Ubiquiti UniFi AC Wireless Access Point
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,541 words · ~7 min read
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fors a raptor K40 keyboard and M45 Mouse
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are designed to provide best in-class features and performance for gaming
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click now to learn more consumer grade Wii is poo we all know it but what could
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we really expect it's like that whole uh
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how great do you expect the camera on your phone to be conversation all over
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again a wireless router is not a real thing it's a colloquial term when you
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what you call a wireless router is actually three pieces of Hardware that
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are rolled into one a router a network
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switch and a wireless access point then a team of highly trained monkeys
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develops the firmware software and UI
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which is difficult enough when you're just trying to make all that stuff for one piece of Hardware then they have to
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turn around and sell all of this for whatever consumer-friendly price point
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they are targeting let's say $49.99 no wonder it's all poo so I
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reached out to Wendell from Tech Syndicate for help Wendell I said save
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me from the Poo I'm not a plumber he replied to which I said I know it's
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wireless poo and Wendell descended from the heavens with a recommendation for me
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to try the ubiquity UniFi AC access
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point that you see right here in its pleasing brown box so let's take a look
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at the hardware it's got a pleasing ID that can be easily wall or ceiling
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mounted it's nice and low profile and comes with all the hardware you need
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little plastic mounting plate right here metal bracket as well as the screws and
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nuts that you're going to need for that it's got a center LED ring in the middle
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that's glows either white or blue and can be used for Diagnostic so you can
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see whether or not it's connected to the network as well as as a device locator
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so it'll Flash Blue if uh you tell it to through the software so you can actually
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find where it is and identify which one is which if you're deploying a bunch of
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them it's got internal antennas so that helps with the pleasing look and also is
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one fewer thing to set up but don't worry the range is still quite strong
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and then when we flip it over to the bottom we find two Ethernet ports uh
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they're nothing sort of too complicated here guys it doesn't support teaming or
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anything like that but there's just a main and a secondary and that's for
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failover in case one of them outright dies the cool thing about the Ethernet
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ports we don't really discover until we dig further into the box and find this
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guy right here this is a PoE injector or
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power over Ethernet what this allows you to do is place this pretty much anywhere
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you can get an Ethernet cable you don't have to worry about AC power because
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both power and data are going to be carried by the RJ45 cable so all you do
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is plug this guy into a wall Ethernet from here out to your switch or router
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and then from here off to your access point and the whole thing is taken care
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of very very cool in terms of the actual
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specs for Wi-Fi it supports up to 1300 megabit per second wireless AC with mimo
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and a range of up to 400 ft although although obviously both of those things
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won't be happening at the same time so what are the main advantages of this
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product well number one is the consumer-friendly management software
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and maybe that's actually why uh Wendell recommended it to me in particular
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anyway more on the more on the management software later the next one
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is seamless roaming between access points with their zero handoff feature
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this is something that ubiquity talks about a lot and it's great for
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applications like VoIP that are sensitive to network interruptions that
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way if you have mult multiple ones of these deployed like you often would in
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an Enterprise environment you can move between them and not have whatever it is
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you're doing interrupted although more on zero handoff in just a moment with
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respect to this one it also offers endless expandability so that whole
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thing about having lots of them and just plain higher performance it's Enterprise
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grade this is something I observed personally I am very very happy with
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this product even though it costs $300 so let's move on to the software it
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allows you to easily see the status of Any Given access point including radio
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configuration uh bandwidth monitoring the clients that are connected to it and
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much more it the software for management works across huge installations even
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multi site like multi campuses and runs on just a Windows or Mac PC that is
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connected to the same network uh they say on their site that it runs on Linux
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as well but I didn't see a download for it so your mileage may vary there you
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can even do things like upload little Maps into the software so when you're
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managing locations you can be like okay well I put one here and you can drag it
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around and you can map out your network that way it's supports automatic
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firmware upgrades so it just will automatically upgrade the firmware of
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your access points and it even supports cool stuff like a guest portal or Hotpot
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that includes support for charging for it as well which is kind of neat now
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this whole thing may have sounded like a paid product placement or commercial but
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it's actually quite the opposite I bought two of these and I paid for them
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because I am just so sick of dealing
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with consumer grade Wireless Solutions even my rtn 66 which is the best I've
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used so far for range and Signal consistency isn't as good as this and
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it's just not good enough I mean my
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house isn't that big it's 2,300 sare ft which isn't huge and a single router
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just doesn't cut it this much better and
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it's funny because it was when I first installed it I wasn't that impressed
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it's actually difficult to quantify the performance difference with simple tools
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like Wi-Fi analyzer for Android or just like looking at the reception bars um
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and I don't actually have any strong AC clients that I could use to to Really
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test out the max throughput but what I can say is that when it comes to real
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world running around my house streaming video or using NVIDIA game stream or
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browsing the internet this AC access point comes out on top it's simple to
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use it's seamless to deploy it's easy to manage and it just plain Works mostly
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the one thing that disappointed me is that zero handoff feature that's all
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over their site it's not implemented on the AC version I was I was quite
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disappointed because while seamless which this one does support is enough
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for buffered video playback uh like YouTube or for web browsing to be
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completely uninterrupted like you'd never even notice that you're moving
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from one to another it is not enough to stream a game on Shield As you move
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between access points and I did pick up two of these hoping that I would be able
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to have perfect reception all over my house and be completely uninterrupted um
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no it drops when you cross a threshold and you will have to manually reconnect
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but once you do it is back up and running they do say the firmware upgrade
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is coming at some point though even with that complaint thumbs up for this
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product it's expensive but my expectation is that I should only be
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upgrading my Wi-Fi Hardware when I legitimately need a speed increase again
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rather than when I get tired of the BS from my current setup which is what
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happened to me many times in the past I mean think about this okay this is $300
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but how many routers that cost 100 bucks or 150 bucks have you been through in
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the last year or two is it time for a new approach what do you think leave
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your comments let me know if this has changed the way you think about networking technology especially
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Wireless because it's just mostly terrible um you can leave those comments
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under the video or you can check out the lonus techtips form we'll have a link in the video description remember guys as
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always like this video if you liked it dislike it if you thought it was poo just like consumer wireless routers and
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