the OS, but has not tried it. He found no guide anywhere for MagPi's dual-head, two-user idea beyond the article itself. As a dual-monitor desktop, his 4GB Pi stuttered on full-screen 720p YouTube.

2020-06-30 · open the original ↗

• The five-office overhaul should pay for itself within a year. The host's real estate client gets new networks at all five offices, new phones at two, and a move to the Crosstalk PBX, the firm's own hosted phone system; he puts the payback at about 11 months because the monthly internet and phone bill is roughly halved.
• A hosted PBX without static IPs risks locking whole offices out. The PBX authorizes known WAN IPs, and its responsive firewall locks out anything that fails to authenticate within a few packets; none of the five offices has a static IP, so the host suspects a changed WAN IP could knock all the phones off, and highly recommends static addresses.
• Old in-building cable, not the new gear, caused the fifth office's trouble. A Yealink T20P got PoE but no DHCP address while a laptop on the same jack worked; re-terminating both ends fixed it. The office got an EdgeRouter X, a UAP-AC-Pro and a US-8-150W, and went from DSL to 200/10 Mbps cable.
• Locking plastic dust plugs beat silicone ones for unused switch ports. Prompted by the grease-coated restaurant switches, the host tried two Amazon sets, both about $12–13 per 100; the silicone caps pull out by hand, while the plastic ones click in and need needle-nose pliers to remove, adding a little security.
• A UniFi Video camera firmware push left seven cameras offline. Of about 20 cameras, mostly G2 bullets plus a G3 dome failed to return; power-cycling their labelled EdgeSwitch ports recovered five, one G3 dome recovered only when plugged straight into the switch, and one G2 bullet needed a manual firmware update over SSH (fwupdate -m).

2020-06-17 · open the original ↗

• Ubiquiti puts redundant power in one shared box instead of every device. The USP-RPS lists at $399 and backs up to six devices through a proprietary RPS port, which at recording only the UDM Pro and Gen 2 Pro switches have. The host likes that buyers who don't want redundancy aren't charged for a second supply in each device.
• The RPS cable must be forced in until its printed line disappears. Each USP-RPS includes one cable, and extra cables (USP-Cable) cost $29 each. The host found the cable feels seated while the line is still visible, and it only connects once crammed fully home, as the documentation requires.
• Failover worked in the host's test, with alerts. When he pulled AC power from a USW-Pro-24-PoE, the RPS supplied 10 of 30 W on its 12 V rail, logged an event, sent an email alert and drew 0.905 A against 0.005 A idle. It handed back to AC about 4 seconds after power returned. Adoption and firmware update went cleanly in UniFi, version 5.12.72, on a Cloud Key Gen2 Plus.
• True redundancy needs two circuits and two UPSes. The host's suggested design puts the RPS on one UPS and circuit and the switches on another UPS and circuit. That covers both a failed device power supply and a long outage, and power from two separate grids is better still.
• The host calls it cost-effective for small and mid-size businesses. He prices the RPS plus five extra cables at $544, and with six 48-port Pro switches $7,138 MSRP. His non-comprehensive research put six Aruba or Juniper 24-port switches with hot-swap redundant supplies above $15,000, at $2,500 and up each before licensing. He notes Cisco has a similar but pricier RPS.

2020-06-12 · open the original ↗

• Kitchen grease made a restaurant's switch ports unreliable. The network cabinet sits directly above the kitchen, and after five years the EdgeSwitch 24 PoE's long-exposed, unused ports gave power but no network and did not click home, while long-occupied ports worked; the host recommended replacing the switch and asked viewers for a cleaning method.
• The intermittent home-run fault was fixed, never explained. The Raspberry Pi set to start a packet capture on lost ping saw no outage in six weeks, and the drops returned after it was removed. A temporary cable taped across the floor to another home run 15 feet away stopped them; the host's line is "there's never an answer, there's only a fix".
• Reusing end-of-life Yealink T20Ps saves money but costs labour. The phones, end of life since 2014, redirect only by TFTP on their old firmware. At one office every phone had a static IP and no known password, so the host factory-defaulted each, updated firmware and auto-provisioned it to the Crosstalk PBX, the firm's own phone system, which took an extra 1.5 hours.
• A phone system succeeds on details and training. The host says follow-me, voicemail and call routing must be set correctly, then documented and taught to an office administrator who trains the staff, because the learning curve otherwise makes people hate the system. One office's speakerphone complaint turned out to be phones that had missed a firmware update boosting gain.
• Moving UniFi Video to Ubuntu 16.04 worked but requires a reinstall. The client's Shuttle PC ran version 3.9.12, the highest the host says Ubuntu 14.04 supports; upgrading the OS uninstalls UniFi Video, so take a backup first, then reinstall 3.10.2 and restore. He flags his version numbers as possibly wrong and calls it perhaps the last release.

2020-06-02 · open the original ↗

• Temporary indoor-rated runs were replaced with hidden outdoor-rated Cat6. The host ran about 60 feet of outdoor Cat6 under his deck and into the garage, to a USW-Industrial switch mounted below his Tesla wall charger. The switch's 802.3bt PoE powers a G4 Pro camera watching the driveway. He prefers screw-in grip clips to nail-in ones.
• Use a converter to run a 24 V passive device from an 802.3af switch. The USW-Industrial does not supply 24 V passive, so the garage UAP-AC-LR got no power. An INS-3AF-I-G (802.3af in, 24 V passive out) brought it up as a wired access point instead of a repeater, which the host prefers to buying an overkill 802.3af access point.
• Terminate permanent runs into a female jack, not the device. The host ends custom runs in keystone blocks and an Ethernet surge protector, mainly so the device on the far side can be swapped without rerunning cable. Commenters prompted him to add a drip loop to the outside surge protector.
• The NanoStation AC suits a mixed-PoE point-to-point link. It accepts both 802.3af and 24 V passive, so it works on the industrial switch at one end and the 24 V passive-only Ubiquiti solar point at the other. The link runs about 50 feet, partly through a greenhouse, and showed full bars.
• Old coax runs make good pull strings for new Cat6. The host pulled Cat6 to his loft along an unused coax run and installed an In-Wall HD there, overkill for Wi-Fi but useful for its four wired ports, one with PoE out. The move to a new house then cancelled his remaining plans, and he took down the test pole.

2020-05-26 · open the original ↗

• UniFi AR needs touchscreen gear, iOS and current software. It works only with the new generation of switches and the UDM Pro, the devices with the 1.3-inch touchscreen, and as of recording only on iPhone or iPad. The controller must be 5.12.66 or later; the host says the current 5.12.72 release and the switch firmware that comes with it cover every requirement, whatever hosts the controller.
• Scanning a switch shows what is plugged into each port. In the UniFi app, More then AR turns every switch screen into a QR code; after an orientation scan of the rack, pointing the phone at a switch labels each port with the connected device or cross-connect, with device icons where UniFi recognises them. Arrows or moving the phone switch between switches.
• The AR rack is a saved snapshot and must be rebuilt. This is why AR had failed on his Gen 2 Pro switch in an earlier review: the switch was added after the rack was scanned. Deleting the AR rack under the settings gear and rescanning each switch top to bottom fixed it.
• The host thinks it a gimmick for small racks, valuable for big ones. With his two 24-port switches it is a neat feature he does not need, but he expected it to save real time finding a drop or cross-connect in racks of 10 to 20 switches, or several racks.
• The feature is unfinished, in the host's view. He says the overlay stays horizontal on vertically mounted switches. He would like tapping a port to show its throughput, historical traffic, and the connected device's MAC and IP address.

2020-05-22 · open the original ↗

• One small, identical design suits all five real-estate offices. The client has five offices on the Oregon coast, with three or four agents each, who are rarely in. Each gets an EdgeRouter X, doing quality of service for the phone trunk, plus a UAP-AC-Pro with a secure SSID and a guest SSID. Two offices also get a US-8-150W PoE switch; no site-to-site VPN was needed.
• The suspected double NAT at Depoe Bay turned out not to exist. The host expected the Wave Broadband connection behind a TP-Link router/Wi-Fi unit to be double-NATed, which would have meant calling the ISP. The modem was in bridge mode, so the EdgeRouter X pulled a public IP straight onto its WAN, which he says is ideal for VoIP. He removed an old Samsung phone system and a failing, noisy AdTran PoE switch in about four hours on site.
• He throttled and scheduled the guest network against outside users. Because the coast sees many travellers and transients, the open guest SSID is limited to 5 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up and broadcasts only from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The only disruption to staff was the subnet change, which meant reconnecting to the office printer.
• Call forwarding bridges the gap until numbers are ported. Phones move to Crosstalk's own SIP trunking and Crosstalk PBX. Calls are forwarded from the old provider so the new system is in use before the port completes. The three remaining offices are on DSL, where a previous vendor sold VoIP phones without checking the network. The host says five IP phones cannot run over DSL, so those sites move to Charter Spectrum, with modems in bridge mode.
• The host rates ClearlyIP phones highly for real-estate offices. The phones are ClearlyIP units branded for Crosstalk, which supplies them. A Follow Me button lets each agent toggle and set how calls ring to the desk and to their mobile, which he says suits staff who turn over often and change mobile numbers.

2020-05-20 · open the original ↗

• The ViewPort puts UniFi Protect live views on any HDMI screen. The UFP-ViewPort lists at $199 MSRP and outputs up to 4K at 30 fps. It has a PoE-in port and a second Ethernet port the host takes for pass-through rather than PoE out, and comes with a wall bracket and an HDMI cable. A US-8-60W, which is 802.3af, powered it without trouble, and it ran warm, not hot, at 106°F.
• Adopt it from the Protect web interface, not the mobile app. Its welcome screen says either works, but the host could not find it in the latest Protect app. The desktop interface found it at once under Add Devices, and it updated itself in about five minutes. Even after adoption it never showed in the app.
• Its only setting is which predefined live view it shows. You build views in Protect and assign one to the ViewPort. The host found a bug: a view slot set to rotate between cameras every five seconds, or on motion, cycles in Protect but stays on one camera on the ViewPort.
• Ease of setup makes it one of his favourite Ubiquiti products. It runs in about ten minutes with no learning curve. His Raspberry Pi surveillance monitor was cheap but took hours of fiddling, so for a customer deployment he would rather pay $200 for the ViewPort.
• The host most wants touchscreen control. As of recording the display is static. He would like tapping a camera on a touchscreen monitor to make it full screen and tapping again to restore the view, though he concedes it would probably need a list of tested touchscreens.

2020-05-14 · open the original ↗

• Both Pro switches share the same PoE++ ports and differ in scale. The USW-Pro-24-PoE has eight 802.3bt PoE++ ports (17–24), sixteen 802.3at PoE+ ports, two 10G SFP+ ports, a 400 W PoE budget and 88 Gbps switching capacity. The USW-Pro-48-PoE has the same eight PoE++ ports, 40 PoE+ ports, four SFP+ ports and 176 Gbps. Both take a UniFi RPS input; neither offers 24 V passive PoE.
• Layer 3 routing is promised but not yet delivered. As of recording both are layer 2. The datasheet promises inter-VLAN routing, static routing and DHCP server functionality in future firmware. The host explains that switch-level inter-VLAN routing keeps traffic between VLANs on the same switch from travelling to the firewall and back.
• The Pro has fans and is audibly louder than the non-Pro. Ubiquiti's datasheet claims "near-silent" cooling: about 0.9 dB at 25% fan, 7.3 dB at 50% and 18.8 dB at 100% (22.5 dB on the 48-port). The host measured about 49 dBA behind the switch at fan level 40 against 42.6 dBA ambient, and 64–65 dBA at 100%. He will keep the fanless USW-24 in his rack instead.
• UniFi AR would not work on the Pro switch at first. The Pro showed no QR code although it ran the same firmware as his working Gen 2 non-Pro switch, and he had not found the cause at recording. The front touchscreen shows port, throughput, PoE wattage and temperature statistics, and can also set the fan speed manually.
• The host thinks the pricing fair once layer 3 arrives. The 24-port lists at $699 USD and the 48-port at $1,099 USD MSRP. He judges that about right for a layer 3 switch with these features, so the price is justified by firmware not yet shipped.

2020-05-13 · open the original ↗

• The panic button places a call the phone does not display. The USB button plugs into a ClearlyIP phone and dials a preset extension, ring group, page group or outside number. Whoever answers hears the room through the speakerphone while the phone shows no active call. The host sees it for banks, schools and classrooms, and finds it disheartening that US active-shooter incidents drive the demand.
• The hardware was an unpriced prototype at recording. Expected MSRP is around $49 but not final, with availability expected within a couple of weeks. It has a six-foot cord for hiding under a desk or on a wall. Production units get a black cable and a 90-degree USB plug, since the phone's USB port sits on top. Crosstalk sells ClearlyIP products, and the host invites enquiries.
• The same silent call works from an ordinary phone key. The dongle is only needed to hide the button away from the phone.
• FreePBX's ClearlyIP devices module sets mode, key type and target. Emergency mode drops any call in progress to make the panic call, while normal mode acts as a line key. Silent call hides the call; speed dial shows it, which suits a lobby help button. The host points the button at ring group 550 and prefixes its caller ID with "PANIC" so receivers know it is an emergency.
• A ClearlyIP feature code allows silent listening on any phone. Dialling *99 plus an extension, for example by a security guard, opens that phone's microphone with no indication on the handset. The host calls it a dangerous feature and notes that access to the code can be restricted.

2020-05-08 · open the original ↗

• A Flex switch on a camera's drop avoided a new cable run. For a restaurant needing another access point, the host estimated a new drop at two to four hundred dollars. Instead he put a USW-Flex on the cable already feeding a UniFi G3 camera and fanned it out to the camera and a black-skinned nanoHD.
• The old UVC-G3 cannot run on 802.3af PoE. It accepts 24 V passive only, unlike the G3-AF, so the install stayed temporary until he could swap the camera head. The owner was pleased enough with the coverage to order a second access point. That one serves a back building cut off by a concrete wall about a foot thick.
• A NanoStation and airCube rebroadcast a weak outdoor signal indoors. At rental cottages served for five years by a 2.4 GHz-only UAP Outdoor+, a homeschooling tenant could not hold a Zoom call. An airCube ISP (about $29) passes 24 V passive PoE to a NanoStation loco M2 (about $45). The NanoStation joins the guest SSID and the airCube creates Wi-Fi inside. Testing farther away than the final spot gave about 5.7–6 Mbps wired and 8 Mbps on a phone.
• The host chose low-end gear because the outdoor AP limits the link. He says newer equipment could not pair with the 2.4 GHz-only Outdoor+, and he did not want to replace it. He supplied the equipment and instructions at his own expense for a former client, with no labour charge.

2020-04-29 · open the original ↗

• The XG 6POE suits two roles: high-power PoE distribution or core switch. At $599 MSRP, sold only in the Ubiquiti store at recording, the host sees it powering demanding devices such as G4 cameras and XG access points, or taking a fiber uplink from a Dream Machine or other firewall and fanning out 10-gigabit links to other switches.
• All four RJ45 ports are multi-gig with PoE++. Each runs at 1, 2.5, 5 or 10 Gbps (the 2.5 and 5 Gbps rates are 802.3bz) and supplies 802.3bt power of up to 60 W per port; power comes from an included 210 W brick or a DC terminal block, and the two SFP+ ports auto-sense 1 or 10 Gbps.
• Its layer 3 features exist only on the datasheet so far. The host says the layer 3 capabilities are undefined and unavailable at recording, promised for a future firmware update as with the Pro line. It is also indoor-only (−5 to 45 °C, 23–113 °F), not attic-grade, has a fan, and adds a USB-C console port beside the RJ45 one.
• Adoption over fiber dropped the switch after its firmware upgrade. It disconnected from UniFi until the host unplugged the fiber and connected RJ45; after that the fiber worked normally. He calls it possibly a one-off anomaly or his own ordering mistake.
• The host's test load drew only 28.2 W in total. A downstream USW-Flex powering a G4 Pro and a nanoHD drew 13.6 W and ran at about 116–117 °F, against 84–102 °F on the XG itself. An EnGenius ECW230 Wi-Fi 6 AP negotiated 2.5 Gbps at 8.1 W (a white link LED marks 2.5/5/10 Gbps, green marks 1 Gbps), and a UniFi LTE on 802.3bt used 5.3 W while powering a G3 Bullet through its PoE output.

2020-04-22 · open the original ↗

• Instant On trades configurability for simplicity, enough for most businesses. The host, reviewing units Aruba sent him, was pleasantly surprised and judges them right for easily 90% of customers. He says they fall short for the remaining 10% that needs band steering or separate, custom download and upload throttling. He reviews them because they carry no licence or subscription fees.
• The lineup is five 802.11ac Wave 2 access points. The AP12 (3x3, 1,600 Mbps max data rate, 75 recommended clients) was $133.49 on Amazon and the AP15 (4x4, about 2,033 Mbps, 100 clients) about $160. The rest are a 2x2 indoor, a 2x2 outdoor and a 2x2 desk/wall unit; the host would like a higher-capacity 4x4 outdoor model.
• The APs are cloud-managed only, with no onboard GUI. Setup runs through the Instant On web portal or phone app, and the AP15 was found and added immediately. The portal supports multiple sites for MSPs, scheduled firmware updates (his run Sundays at 3 a.m.), VLAN tagging or a routed NAT network with its own DHCP, SSID schedules, basic DPI and a customizable captive portal.
• Bandwidth limits are fixed, symmetric, per-client tiers. The choices are 1, 5, 10 or 25 Mbps or unlimited, and the same limit applies to download and upload. In his test a 25 Mbps guest network gave exactly 25 Mbps down and 19 Mbps up (his upload tops out near 20 Mbps). The captive portal appeared on his iPhone but not on his computer.
• The AP12 delivered his full internet speed on 5 GHz. He measured 540 Mbps on fast.com, 448/17 Mbps on speedtest.net and 429.9/19.1 Mbps on Ubiquiti's test from a phone, and it had been rock-solid for two days. Its metal back reached about 114 °F at idle; the AP15's wall mount stands roughly two inches off the wall, against about ¾ inch for the AP12.

2020-04-15 · open the original ↗

• The USW-Flex-Mini is a $29 managed switch with trade-offs. It has five gigabit ports, is about the size of a deck of cards, and at recording was sold only in the Ubiquiti store and was consistently out of stock. It is powered by 802.3af/at PoE or USB-C (the host prefers PoE), and its other ports offer no PoE pass-through.
• Hosted-controller adoption relies on DHCP option 43, because there is no SSH. Adopting to a local Cloud Key Gen2 Plus on the same LAN was a simple click. For his hosted controller the host had to put the switch on a separate network and point DHCP option 43 at the controller, which he calls hit and miss. SSH refuses connections, so a manual set-inform is impossible.
• Controller version 5.12.35 adopts it, contradicting a claimed 5.12.60 minimum. The host adopted it to controllers on UniFi 5.12.66 and 5.12.35, and both updated it to the same firmware. He does not know the true minimum version.
• Custom VLAN port profiles do not work on the Flex Mini. Ports take only the All or Disabled profiles or a single untagged network, so a profile carrying the native LAN plus only the IoT VLAN tagged is unavailable. In testing, a Raspberry Pi on an All port took addresses on both the native LAN and VLAN 107. That suits putting a TV's devices on an isolated IoT network.

2020-03-27 · open the original ↗

• Share internet through a separate guest VLAN, not your LAN. The host's demo uses an EdgeRouter X (about $59 new) with the LAN on 192.168.100.1/24 and guest VLAN 101 on 192.168.101.1/24, each with its own DHCP range and DNS listening on both interfaces. He adds no extra firewall rules, saying the same approach works on a USG or pfSense.
• A wireless bridge is optional. It only adds distance. An outdoor access point on a long cable with a "free Wi-Fi" sign is enough. For the far end the host recommends the UAP-AC-M, cheap and pole-mounted, over the wall-mounted UAP-AC Pro he demoed with. His bridge pairs a NanoBeam M5 (NBE-M5-16, about $65 on eBay) as access point with an older NanoStation Loco M5 as station.
• With no PoE switch at the remote end, chain power instead. The full-size NanoStation M5's secondary port passes 24V passive PoE to a UAP-AC-LR or UAP-AC-M, so one plug runs both. Otherwise daisy-chain two PoE injectors' LAN ports, as the host did with a passive injector and an 802.3af one.
• Bridge setup points: default IP, NTP, mode, and channel. Factory-reset NanoBeams and NanoStations come up on 192.168.1.20 and need static addresses in the real LAN. NTP must be enabled to use UNMS, one side is set to access point and the other to station with matching WPA AES, and a congested 5 GHz band may need a manual channel. The host's test bridge reached 300×300 with airMAX quality 96% and capacity 91%, on firmware XW v6.2.0.
• UniFi guest policies isolate guests; a user group throttles them. The open SSID is tagged to VLAN 101 with guest policies on, and the guest group is capped at 5 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. That cap is per user, not total. The host skips UniFi's captive portal, which he finds unreliable, and suggests a periodically changed password instead. In testing, the secure SSID gave about 90 Mbps on fast.com and the guest SSID almost exactly 5 Mbps.

2020-03-23 · open the original ↗

• Put the emergency announcement before time conditions so every caller hears it. On a typical inbound flow (time conditions, IVR greeting, ring group, voicemail), the host inserts the message at the very start so it plays at any time of day. He suggests it for closures, changed hours, longer hold times, or instructions such as a restaurant switching to takeout only.
• It takes three FreePBX steps: recording, announcement, then inbound route. Record the message under Admin > System Recordings, by uploading a WAV or MP3, in the browser, or by having FreePBX ring your extension. Then create an Applications > Announcements entry that plays it and goes on to the business-hours time condition. Finally, point the inbound route's destination at that announcement instead of the time condition.
• The IVR's stock "invalid response" prompt can be turned off. In the host's test call, the default voice played a no-valid-response message after the IVR timed out. He says he normally disables it and sends a timeout straight to the ring group.

2020-03-18 · open the original ↗

• EnGenius sells two separate platforms, and they don't integrate. EnGenius supplied the gear; the host says his opinions are his own and that EnGenius had not impressed him four to five years earlier. The on-premises line (SkyKey controller, EAP1250) and the EnGenius Cloud line (ECW230, ECS1008P) are managed separately. Devices behind a SkyKey never appear on the cloud dashboard; you have to remote into each SkyKey. He advises MSPs to standardize on one line.
• Parts of the range are cheap; the Wi-Fi 6 access point is not. The SkyKey is $98.99 on Amazon against $179 for UniFi's Cloud Key Gen2, managing up to 100 devices per site. The EAP1250 (4×4 MU-MIMO, 802.11ac Wave 2) is $73.50, which the host puts at about half Ubiquiti's closest equivalent. The ECW230 (802.11ax 4×4, 2.5 GbE port) has an MSRP of $550, confirmed by the EnGenius rep, against what he recalls as about $399 for the AmpliFi Alien.
• The SkyKey interface looks dated but does everything needed. The host found up to eight SSIDs per access point group, layer-2 isolation with a MAC whitelist (so a shared printer stays reachable), band steering, per-user or per-SSID traffic shaping, RADIUS, mesh and floor-plan views. His verdict is that it "will get the job done" for low-cost deployments.
• The cloud interface is nicer but covers Wi-Fi only. The host prefers it, citing QR-code device claiming that lets an MSP preassign gear before shipping, a "clone from" button, and rich captive-portal options. Against that: there are no EnGenius firewalls, no wired-client statistics, layer-2 isolation has no MAC whitelist, and it needs internet access to administer. On the ECS1008P, VLAN 10 was not tagged on any port until he set it by hand.
• The ECW230 ran slower than the AmpliFi Alien in the host's tests. In iperf at about 6 feet, one stream gave about 340–350 Mbps (310 Mbps reversed) and six streams 434–450 Mbps. He notes a single-client test understates Wi-Fi 6. With a phone speed test running at the same time (144/22 Mbps on a 400/20 Spectrum line), the desktop briefly dropped to 76–197 Mbps.

2020-03-10 · open the original ↗

• Use 2.4 GHz point-to-multipoint across the grounds, given the tree cover. Bob Burkett, chief of the Summer Hill Volunteer Fire Department in Pennsylvania, asked for Wi-Fi for vendors' card readers at a two-day festival, which he says earns over half the department's yearly operating budget. The grounds are about 550 by 200 feet, with internet in building A only. The host chose point-to-multipoint over two point-to-point NanoStation links, which would be cheaper, so that more receivers can be added later.
• Use the US-8-150W core switch, which powers both PoE types. It supplies both 24V passive and 802.3af PoE, so it can power any of the Ubiquiti gear in the design. The cheaper US-8-60W cannot supply 24V passive.
• Buy a used Rocket 2AC Prism rather than a Rocket M2. New, the Prism costs $205 plus $156 for the 10 dBi omni (AMO-2G10). Used, the Prism is about $100 on eBay. A used Rocket M2 (about $75) saves only about $25 for roughly half the bandwidth. The $100 RF Armor enclosure is optional for a short autumn deployment. link.ui.com showed 100% signal with the omni at about 40 feet; the host expects 80–90 Mbps at each NanoStation.
• Each remote building gets a NanoStation M2 that powers its indoor access point. Its 24V passive passthrough runs a UAP-AC-LR indoors; the host would start with one per building. An outdoor UAP-AC-M-Pro on the wall needs its own PoE injector. The second Mesh Pro on building C is optional, pending on-site testing the host has not done. An optional movable "pod" (NanoStation M2 plus UAP-AC-M on a stand, run from a Jackery battery for about four hours) can fill dead spots.
• The build costs $1,569 new, or about $1,011 used on eBay. Both figures cover buildings A, B and C only, excluding the optional pod and RF Armor. The host also asked viewers to donate equipment through Crosstalk.

2020-03-05 · open the original ↗

• The $15 Argon NEO is now the host's standard Raspberry Pi 4 case. It offers the Flirc look with the GPIO access that made Pimoroni's case the winner of his earlier roundup. Cooling is passive, through a thermal pad into the metal top: he measured 95–98°F on the case at idle and 115–120°F after a 10-minute CPU stress test. The official Pi camera did not fit its camera mount. He bought both cases himself and links to them through Amazon affiliate links.
• The $25 Argon ONE suits media-centre or retro-gaming use. A daughterboard moves the ports to the back, and it has both a fan and a thermal pad. Its power button runs from an installed script: press to power on, double-tap to reboot, hold 3–5 seconds for a graceful shutdown, hold over 5 seconds to force off. The host tested the Pi 3 version by mistake; a Pi 4 version is sold.

2020-02-21 · open the original ↗

• Routing, firewall and VPN are unlicensed; the security features are not. Cisco approached the host to review the RV345P and told him it had no licence fees, lifetime software updates, a limited lifetime warranty and a year of tech support. After registering, he was shown as out of compliance, and Cisco then explained that everything under the security tab (content filtering, antivirus, IPS) needs a $121.99 annual licence, while buyers who skip those features need not register at all.
• The built-in application control is too thin to rely on. The dating category lists nine apps and leaves out match.com, so the host would handle filtering for a business through DNS filtering such as Cisco Umbrella or OpenDNS, forcing users onto those DNS servers. He could not find whether turning on IPS cuts throughput. The figures he found were 950 Mbps standard and 650 Mbps VPN.
• Per-port PoE power caps are a feature the host had not seen before. Each of the eight PoE ports can be given a maximum allocation in milliwatts. His UAP-AC-Pro drew 3.6 W against a default 30,000 mW allocation, so he suggests capping such a port at about 6 W. He also approved of SIP ALG and UPnP being off by default, but found only DHCP options 66, 150, 67 and 43.
• The Cisco side of a site-to-site IPsec VPN worked entirely in the GUI. Building a tunnel to his EdgeRouter 4 took 45 minutes to an hour, and the EdgeRouter was the harder side: he had to delete his GUI config and use its CLI. Filtering the logs to VPN entries helped him find the fault. The unit supports 50 tunnels, and multi-WAN can load-balance by percentage or by bandwidth across both WANs and the USB LTE dongles.
• The host rates it a solid SMB firewall, not a beginner's one. He sees it fitting businesses with sub-gigabit internet, and says the $471.21 Amazon price is fair for 16 ports (eight PoE) plus a year of Cisco support; a non-PoE version is $338.16. Buy from the Cisco Systems seller (affiliate link), since a rep warned that knockoffs may not carry the warranty. He has not run one in production and will not resell them until the licensing is clear.

2020-02-14 · open the original ↗

• Existing phone systems get one to two years to comply. According to the host, new multi-line telephone system (PBX) installs must comply with Kari's Law and the RAY BAUM'S Act from 16 February 2020. Existing fixed desk phones have until February 2021, and softphones, mobile and off-premises phones until February 2022. He expects the technology for those last devices to catch up by then, so he advises fixing fixed phones first.
• Phones must reach 911 directly, alert staff, and give a dispatchable location. No "9" prefix can be required, a rule traced to Kari Hunt's 2013 killing, when her daughter's hotel-room 911 call failed. A 911 call must notify a central point (email, SMS or a page group) that need not be staffed 24/7. The location sent must be detailed down to floor and room. His FreePBX dial patterns route 911, 9911 and 9-911 variants, and 933 lets you test.
• The host recommends ClearlyIP over Crosstalk's own SIP trunking for compliance. He says ClearlyIP's E911 goes beyond anything else he has seen, including the wholesale SIP trunks Crosstalk resells, and can be used for E911 alone. It sends a 16-digit caller ID (a 10-digit number plus a 6-digit location code) and turns the code into an address for the PSAP. He links it with a referral code that pays Crosstalk.
• Location codes cost far less than one DID per extension. With a typical SIP provider, each location needs a DID at about $1 a month plus an E911 address at about $1 a month. In his two-storey, 12-room example that comes to $24 a month. ClearlyIP charges $1 per callback profile (two ring groups) plus $0.50 per dispatchable location, $8 a month in total, saving $16 a month (about $200 a year). A 1,000-room hotel done one-to-one would cost about $2,000 a month.
• Hot-desk phones must dial 911 logged out and set location at login. The host knows of no vendor other than ClearlyIP that does both. Its system also lets roaming users pick from an admin-limited list of locations, either on the phone or in the user control panel. He stresses that installers are responsible for their customers' compliance, and Crosstalk offers compliance reviews.

2020-02-11 · open the original ↗

• The host's overall winner is Pimoroni's Pibow Coupé 4. It is $9.10 direct from the UK, since it is not on Amazon; US shipping was about $5–6. He prefers it for its slim profile, which leaves the USB and Ethernet ports sticking out, for its full GPIO access, and for its looks. It only takes low-profile heatsinks, and his unit carries Pimoroni's Fan SHIM. Links to the other cases are Amazon affiliate links.
• The Flirc case wins if you will never touch the GPIO. For a Pi-hole-style build, the host would choose the $15.95 Flirc over the Pimoroni. It is the easiest to build (four screws), and the aluminium shell works as the heatsink, touching the CPU through a supplied thermal pad. It has no fan and no GPIO access.
• The C4 Labs Zebra Virtue was eliminated for cost and fiddliness. It cost $24.99 plus $5.15 shipping ($30.14), close to the price of the Pi itself. It has the biggest fan and solid hardware such as countersunk nuts, but it was the hardest to assemble, and the host judged that the build quality does not justify the price.
• The acrylic stack cases from GeeekPi and Miuzei are near-identical. GeeekPi is $9.48, and Miuzei is $9.99 for the case or $15.59 with a switched power adapter, which the host recommends for any Pi. He kept the Miuzei for its base and bigger rubber feet, then dropped it in favour of the Pimoroni because it encloses the ports.
• The cheapest case works but uses screws that strip. The $8.99 clamshell case came with a fan, heatsinks and feet, was easy to build, and leaves the GPIO open, but the host would not use it himself. His fan-wiring tip: the label faces the CPU, red goes to 5 V and black to ground on the GPIO header.

2020-02-04 · open the original ↗

• The host likes the UDM Pro but hesitates to recommend it. For home use he calls it overkill unless you are a Ubiquiti enthusiast. For a small business, running UniFi, Protect, Access and Talk on one 1U box is a single point of failure, so he would only deploy it with a spare on the shelf, or as an MSP holding stock. Ubiquiti sent the unit free; he says his opinions are his own.
• It combines controller, gateway and switch, without PoE. At an MSRP of $379 it has eight gigabit ports, one WAN and one LAN 10G SFP+ port, and a drive bay for Protect that takes 2.5- or 3.5-inch drives. The host accepts the lack of PoE as the price of keeping it cheap. He says he would have paid $479 for a version with RAID 1 dual drives.
• IPS at maximum still delivered his full 400/20 connection. With threat management at level 5 and DPI on, he measured 454/22 Mbps. Ubiquiti's IPS figures are 85 Mbps for the USG, 250 Mbps for the USG Pro, 1 Gbps for the USG XG and 850 Mbps for the base UDM; the UDM Pro reportedly does about 3 Gbps. He could not test gigabit, and expects heavy Protect, Access or Talk use to cut throughput.
• It drops several standard UniFi capabilities. It runs a single site, cannot be adopted by a hosted controller, and has no config.gateway.json. It allows one WAN IP per interface and has no graceful shutdown that he could find. Login uses Ubiquiti SSO, but with the WAN unplugged he logged in without 2FA, which he flags as a risk if someone has physical access.
• Dual-WAN failover worked in about ten seconds, with no load balancing. Failback was similarly quick. The host notes that LTE failover (U-LTE, $15 a month for the first GB and $10 a GB after, on AT&T) and RPS power redundancy are UniFi or pro-line features rather than UDM Pro ones. Ubiquiti's 8 TB drive option is $190, against $223–233 on Amazon for the WD Purple and Seagate SkyHawk, so he suggests the factory install.

2020-01-30 · open the original ↗

• The plug exists only to reboot the ISP modem automatically. The USP-Plug-US, at about $19, sits between the wall or UPS and the ISP's modem or router and power-cycles it when the UniFi controller detects the internet is down. It has almost no settings: name, DHCP or static IP, and a side button for power on/off and a five-second factory reset.
• Ubiquiti's stated requirements are wrong in two places. The product page says it needs a Dream Machine, but the host confirmed with Ubiquiti that any controller on 5.12.42 or newer works, plus an access point, since the plug adopts over Wi-Fi. The quick-start guide's "5.12.32" he takes to be a typo: his Cloud Key Gen2 Plus on 5.12.35 would not detect the plugs.
• Running it required beta controller software at recording time. As of 28 January 2020 the latest stable release was 5.12.35, so the host moved his UDM to the beta release channel (new settings, Updates, Advanced) with private release channels enabled on his Ubiquiti account.
• The controller does not yet treat it as its own device type. It appears with an access-point icon, reports its model as "UP1" rather than USP-Plug-US, and an unplugged unit shows on the dashboard as an offline access point. The host also saw a STUN connectivity error he could not resolve and hopes a firmware update clears it.
• No scheduling or appliance control, which the host calls a missed opportunity. Unlike typical smart plugs it cannot be switched or scheduled, and he speculates (with no inside knowledge) that firmware could add this. He had not tested an actual outage recovery or learned how it retries; it fits only US Type B outlets, and his modem's Type A plug sat loose in it.

2020-01-29 · open the original ↗

• Firewall rules can force clients onto whitelisted, filtering DNS servers. The aim is to stop savvy users bypassing Pi-hole or content-filtering DNS by setting 1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9 manually; it can be applied per VLAN, such as a guest or student network only. Statically addressed devices, including the router itself, must have the allowed DNS servers set by hand since they skip DHCP.
• Use address groups so DNS servers change in one place. On EdgeOS the host keeps a group of his three Pi-holes (192.168.200.201, a Docker Pi-hole on his Synology NAS at .210, and a test one at .206) and an RFC 1918 group; changing a group updates every rule that uses it.
• Three ordered rules do the work: allow, let filters out, drop. On LAN in: allow established/related, accept TCP and UDP to port 53 on the whitelisted group, allow the Pi-holes themselves to reach any DNS server (they forward to Cloudflare's 1.1.1.1), then drop all other port-53 traffic. Order matters because rules are processed top-down; he notes the Pi-hole forwarding rule could be tightened to 1.1.1.1 only.
• An IoT VLAN can use main-LAN Pi-holes while staying otherwise isolated. Its rule set allows port 53 to the Pi-hole group, drops other DNS, then drops all traffic to RFC 1918 ranges, so devices reach the secure LAN only for DNS. No outbound rule for the Pi-holes is needed there since they sit on the main LAN.
• UniFi does the same with an address group and a port-53 port group. On a Dream Machine (Internet Security, Firewall) the host whitelisted 1.1.1.1, 9.9.9.9 and the UDM for demonstration, saying a real lockdown would use Pi-hole or OpenDNS. Testing showed whitelisted servers resolving and 4.2.2.2 timing out, matching his EdgeOS nslookup tests.

2020-01-23 · open the original ↗

• The official Pi touchscreen swapped in for the surveillance monitor without reconfiguration. After breaking the micro-USB connector on his old HDMI 7-inch display, the host moved his existing Raspberry Pi 3 camera-feed setup onto the official Raspberry Pi 7-inch touchscreen (about $75), connected by ribbon cable; it booted straight into the four camera feeds.
• The only change needed was setting the output to 800×480. The new screen's resolution was noticeably lower than the old one's, so he logged in and matched the display output to it. Touch was left unused, since the surveillance view needs none; he says it would suit Raspbian with the full GUI or any touch application.
• The PoE HAT became redundant because one cable powers both. In the SmartiPi Touch 2 case, a supplied splitter (dual micro-USB for a Pi 3, USB-C for a Pi 4) feeds both display and Pi, so a PoE HAT would only power the Pi and still leave a second cable. He kept a wired network connection, saying hardwired is always better for camera feeds.
• The host likes the SmartiPi Touch 2 case. It holds the Pi under a removable fan door with no screws, offers a low- or high-speed fan on the GPIO, accommodates a Pi camera with a longer ribbon cable, and has 100×100 VESA holes as an alternative to its stand. Product links in the description are Amazon affiliate links, which he discloses.

2020-01-16 · open the original ↗

• A Pi can capture packets only while the internet is down. The host's script pings 8.8.8.8 once every 5 seconds; on a failed ping it kills any running tcpdump and starts a new capture to a date-stamped file, stopping when connectivity returns, so the pcap can be read later in Wireshark. Any Linux box would do; a Pi 4 with 4 GB is overkill, and a Pi Zero W or Pi 3 would suffice.
• Three script improvements were in progress at recording. The ping target and the network interface (wired or wireless) are being made variables, and pcaps taken during an outage will be uploaded automatically to an FTP server once connectivity returns, replacing his manual retrieval. The script is offered for download.
• The firm's phone-home system gives remote access without firewall changes. Crosstalk devices check in with what it calls its RMS system on boot; ticking "connect with VPN" makes the Pi open a VPN tunnel to the RMS server the engineer is also connected to. He planned to leave it on site for a week or two and check for captures remotely.
• The client fault takes down only wired clients, sporadically. In a roughly seven-person office with under 30 devices, wired clients lose both internet and LAN (including a Synology NAS) for 5 to 20 minutes, from three times a day to once a week; wireless clients are unaffected. During outages the UniFi controller loses the downstairs US-24 switch but still sees the USG and the UAP-AC-Pro.
• Swapping both switches and testing the cable ruled nothing in. Firmware was current, the junky upstairs switch was replaced with a TP-Link 8-port, the roughly 100-foot cross-connect tested clean, and a spare replaced the US-24 with no change. His suspicions, all unconfirmed, are a broadcast storm, malware, a rogue device ARPing as gateway, or the large Canon copier, which staff once power-cycled to clear an outage.

2020-01-10 · open the original ↗

• Only the Pro Gen2 switches get 10G uplinks and layer 3. Of four released models, the USW-16-PoE ($299: 8 PoE+, 8 non-PoE, two 1G SFP) and USW-24-PoE ($379: 16 PoE+, 8 non-PoE, two 1G SFP) are layer 2. The USW-Pro-24-PoE ($699: 16 PoE+, 8 PoE++, two 10G SFP+) and USW-Pro-48-PoE ($1,099: 40 PoE+, 8 PoE++, four SFP+) get layer 3 in a future software update, Ubiquiti says.
• The USW-24-PoE is fanless and shallower than Gen1. Its depth is 7.9 inches against 11 for the older fan-cooled switches; the host's Gen1 24-port needed its loud fans replaced with Noctuas. He relies on others' reports, including a teardown video by another channel, for its heat dissipation.
• Gen2 drops 24V passive PoE output. The port settings no longer offer it, so a 24V passive device such as the host's camera now needs a PoE injector. The first 16 ports are 802.3af/at.
• Update the firmware before judging the touchscreen. The switch arrived on 4.0.49, where tapping the screen only cycled a few statistics; 4.0.66 brought large improvements, and the host recommends updating. UniFi site settings cover LED and screen on/off, brightness, a 300-second timeout and rack multi-screen synchronization for stacked switches.
• The touchscreen gives useful per-port detail at the switch. It shows which ports are linked and at what speed, real-time traffic and PoE watts per port (3.4 W for a ClearlyIP phone, 7 to 11.5 W for a Cloud Key Gen2 Plus), total throughput, CPU and RAM, PoE draw against capacity, and IP, uptime, MAC and firmware. A speed test on his roughly 400/20 connection showed on the live graph; background colour is settable only on the switch.

2020-01-08 · open the original ↗

• Snom's system costs far more than the Yealink kit Crosstalk usually sells. The Yealink W60P kit is $189 with base and one handset (extra handsets about $92), whereas the Snom M700 base is $259 and the M85 handset $329, almost $600 for the first phone. The host plans to add the Snom gear to the phones he sells.
• The premium buys multi-cell scale. The M700 supports up to 253 base stations with handsets roaming between them and up to 1,000 handsets, against the single base (plus repeaters) of the older Yealink kit; Yealink's own multi-cell product the host has not tried. The base is PoE-powered.
• Many vendors' DECT phones are the same rebranded hardware. The host shows the Snom M25 office handset and base matching Sangoma's and Mitel's single-cell DECT products, built by one licensing manufacturer, so shopping around between them changes little. Snom also offers the mid-range M65.
• The M85 suits harsh sites needing emergency features. It is IP65 dust- and weather-resistant, with Bluetooth and a 3.5 mm headset jack, a hard-to-press red alarm button that dials a preset number, a man-down motion sensor and a wrist-loop pull alarm, which the host has not tried. His deployment was a retirement home that wanted handsets able to survive heavy abuse; one of five arrived defective and was replaced by RMA.
• The M700 setup has a few non-obvious steps. Its web interface failed for him in Chrome but worked in Firefox; the default login is admin/admin. Set country and time zone by region plus an NTP server, enter the SIP server as registrar, and create extensions with the PBX SIP credentials and *97 as the FreePBX voicemail number. The handset registers using the base's access code, default 0000.

2020-01-02 · open the original ↗

• Auto-provisioning lets phones configure themselves, even when drop-shipped. Phones download configuration files built from a MAC-to-extension mapping, so button changes push out to every phone; as a reseller the host drop-ships phones and they set themselves up when plugged in. The ClearlyIP device module is free, unlike Sangoma's paid Endpoint Manager, and works similarly.
• Point provisioning at an FQDN, not an IP, and open its ports. The module is uploaded once via Module Admin from ClearlyIP's wiki URL, using a newer version than the link gives, then updates like other modules. Using the server's FQDN lets phones follow a later migration by a DNS change. TCP 2579 (phone apps) and 2580 (provisioning) must be opened in the FreePBX firewall, unless Sysadmin Pro's ports are used instead.
• Logged-out phones should fall back to an emergency-capable extension. The hot-desk wizard creates a default logout extension (the host's is 999, allowing up to 100 registrations) that can dial 911 and internal extensions but not outside lines. An unmapped phone shows a "not registered" image and a login button, so staff can log in with extension and voicemail password instead of a MAC mapping.
• Templates hold global settings, models hold per-model keys. The host uses one template per customer location, with resync every 1,440 minutes and its own time zone, and models for key layouts (here a CIP 270). He sets BLF long-press to prefix *80 for intercom and in-use short-press to prefix * for transfer to voicemail, which he says helps receptionists.
• ClearlyIP's redirect server provisions factory-fresh phones by MAC. At devices.clearlyip.com, which needs reseller sign-up, MACs entered singly or by CSV redirect a defaulted phone to the customer's PBX; the host was adding about 30 this way. It shows check-ins and firmware, which module updates push to phones, and offers a reseller lock-out for customers on per-extension monthly plans who stop paying.

2019-12-30 · open the original ↗

• The host recommends a CanaKit starter kit as the easiest start. It sells at $79.99, $89.99 and $99.99 for the 1 GB, 2 GB and 4 GB Pi 4 respectively, through links in the description that are Amazon affiliate links. He calls 1 GB fine for testing but would take 4 GB for any graphics or desktop use. The kit includes a 32 GB class 10 microSD card, heatsinks and an inline power switch he uses constantly to avoid wearing out the USB-C port.
• The kit ships only one micro-HDMI cable for two ports. Dual monitors need a second micro-HDMI-to-HDMI cable; with one monitor, use the port labelled HDMI 0, nearer the power connector. He puts keyboard and mouse on the USB 2.0 ports to keep the blue USB 3.0 ports free for fast devices like external drives. He also prefers wired Gigabit Ethernet over the onboard Wi-Fi for initial setup.
• Triple-check the drive letter before formatting the microSD card. SD Card Formatter will just as readily wipe a USB drive, unrecoverably. A brand-new card can skip formatting. The host then copies the unzipped NOOBS files onto the card. Without a network connection, NOOBS offers only Raspbian Full; other operating systems appear once it can reach the internet, wired or over Wi-Fi.
• The first-boot wizard's software update can fail; update manually instead. It has failed for the host before, though it worked on this recording, so he shows the manual fallback: sudo apt-get update then sudo apt-get upgrade -y. The wizard is also where to replace the default pi user's password, "raspberry", and tick the black-border box to fix overscan.
• Disable auto-login, then enable SSH and VNC for remote access. Both settings are under Raspberry Pi Configuration. Windows 10's command prompt can now SSH natively, but the host prefers PuTTY because it saves sessions. RealVNC Viewer reaches the desktop, and he advises against saving the password in it, as less secure.

2019-12-17 · open the original ↗

• The UniFi Industrial Switch is a niche part for high-power PoE. The USW-Industrial has 10 ports: two non-PoE gigabit uplinks and eight that auto-sense 802.3af, 802.3at or 802.3bt (PoE++). With the 450 W power supply it can deliver 60 W per port on all eight at once. At $499 MSRP ($506.15 on Amazon at recording), the host says he can think of few of his own projects that would have needed it.
• Its value is the ruggedized build, not its UniFi features. It is fanless and plenum rated, mounts horizontally or vertically in a wall, and has a die-cast aluminium case powder-coated against corrosion. It weighs 8.5 lb (3.85 kg). It runs at −40 to 50 °C on the 450 W supply, or −40 to 60 °C on 240 W. The host found nothing special in the UniFi controller beyond the PoE++ flag, and pitches it as a set-and-forget switch for rafters and attics, or in place of the Netonix ruggedized switches his firm uses on wireless ISP jobs.
• Its intended loads are 802.3bt devices such as the USW-Flex. It can feed the USW-Flex outdoor switch with 60 W, or power the UniFi BaseStation XG (for stadium coverage) and the XG access point. The host says that on 802.3at power alone, the USW-Flex had only managed one G4 camera before devices started rebooting.
• In his test, one 802.3bt port ran five devices through a USW-Flex. One port fed a USW-Flex, which powered a G4 Pro camera, a Cloud Key Gen 2, an In-Wall HD and a UAP-HD access point, and all of them stayed up. The host says the switch stayed cool to the touch under that load.

2019-12-11 · open the original ↗

• The FlexHD is a nanoHD in an indoor/outdoor body. The host says the UAP-FlexHD-US has essentially the same specifications as the UAP-nanoHD: 802.11ac Wave 2, 4x4 MU-MIMO at about 1.7 Gbps on 5 GHz, and 2x2 MIMO at 300 Mbps on 2.4 GHz. It has one gigabit Ethernet port and a reset button, and is rated for −30 to 70 °C.
• It is weather-resistant only when mounted upright. It carries no IP66/IP67-style rating and its mounts leave the Ethernet port exposed. The datasheet says outdoor units must be mounted vertically, right side up, so gravity keeps water off the port. Mounting upside down in a drop ceiling is for indoor installs only.
• For $12 more than the nanoHD, it adds mounting options. It cost $186.20 on Amazon at recording, and comes with a tabletop stand, a wall/pole mount and an 802.3af PoE injector. A recessed ceiling mount exists, but the host could not find it on sale. He guesses it will cost about $20, like the $19 G3 Flex camera ceiling mount.
• The host calls it steep for home users but good for business or outdoors. His example is covering a pool area. In his test it adopted and provisioned through the UniFi phone app in just over two minutes, with firmware 4.0.69 offered. He expects it to behave like any other UniFi AP, and plans to swap it in for the In-Wall HD in his office, mainly because it looks better.

2019-12-04 · open the original ↗

• The Building Bridge is a 60 GHz short-range gigabit link with 5 GHz fallback. The UniFi Building Bridge sells as a pre-paired set of two antennas for $499 MSRP. The 60 GHz radio reaches up to 500 m (1,640 ft) with clear line of sight, and the 5 GHz backup covers rain or snow fade. Each unit runs on 802.3af (an injector is included) or 48 V passive PoE. Rated limits are −40 to 70 °C and 125 mph (200 km/h) wind.
• Setup on his UniFi Dream Machine failed; a Cloud Key Gen 2 worked. On the Dream Machine, only one of the two units would take a firmware update and the link would not come up. Adopting to his Cloud Key Gen 2 worked, at 97/100 link quality. While both units sat in his office, the host suspects they were interfering with his other wireless.
• His iperf tests at about 9 m gave roughly half a gigabit. He measured about 500 Mbps one way and 550–575 Mbps the other, and about 750 Mbps combined with both directions running at once. UniFi reported 1.75 Gbps capacity, which the host calls ambitious: the link is not full duplex and the Ethernet ports are only gigabit.
• Widening the 60 GHz channel hurt the reported link but not throughput. Moving from HT1080 to HT2160 dropped reported link quality to 66/100 and capacity to 1.17 Gbps, while iperf held at about 550 Mbps; he reverted the change. Only the access-point side can set channel width, and the 5 GHz backup allows only a manual channel. The LED ring colour can be changed, which the host calls cool but unnecessary.
• The host likes it but finds it overpriced against MikroTik. He puts the MikroTik Wireless Wire at about $200, also out-of-the-box. In his view, the Building Bridge's extra $300 buys looks and easy UniFi integration.

2019-11-27 · open the original ↗

• The Dream Machine undercuts buying the equivalent UniFi parts separately. At $299 it combines a 4x4 802.11ac Wave 2 MU-MIMO access point, a Cloud Key-style controller, a USG-style firewall and a four-port gigabit switch (no PoE) with one WAN port; the host prices a nanoHD ($172), Cloud Key ($179) and USG (~$139) at just under $500. The trade-off is that the built-in access point sits wherever the internet terminates, though extra APs can be adopted.
• The host aims it at home users and SOHO, not medium businesses. He sees it as an entry point to UniFi for enthusiasts and for small businesses with "vanilla" needs, such as a tanning salon. Criticisms he has heard online but not tested (no adoption to a hosted controller, no multi-site, no JSON file editing) matter to IT people like himself, not to that audience.
• Its CPU should beat the USG, but he could not test gigabit. He does not recommend the USG above about 300 Mbps with IDS/IPS and DPI on; the UDM has a 1.7 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A57 and ships with DPI enabled by default. Turning on threat management shows a note citing 850 Mbps maximum throughput, which he could not verify on his roughly 400/20 Mbps connection.
• Setup supports two-factor login through the Ubiquiti account. The host believes 2FA was not yet available in standard UniFi controllers or Cloud Keys. The UDM ran UniFi Network 5.12.22 as of November 26, 2019, and he advises home users to leave automatic firmware updates on, judging security fixes worth the risk of a buggy release.
• There is no backup slot and no battery, so download backups. There is no microSD card for auto-backup, so a failed unit could take its backups with it; he advises downloading one after initial setup and any major change. Pulling the plug shut it off instantly, and he says it remains to be seen whether it avoids the Cloud Key Gen 1's database corruption.

2019-11-25 · open the original ↗

• Crosstalk's own web store now sells the full ClearlyIP lineup. It joins the Sangoma and Yealink phones the store already carries, with free shipping. The host, who calls this a sales video and promises a proper review later, says the people behind ClearlyIP are familiar names from the FreePBX community.
• The ClearlyIP 710 server suits small businesses, not its rated maximum. It costs $610 and is fanless, with a 2 GHz quad-core Celeron, 4 GB RAM, a 64 GB SSD and four gigabit ports. It is rated for 100 phones and 50 concurrent calls, but at that scale the host would buy an enterprise-grade server or run two 710s as primary and warm standby.
• Every phone shares community-requested features and free provisioning. All have gigabit pass-through, a stand that doubles as a wall mount, OpenVPN, the G.722 and Opus HD codecs and a two-year warranty, extendable by three years for about $90. ClearlyIP's phone apps and Clearly Device Manager are free, so the paid FreePBX endpoint manager is not needed.
• The range runs from receptionist phone to utility handset. The 270 ($179), the host's daily phone for months, has 10 programmable keys with four pages, a 4.3-inch colour LCD, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The 250 has a 2.8-inch screen and eight keys, the 230 the same screen and four keys. The 200 sidecar ($179) adds 40 keys and works with the 270 and 250.
• Bundles were on offer through the end of 2019. A phones bundle (270, 250 and 230) is $349, about 15% off, and a complete bundle adding the sidecar and 710 server is $999. The host asks volume buyers to contact him for discounts, and says the company is young, lacks some phone apps so far, but has a strong roadmap.

2019-11-06 · open the original ↗

• The link's line of sight depends on a tall Manila-side mast. A viewer planned a 35 km (about 22 mile) link from a hillside near Calamba, at roughly 500 ft elevation, to a Manila suburb at about 100 ft, partly over water. In the host's airLink simulation, hills block the Fresnel zone below about 72 ft and line of sight is gone by 50 ft, so the viewer's 82 ft (25 m) mounting height is needed. airLink ignores trees and buildings.
• A Rocket Prism setup gives about 200 Mbps for roughly $1,100. It uses a Rocket 5AC Prism Gen 2 ($209) with a 31 dBi RocketDish ($339) on each end. airLink predicts 100% signal and 545 Mbps, but the host expects about half that in practice. He rejects the airFiber 5 at $999 per side (about $2,000 for 768 Mbps estimated) as nearly double the cost for little gain, needing a 50 MHz channel in likely crowded 5 GHz.
• The host recommends the airFiber 5XHD (LTU) with 30 dBi dishes. With the AF-5G30-S45 dish, it costs about $1,100 for the pair, only $10–12 more than the Rocket setup. Opened to a 100 MHz channel, airLink estimates 100% signal and 1,094 Mbps, almost three times the throughput. He is unsure a 100 MHz channel would hold up in practice.
• Licensed 11 and 24 GHz options cost more for similar results. An airFiber 11FX pair with 35 dBi dishes and four duplexers totals $2,754 for 1,376 Mbps at 56 MHz. The airFiber 24 (about $3,000 a pair) predicts 33% signal and 515 Mbps, and the 24 HD 50% and about a gigabit. US use needs an FCC licence; the host does not know the Philippine rules.
• A nearby university rooftop could replace the tower and serve a neighbourhood. The host notes that a university building near the Manila end has clear sight over the hills. Leasing roof space there would allow point-to-multipoint coverage of the area, potentially as a wireless ISP. He stresses that airLink is a starting point, not a real-world site survey of interference and obstacles.

2019-10-15 · open the original ↗

• The G4 Pro is UniFi Protect's top camera, priced accordingly. The UVC-G4-Pro lists at $449 MSRP (about $1 less on Amazon) for 4K 3840x2160 H.264 at a maximum 24 fps, a 3x optical zoom, a 108-degree field of view with some fisheye at the edges, IP67 rating, a gigabit port powered by 802.3af/at PoE, and a -20 to 50°C operating range. It offers only 720p and 4K settings, and the host wishes it had 1080p.
• Mount order matters, and the host got it wrong on camera. The cable goes through the wall mount, then the cable gland (circular side toward the lens, needed for the IP67 seal), then the swivel. Aim the camera before tightening the wall mount, because tightening is what locks the position, and fit the optional pole mount before that, not after.
• Only optical zoom made a face recognizable at 50 feet. Against a 1080p G3 bullet (about $139, outdoors for over a year), set to 30 fps at 6,000 bitrate against the G4 Pro's 24 fps at 16,000, the G3's digital zoom on a figure 22 paces away was blurry. The G4 Pro's digital zoom was better but still not identifying; 3x optical plus digital zoom gave a clear face. The host calls the comparison unfair.
• The G4 Pro's night vision far outclasses the G3's. In pitch dark the G3 showed only that someone was there, while the G4 Pro lit the scene well, with each camera tested alone so the IR would not interfere. Jumping straight to full 3x optical zoom at night went blurry and did not recover; zooming more slowly worked, giving a rough view of a face at 50 feet.
• The host rates night vision and microphone highest, 4K least. He calls the camera awesome but thinks 1080p is enough for security and leaves value for money to viewers. He has not tested the G4 Pro with UniFi Video, only UniFi Protect, and assumes but cannot confirm that it works there.

2019-10-08 · open the original ↗

• A 2.4 GHz point-to-multipoint access point costs about $350. The host used a Ubiquiti Rocket AC Prism 2.4 GHz (R2AC-Prism: gigabit port, separate management radio, GPS sync, unused here) at $192 on Amazon, with the AirMax 2x2 10 dBi omni antenna (AMO-2G10) at about $150. He says the 10 dBi omni suits a few miles; past about 10 miles use the 13 dBi omni (roughly 30% larger) or, better, sector antennas on multiple Prisms.
• At 200 feet through forest, 2.4 GHz performed very well. A NanoStation M2 client saw a -48 dBm signal (chains about -53 and -54 dBm), a 300/300 Mbps link rate and 95% airMAX quality. A fast.com internet test gave 70 Mbps and an iperf LAN test, run because viewers asked for one after his earlier video, gave 61 Mbps.
• At about a quarter mile, the link failed completely. Shooting through houses and forest down a residential street, the NanoStation connected not at all, and the scan showed many neighbouring 2.4 GHz networks; he cannot say whether distance and obstacles or interference was the cause. A second spot, a logging road about a quarter mile away through trees, also got no signal.
• Line of sight matters most; height would likely have helped. The host frames 2.4 GHz as the middle ground: faster than 900 MHz, which got through the same forest in his earlier video, but worse at penetrating obstacles than 900 MHz. He did not test from the roof but expects 30 feet of height to clear the 6–10 foot brush that blocks ground-level links, and calls the test unscientific.

2019-09-04 · open the original ↗

• Rooftop radios cannot see each other across the rolling hills. A viewer's family business wanted to share Spectrum Business internet from its Berlin, Ohio site with its DSL-only Winesburg site 6.03 miles (just under 10 km) away. In Ubiquiti's airLink planner, airFiber 5X HD radios at about 40 feet (12 m) on each roof hit many obstructions, and dropping to 900 MHz Rocket M900s did not clear them either.
• The link only clears with towers around 100 feet tall. At 30 m (about 100 ft) on both sides the simulated 5 GHz airFiber link showed 100% signal and an estimated 240 Mbps. Because it is only a simulation, the host would build to 120 feet (36 m) for margin, and expects little interference in so rural an area.
• The towers cost far more than the DSL they would replace. Used self-supporting towers listed at $4,500 (110 ft) and $6,000 (120 ft); with delivery, crane, footings and a climber to mount and aim the radios, the host estimates a bare minimum of $10,000 per side. Against DSL he guesses at $200–300 a month, he recommends staying on DSL.
• A relay through an existing hilltop tower is the other option. If a tower in between, such as a cell tower, has line of sight to both sites, the business could rent space and dogleg the link over the hill. The host found no such tower on the map and had no information about one.

2019-09-03 · open the original ↗

• The USW-Flex is a small, PoE-powered, UniFi-managed distribution switch. It is a five-port layer 2 switch with one PoE-in and four PoE-out ports, retailing at $99 USD, with no separate power supply. In UniFi it is fully VLAN-capable, offers per-port PoE off/on, and appears as model "USF 5P"; firmware was 4.0.54 on controller 5.10.26 as of the recording.
• Its "weatherproof" claim looks thin from the bottom. The host found no IP rating, and the large opening at the bottom would let water, bugs and spiders in, though rain from above would not get in. Mounting is flexible: a wall/pole bracket, rubber feet, a magnetic mount, and a split cover so cables are run before closing it.
• Output power depends entirely on the PoE standard feeding it. The quick start guide gives a total budget of 8 W on 802.3af, 20 W on 802.3at, and 46 W on 802.3bt or a 54 V 1.1 A injector. On a US-8-60W (af only) the host's Yealink phone kept rebooting once a NanoHD was added; on a US-24-250W (at) both ran.
• Even 802.3at could not carry a G4 Pro alongside two devices. With the phone and NanoHD attached, the G4 Pro camera blinked without linking and the NanoHD dropped; alone, the G4 Pro powered up. The host suspects 802.3bt, which Ubiquiti's sales page pairs with the USW-Pro-48-PoE, USW-Pro-24-PoE and USW-Industrial, would do better, but had no bt switch to test.
• It answers requests for an 802.3af version of the Nano Switch. The host frames it as a UniFi-controlled counterpart to Ubiquiti's 24 V passive Nano Switch, which has no configuration interface. He sees it suiting installs like his own solar setup with several 802.3af devices; it will not supply 24 V passive.

2019-08-29 · open the original ↗

• The Yealink CP920 is the host's go-to small-room conference phone. Crosstalk sells it, at $315 (or $300 for buyers who mention the video), and the host says it costs much less than Polycom conference phones such as the IP 6000. He reports selling "a ton" of them for years without a return or a customer complaint.
• It covers rooms of about 20 feet and installs without network cabling. Its microphones pick up voice through 360 degrees to 6 metres (about 20 feet). It runs on PoE through a 10/100 port or on a 12 V DC adapter, and has built-in Wi-Fi for rooms with floor power but no network drop. It also has Bluetooth, a 3.1-inch touchscreen, touch-sensitive mute keys, five-way local conferencing and USB call recording to a thumb drive.
• Registering it to FreePBX takes one screen, not Endpoint Manager. Log in with the default admin/admin and change it. Under Account, set Line Active to enabled (it ships disabled), enter the FreePBX extension's name, user and SIP password, and give the PBX's IP address or FQDN as the host. If the room has a voicemail box, set the voicemail number under Advanced to *97.
• The CP960 is for large rooms needing spread-out microphones. It has the same form factor but an Android colour display, for $490. For $580 it comes with two docked wireless microphones, which the CP920 cannot take. The host considers the CP920 adequate for most of the SMB and small-enterprise rooms Crosstalk sells into.

2019-08-27 · open the original ↗

• A pieced-together mesh network had outgrown the speedway's needs. Aaron Zufall of Zufall Communications had built it in his spare time for security cameras at the Pennsylvania Motor Speedway near Pittsburgh. He says its Wi-Fi was spotty away from the APs, and the track wanted grandstand Wi-Fi so fans could follow online live timing without cellular data. Cambium Networks sponsored all the equipment for the replacement.
• One elevated ePMP 3000L feeds four sites from a single fibre line. The track's only internet, a FiOS 150/150 Mbps fibre line, lands in one building, where the AP sits on a 10-foot mast. Force 300-16 subscriber modules link the ticket booth, press box, pit scoring booth and pit concession stand. A Cambium engineer measured 129 Mbps down and 133 up at about −51 dBm RSSI on a barely line-of-sight 40 MHz channel.
• Sector APs light the stands while guest bandwidth is capped. Four cnPilot e501S outdoor sector APs (90° beam, IP67, up to 256 clients) cover the main and side grandstands, and e410 indoor APs serve the concession and pit areas, all as one network. Guest traffic is throttled to 5/2 Mbps per client and 50/20 Mbps for the whole guest network.
• The sector APs reached far beyond the stands. On the far side of the track, about a fifth of a mile from the APs, the host's iPhone tested at 40 Mbps down and 20 up, and the Cambium engineer saw 2–3 bars at about 1,000 feet.
• The track's Wi-Fi contest stress test peaked at 138 clients. The Cambium dashboard showed most clients on 2.4 GHz (105, against 26 on 5 GHz) and a peak of about 74 Mbps throughput. The Cambium engineer reports frame utilization stayed below 30% all evening.

2019-08-22 · open the original ↗

• A wireless link design starts from a marked-up map. A viewer asked whether two Ubiquiti M5 radios would carry a new Xfinity line from the main house to a shop 60 yards away and a camper 70 yards away, the two 25 yards apart. The host first asked for a Google Maps markup of the sites. He then ignored the trees on it on the viewer's word that he had clear line of sight.
• An M5 point-to-multipoint setup would work, and is probably overkill. The design has a NanoStation M5 on the house in point-to-multipoint mode and a NanoStation Loco M5 at each remote site, each behind an ETH-SP-G2 surge protector, feeding a UAP-AC-Lite. The camper's surge protector probably cannot be grounded, and the host says it can be left out. The Amazon parts total $455.53, including $77 for the NanoStation and $124.96 for a Loco two-pack.
• An AC upgrade adds throughput the job does not need. It uses the same layout with a LiteAP AC (LAP-120, $81.37) at the house, NanoBeam AC Gen2 stations ($92.42 each) and UAP-AC-Pro access points ($134.26 each). Neither total includes the UniFi controller the access points need. The host links all the parts on Amazon and asks viewers to buy through his links.

2019-08-13 · open the original ↗

• A Raspberry Pi Zero W replaces the Tesla's dashcam USB stick. Running the open-source TeslaUSB project, it stores dashcam and Sentry Mode footage plus a music library. On reaching home Wi-Fi it offloads footage to a Windows share and pulls new music from another, so nothing has to be carried indoors. The host credits cimryan's original manual build and marcone's pre-built image, which he uses.
• A cased Pi Zero draws little power and stays protected. The host's parts are a CanaKit Pi Zero kit with case and heatsink ($24.99), a SanDisk Ultra 64 GB card ($12.49) and a 6-inch right-angle Cable Matters micro-USB cable, velcroed in the storage compartment. He skips the full-size USB add-on board because it sticks out and can be knocked. His Amazon links are affiliate links.
• Give the Pi its own Windows account. The config file stores the share password and Wi-Fi key in plain text, so the host creates a local "Tesla" user that can reach only the two shares, with read/write access. He names the footage share exactly "TeslaCam", because footage-viewer programs look for that name by default.
• Write the card carefully, then set the storage split and keep-awake. The host flashes version 1.3 (the 2019-06-15 image) with Win32 Disk Imager, warning that it and SD Card Formatter will wipe whatever drive is selected. In the renamed config file, setting cam size to 80% gave him about 45 GB of footage and 12 GB of music. Instead of the car-API keep-awake option, he turns on climate in the Tesla app, which he says keeps the car awake for hours.
• Restart the setup script if first boot stalls. Setup takes about 5–10 minutes. SSH to [email protected] was hit-and-miss for the host, so he used the IP from his DHCP leases. If the log sits 10–15 minutes on one line, rerun /etc/rc.local as root; his install needed two restarts. In the car, use the inner micro-USB port, which he says alone carries data, and look for the dashcam icon.

2019-07-30 · open the original ↗

• Heat sinks only delay the Raspberry Pi 4's thermal throttling. The Pi 4's Broadcom quad-core 1.5 GHz CPU throttles at 80°C; under stress -c 8 with all four cores at 100%, the heat-sinked board showed the throttle icon after roughly two and a half minutes (2:10 on a stopwatch started about 30 seconds late). The host measured 40–50°C on the outside of the CPU heat sink during the test.
• The Pimoroni Fan SHIM kept the CPU from ever throttling. With the fan alone and no heat sinks, the same full-load stress test ran for 8 minutes 50 seconds without reaching 80°C. The fan cycled on at 65°C and off around 58–60°C. The host allows that some workloads might still push it to throttling, and says he will replace the heat sinks on both his Pi 4s with it.
• Set the fan to run as a service with hysteresis. Pimoroni's installer script takes an on-temperature and a hysteresis value, which the host set to 65°C and 5°C. The buffer keeps the fan from flapping at the threshold; it stays on until the CPU drops to 60°C. The SHIM costs $10 from Pimoroni, and the host paid about $27 for two plus a case, shipping included.
• CPU temperature takes more work to read than GPU temperature. GPU temperature comes straight from vcgencmd measure_temp. CPU temperature is in /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp as a five-digit figure that has to be divided by 1,000. The host wraps both in a short script credited to Vivek Gite of cyberciti.biz and runs it under watch to refresh every 2 seconds.

2019-07-22 · open the original ↗

• The Pi 4 is not a real desktop replacement. It is being marketed as one, and the new Broadcom quad-core 1.5 GHz CPU gives three to four times the Pi 3's processing power (per benchmarks the host cites from MagPi). In his testing it handled web, email and dual monitors, but stuttered on full-screen 1080p YouTube and is unusable for gaming. He doubts its claimed 4K output (two displays at 4Kp30 or one at 4Kp60) would give a good experience.
• Buy the largest-memory model; the premium is small. The 1 GB board is still about $35, with 2 GB costing $10 more and 4 GB $20 more. The host would almost always recommend the 4 GB, especially for anyone using the Pi as a desktop.
• Ethernet now runs at full gigabit, and USB 3.0 arrives. The Pi 3's gigabit NIC shared the USB 2.0 bus, which capped it at 300 Mbps; the host confirmed full gigabit throughput on the Pi 4. The two USB 3.0 ports make a mini NAS possible, and USB 3 boot is rumoured. Moving the NIC and USB ports breaks compatibility with older cases, though the host found the PoE HAT still works.
• USB-C power fails with some third-party adapters. Others report that many USB-C chargers won't power the board, including Apple MacBook chargers. The official power supply and a Nintendo Switch charger both worked for the host, and he expects the Raspberry Pi Foundation to fix this in a later revision.
• More power means more heat and higher draw. The Pi 4 throttles its CPU at 80°C, and the host reproduced this under stress testing: heat sinks only delayed it, while a Pimoroni Fan SHIM did better. Idle power draw is about 35% higher than the Pi 3 Model B+, so he suggests older models for battery or solar projects.

2019-07-18 · open the original ↗

• A line-of-sight wireless bridge can replace a second internet connection. For a client job, the host extends a flat /24 LAN (192.168.10.0) to a building about a third of a mile (half a kilometre) away. The link uses two Ubiquiti NanoBeam AC Gen2 radios, roughly $99 MSRP each, which his firm sells below MSRP. His case is that dropping the second site's connection saves its monthly charges. In airLink, at about 30 ft mounting height, 25 dBm and 40 MHz, the path planned as a clear signal.
• Add a grounded Ethernet surge protector despite the radio's built-in protection. At each end the host puts a Ubiquiti ETH-SP Gen2 between the radio and the switch. The radio's own surge protection doesn't stop a lightning surge carried down the copper from reaching the switch inside.
• The NanoBeam's second port can power a camera. The radio takes 24 V passive PoE in on one port, from the bundled injector or a switch that supplies 24 V passive. It can pass PoE out on the second port, so a 24 V passive camera can share a pole-mounted radio.
• Initial setup no longer needs a laptop on the default subnet. Previously the radio had to be reached at its default 192.168.1.20; now its management Wi-Fi radio lets the UNMS phone app find it and set a static IP; the bridge ends were 192.168.10.8 and .9. After that the host configures it in the web GUI: station point-to-point locked to the AP's SSID, with a WPA2 key and an optional backup SSID. He also enables NTP, which UNMS needs, and adds the radio to UNMS for remote monitoring.
• Bench throughput fell short of what the host hopes for. With both radios in the same room at maximum output power, the link connected at 200–250 Mbps. The host hopes for about 300 Mbps in the field, and may lower the output power because full power may be too loud for the distance.

2019-07-09 · open the original ↗

• Choose the In-Wall HD for busy rooms or extra ports. The host recommends the UAP-IW-HD ($179 MSRP) for high-density spaces such as conference rooms, restaurants and hotel lobbies, or where more wired ports are needed. For an ordinary hotel room the standard In-Wall or In-Wall Pro is enough. He would pick the HD over the Pro anyway, since it is 4x4 MU-MIMO against 3x3 and $20 cheaper. Crosstalk offers discounts on Ubiquiti orders over about $2,000.
• The HD outclasses the other in-wall models in streams and ports. Per Ubiquiti's datasheet it is 802.11ac Wave 2: 2x2 at 300 Mbps on 2.4 GHz, 4x4 MU-MIMO at 1,733 Mbps on 5 GHz. It claims 940 Mbps single-client and 440 Mbps 10-client aggregate throughput, against 600 and 130 Mbps for the UAP-AC-Pro. It has four gigabit ports, one passing PoE through, while the In-Wall (2x2) and In-Wall Pro (3x3) have two. It is indoor-only.
• Disable the spare wall ports or put them on isolated VLANs. Port VLANs only become selectable after enabling the port VLAN option on the device, and the default "All" profile isn't offered, so specific or custom profiles are needed. In a hotel, the host would put the PoE-out port on the VoIP network and disable the rest or make them guest-only. In his test, the AP and a Yealink phone powered through it drew 7.7 W together.
• Installation is simple and tamper-resistant. The clamshell design fits any single-gang box and comes with Torx security screws, plus ordinary screws as an alternative. Adoption and the firmware upgrade on UniFi controller 5.10.24 took about nine minutes. The back of the AP read up to 122°F, but about 97°F through the case.
• One AP in a far corner won't cover a house. In the host's NetSpot Pro survey, which he calls anecdotal, the AP was placed in a basement corner. It covered nearby rooms well but left the far side, the garage and most of the yard weak or spotty. He takes this as the case for central AP placement, or for adding a second AP.

2019-05-30 · open the original ↗

• A SIP door station can ring video phones and unlock remotely. In the host's demo, an Axis A8105-E calls a ring group on his Crosstalk-hosted FreePBX; whoever answers on a Yealink T58A sees the door camera and dials DTMF 99 to trip a relay that unlocks the door for 5 seconds. Because the PBX is hosted, the door and the answering phone can be in different cities.
• Any door phone or desk phone works if it does SIP and H.264. MSRPs he cites: Axis A8105-E $799, Axis A8004 $1,249, CyberData outdoor video units $1,023 with keypad and $920 without; Crosstalk, which sells them, offers 10–15% off MSRP. The T58A is about $245 without camera; the Grandstream GXV3240 ($215) should work, though he dislikes Grandstream and says FreePBX functionality is lost.
• Keep the unlock relay away from the door station itself. Best practice is a separate relay box or central controller, because someone could pull a wall-mounted unit off and hot-wire the two relay wires to open the door; his bench demo wires the relay directly only for simplicity.
• FreePBX has video disabled by default, and needs a no-answer path. In FreePBX 14.0.11 (current as of May 2019) video support must be enabled under Asterisk SIP Settings with H.264 at the top; extensions are ordinary. He sends the ring group's failover to an announcement that tells the visitor where to go, then hangs up, noting rings are 5 seconds each.
• Bandwidth to a hosted PBX is modest but varies with motion. On the FreePBX dashboard a call measured about 1 Mbps while ringing, 140–200 kbps with a static picture, and up to about 1.2 Mbps when the camera moved, since H.264 is variable-bitrate; on a local network the host calls it next to nothing.

2019-05-23 · open the original ↗

• The host rates the Yealink T58A his favourite phone, despite the price. He says it has the best voice quality of any phone he has used, especially on G.722, and recommends it for receptionists, executives and anyone who values video calling, at just over $330 per phone with camera.
• The camera is a separate purchase on the T58A. The T58V has the camera built in; the T58A takes an optional CAM50 USB camera with a privacy shutter. MSRP with camera is $539, but Amazon had the phone at $244.22 plus $88 for the CAM50 ($332.22); the host offers to match Amazon's price if bought through Crosstalk.
• Hardware suits desk use but lacks some basics in the box. It has a 7-inch adjustable touchscreen, 720p/30fps video, Android 5.1.1, dual gigabit ports with VLAN support for the PC port, 802.3af PoE (AC adapter sold separately), Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, 27 DSS/BLF keys and EXP40 sidecar support. The stand has one angle, against the T56A's two; a second USB port drives a photo-slideshow screensaver.
• Video calling works only with H.264 or VP8 endpoints. He tested T58A-to-T58A calls, the Bria softphone, and Zoiper on iPhone after its H.264 add-on (about a dollar), but the free X-Lite softphone failed because it uses H.263. It also displayed an Axis door station's video and passed its DTMF unlock code.
• The FreePBX endpoint manager covers the settings that matter. Options it lacks can be added through a basefile edit, which he says is rarely needed. He recommends hosting a shared Yealink directory on the TFTP provisioning server rather than in each phone, and doubts anyone will use its browser or email apps.

2019-05-01 · open the original ↗

• IoT devices belong on their own VLAN, cut off from private networks. Smart plugs, TVs, consoles, thermostats and voice assistants are hacker targets, so the host isolates them on VLAN 107 (192.168.107.0/24) using an EdgeRouter 4 on firmware 1.10.8, a UniFi Switch 24 and a UAP-AC-Pro. He says any VLAN-aware gear with a strong firewall, such as pfSense with Ruckus, can do the same.
• The firewall blocks all RFC 1918 ranges except specific holes. An address group holds 192.168.0.0/16, 172.16.0.0/12 and 10.0.0.0/8. The VLAN's "in" rule set defaults to accept, then allows established/related traffic, DNS on port 53 to his Pi-hole, and Plex on TCP 32400, then drops everything else to those ranges. The "local" rule set defaults to drop, allowing only DNS to the router and DHCP on UDP 67.
• Hidden SSIDs and multicast blocking can stop some devices connecting. Wired devices reach the VLAN through an untagged switch port feeding a dumb switch; wireless ones use a hidden WPA-personal SSID. His Nintendo Switch would not join the hidden network until he briefly broadcast it, and some devices may need "block LAN to WLAN multicast and broadcast" unchecked. He skips throttling because streaming devices sit there.
• The host concedes his setup has gaps he intends to close. He says Plex should really move into the IoT network rather than be reached through a firewall hole, and plans an "in" rule blocking port 53 to any other DNS server so devices cannot bypass his. Without a Pi-hole he suggests malware-filtering public DNS such as 1.1.1.1 or 9.9.9.9.
• Isolation makes IoT traffic easy to log and inspect. With logging only on the IoT rules, "show log tail" showed an iClever smart plug broadcasting on UDP 6666 every few seconds and talking MQTT on TCP 1883 to an AWS address in Boardman, Oregon, and a Roku sending HTTPS to Google. He suggests a syslog server for easier review.

2019-04-11 · open the original ↗

• Two servers can share 10 Gbps networking for under $250. The host's build totalled $322.80 shipped using fiber, but with two 1-meter DAC cables instead it comes to $242.24 (switch $141.28, two NICs $68.98, cables $31.98), or about $250 with 3-meter DACs; servers not included. In his iperf3 tests between two Ubuntu 16.04 servers he measured 9.4 Gbps one way and 9.41 Gbps the other.
• The MikroTik CRS305-1G-4S+IN is a cheap, capable switch but backordered. It is a five-port desktop switch with one Gigabit Ethernet port and four 10 Gbps SFP+ ports, plus redundant DC power inputs taking 12–57 V from two separate circuits. As of recording on April 10, Baltic Networks listed it for pre-order at $124.25 for the third week of May; the host waited about eight weeks for his, ordered in late 2018.
• Used Chelsio T320 dual-port cards work, but check the bracket. On Tom Lawrence of Lawrence Systems' recommendation he bought them on eBay at $29.99 each; listed as full-height, they arrived with low-profile brackets, so he removed the bracket and seated them loose. For production servers he would buy a current-generation card (about $166 on Amazon) for longer support.
• DAC cables are much cheaper than SFP+ modules plus fiber. A fiber link needs two SFP+ modules ($20.99 each) and an LC-to-LC multimode cable (about $14), around $56; a 3-meter DAC is $18.99, a 1-meter about $15.99, and 7-meter about $42. His 10Gtek SFP+ modules coded for Ubiquiti worked fine in the MikroTik.
• A factory-reset MikroTik has no gateway or DNS configured. It defaults to 192.168.88.1, user admin, no password, so you must put your own computer on 192.168.88.0/24 to reach it, then use Winbox's Quick Set (bridge mode, static) to set your LAN address, gateway, DNS, identity and an admin password. Ubuntu 16.04 had the Chelsio drivers built in; the card's second port appeared as "rename3".

2019-03-12 · open the original ↗

• Version 2 uses RTSP streams instead of a full-screen camera app. Version 1 showed a single camera through UniFi Video in full-screen mode and kept timing out; this build shows four cameras, works with UniFi Video, UniFi Protect or any RTSP-capable system, and boots straight to the camera view so nobody has to remember passwords or config months later.
• Two cables suffice when a PoE HAT powers the Pi. One cable powers the monitor and one Ethernet cable feeds the Raspberry Pi; a Pi 3 Model B+ on Wi-Fi would also need just two power cables. Whether the monitor's second micro USB port can pass power through to the Pi is speculation the host had not yet tested.
• The display's picture is good but its build quality is not. The $75 8-inch 1280x800 IPS screen from Amazon is cased in cut acrylic sheet, whose protective film must be peeled off while the screws are out; its micro USB cable made the 5 V 2 A monitor flicker, so the host used a power brick. The vendor offered him the monitors; of the two he asked for, one was dead on arrival, so there is no giveaway.
• Make the Pi wait for the network and maximise GPU memory. The setup is Raspbian Stretch Lite (the 13 November 2018 image) on an 8 GB class 10 card, with an empty ssh file to enable SSH. In raspi-config, "wait for network at boot" stops the display service starting before the RTSP feeds can be reached, and the GPU split goes from the 64 MB default to the 256 MB maximum.
• The displaycameras layout file needs pixel coordinates worked out per screen. Version 0.8.3.3, following a Self Hosted Home blog post, ships no 1280x800 example, so the quadrants run 0,0–639,399, 640,0–1279,399 and so on. The host used Protect's medium 1024x576 stream (high is 1920x1080), noted port 7447 for remote access, and tested URLs in VLC first.

2019-03-07 · open the original ↗

• Keep Protect to about six non-mission-critical cameras. Protect runs only on the $199 Cloud Key Gen2 Plus and only with Ubiquiti cameras. Ubiquiti recommends at most 20 cameras, or 15 alongside the UniFi SDN controller. The host would stop at about half a dozen because the single drive (1 TB, upgradable to 5 TB) has no redundancy; he has tested only four.
• Protect records continuously, with no motion-only option. UniFi Video usually defaulted to motion-only recording to save disk. Protect's cameras default to 15 fps and a variable 3,000 kbps maximum bitrate, which drops when the scene is static. Privacy zones, which black out part of the frame, are new compared with UniFi Video; the host found RTSP output hit-and-miss.
• The host found Ubiquiti's 1,600-hour storage claim accurate. Three cameras at default settings used about 650 GB over 15 days, which works out to roughly 14.4 GB per camera per day, or about 600 MB an hour; 1,600 hours at that rate is about 960 GB. By his rough estimate, the stock 1 TB drive holds about 20 days for three cameras and 10–11 days for six.
• Playback and the mobile app are strong, but admin features are thin. Scrubbing through footage is fast, even over LTE on the app, which connects through Ubiquiti's cloud without open firewall ports. What is missing as of recording: view-only roles (every user is an administrator), multi-select event download, view cycling and alert scheduling. His outdoor camera sent alerts every five minutes in rain.
• The host reads Ubiquiti's FAQ as making UniFi Video 3 final. Ubiquiti promises security updates, bug fixes and new G3 camera support, which he takes to mean no new features and no version 4. Crosstalk stopped selling UniFi Video servers at the start of 2019, over thin margins and that uncertainty. He speculates Protect will reach the UniFi Application Server XG and gain doorbells and sensors.

2019-02-13 · open the original ↗

• The two UniFi 24-port switches switch identically; PoE is the difference. Both the US-24 and US-24-250W do 24 Gbps non-blocking throughput and 52 Gbps switching capacity, with 24 gigabit ports and two 1 Gbps SFP (not SFP+) ports. The host says he cannot recall one failing across many installs, though some 48-port PoE models have. Only the US-24 has a 24 V DC input, and its rack ears are detachable.
• The PoE model costs nearly twice the non-PoE switch. On Amazon on the day of recording, the US-24 was about $199, the US-24-250W $379.98 and the 500 W version $528.49. The host notes the PoE model also supports 802.3af, 802.3at PoE+ and per-port 24 V passive, which he uses on one port to power a NanoStation.
• The host says the 500 W model is almost never needed. His arithmetic: a UAP-AC-HD, Ubiquiti's largest access point, draws about 5.5 W, so 24 of them total about 132 W. That leaves roughly 100 W of the 250 W budget, and phones and UVC G3 cameras draw 3–4 W each. His firm rarely sells the 500 W model.
• The US-24-250W proved too loud for a desk. The datasheet gives four fan levels at 9.1, 14.2, 16.8 and 21.2 dB. The host measured 64.9 dB beside its fans against about 42 dB ambient, 55 dB beside the US-24, and 51–52 dB at his desk. After several days it was distracting him and showing up in his video audio.
• Swapping in Noctua fans did not make it quieter. The case held only two 40 mm fans, not the four he expected. The Noctuas arrived as the 5 V version rather than 12 V (about $26 for two), needed their screw holes drilled out to 3/16 inch, and needed their 2-pin adapter. They read 69–71 dB against 65–70 dB for the stock fans; cutting out the side grates (which voids the warranty) brought them back to about stock level. He plans to move the switch under his desk.

2019-02-08 · open the original ↗

• Domain Names Outlet offers a domain it does not own. The host received an email at the WhoisGuard address for crosstalkwireless.net offering crosstalkwireless.com for a one-time $99 (the sales page said $99.95), with a year of registration and transfer included. The link was flagged as untrusted, the only contact is a generic email address, and he judges the customer testimonials probably fake.
• The .com was simply available to register for $8.88. A search at Namecheap, his usual registrar, showed crosstalkwireless.com free, and he bought it there for $8.88; he says other registrars are cheaper still. His inference is that the company watches for .com names becoming available and emails owners of the matching .net, claiming to sell a name anyone can buy.
• The host says the real target is non-technical staff. In many organizations domain renewals go to accounting or another department that may not recognize the scam. He advises warning those people so they come to the technical staff before paying for a domain, and notes that a WHOIS search would show the name is free.

2019-01-17 · open the original ↗

• The onboard battery is reason enough to choose Gen 2 Cloud Keys. The host says power loss often corrupted and wiped the Gen 1 Cloud Key's database. On power loss the Gen 2 shows a seven-second countdown and shuts down cleanly. He pulled the plug about a dozen times without corrupting it, and says he will now recommend only Gen 2 units to customers who want a Cloud Key.
• Pay the extra $20 for the Plus model. On the Ubiquiti store the Cloud Key Gen 2 is $179 and the Gen 2 Plus is $199. The Plus adds UniFi Protect and a 1 TB Toshiba 2.5-inch drive that the host priced at $46.50 on Amazon, where the Plus was listed at $299 at recording. He found a 5 TB Seagate Barracuda 2.5-inch upgrade for about $143.40; the drive cage has room for a thicker drive.
• USB-C backup power needs a Quick Charge charger, plugged in before PoE. The unit runs on 802.3af PoE or 9 V/3 A USB-C (marked QC 2.0). An iPhone adapter and a Nintendo Switch supply both gave "bad USB-C power"; a $13.99 Anker Quick Charge 3.0 charger worked. When PoE went in first and USB-C second, pulling PoE still shut the unit down. In the other order it stayed up and only reported Ethernet disconnected.
• Firmware and controller upgrades took workarounds. The 0.8.10 Cloud Key firmware would not install through the GUI, either automatically or from a URL. Only the SSH method from Ubiquiti's blog (ubnt-systool fwupdate plus the firmware URL) worked. Separately, a site export from a 5.7 controller would not import into 5.9.29, so the host first upgraded his production controller. That upgrade broke one customer's access points and its cloud-access link.
• Protect used 14% of the drive in four days, but was unreliable. That was two cameras on the 1 TB drive, which the host calls anecdotal because it depends on motion. In his test CPU load was 6% and temperature 39 °C with three cameras and about six network devices. Protect's live view failed to load on camera, and he suspects Protect itself is "not quite up to snuff" rather than the hardware.

2018-11-29 · open the original ↗

• The DS218+ suits home users and small businesses with basic backup needs. Synology sent the host the unit with two 8 TB Seagate IronWolf drives; he also recommends Western Digital Red NAS drives. Synology's figures he reads out: a dual-core 2.5 GHz CPU, one Gigabit port, encrypted transfers at 113 MB/s read and 112 MB/s write, and 4K transcoding.
• Size drives by doubling your current data, then rounding up. The host's rule of thumb: 1.5 TB of data doubles to 3 TB, so buy 4 TB drives. He calls 8 TB likely overkill for most homes, but says it is always better to overestimate than underestimate.
• Initial setup runs from a browser on the same LAN, and wipes the drives. Browse to http://diskstation:5000; installing DSM erases both drives and takes about 10 minutes. The host sets updates to install automatically, uses QuickConnect for remote access, and then moves the NAS from DHCP to a static address outside the DHCP pool so he always knows where it is.
• Turn off the recycle bin on a backup-only share, but keep it on working shares. On a folder people work from, the recycle bin guards against accidental deletion; on a backup share it is not needed. He also says to leave the data-checksum option unchecked if a database runs off the NAS, and gives the backup user read/write and guests no access.
• Windows File History to a mapped drive gives set-and-forget backup. The host maps the share as a drive letter using the NAS account's credentials, adds folders such as a video-editing SSD, and sets automatic backup on. He saw about 120 Mbps on the LAN during his roughly 1.8 TB first backup, and says small files copy slower than large ones.