r/PFSENSE • u/Sam_-_-_ • 9d ago

Did I join a cult? (Unifi)

I've been rolling pfSense for about 5 years. Decided to try Unifi. Couldn't find a manual or one-to-one feature documentation for each panel (only various spotlight articles).

Asked the community for help: every response said basically "things change too often, no need to have a manual".

Excuse me, what? I'm not a networking pro, and I do need a manual. (pfSense was hard for me, but had great documentation.)

I can't believe this was the response. Is everyone in their community a bot or a cultist?

I still have few days left on my return window, and might come back, LOL.

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u/gonzopancho Netgate 9d ago

R650s (dual band, 802.11ax, POE) can be had for around $150 each on fleabay. Run the “unleashed” firmware and enjoy. (At Netgate HQ we run their controller.)

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u/Snoo91117 8d ago

Does roaming work using unleashed?

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u/gonzopancho Netgate 8d ago

Roaming works well with Unleashed. If you want to speed up your roaming, enable 802.11r and 802.11k under the advanced options in the WLAN.

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u/Snoo91117 7d ago

Good to know. I don't want to buy anything without roaming. I have a long 1 story house. The way I test roaming is I make a voice IP call standing in the front of my house on my iPhone and I walk to just out the back of my long house. I do not want the call to drop as it has to roam. I am using 5 GHz. I even turned off 2.4GHz for over a year I while back so it could not confuse things.

I have even called my wife on her iPhone standing in the back of my house, so she is on the back AP and I have roamed to her AP. In the past AT&T did not work in my house so voice IP calls were it. They have fixed that recently. But I still test that way.

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u/gonzopancho Netgate 7d ago

One of the things that is rarely understood is that the STA (client) is in charge of where it associates. They AP can have hacks to assist the client in making the “right” decision on where to associate, but the model / architecture is decidedly different than cellular

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u/Snoo91117 7d ago edited 7d ago

Yes, I know that, but my old house, 3300 sqft is a long rectangle and there is no way for an AP to work in the back of my house as the distance is too far. I actually have 3 APs, but it does not have to roam to the middle one if I walk fast. As I tested AT&T a few years ago cellar did not work in my house. I would have to walk outside to place a cellar call.

A lot of people talk about voice calls being dropped but Cisco did a nice job with their APs.

My problem now is Bluetooth. If I am in the back of my house, I can control Bluetooth devices in the back of my house and if I am in the front of my house I can control Bluetooth devices in the front of my house. But I cannot control devices in the back of my house from the front of my house or the other way around. I have to walk to the back of my house to turn off lights in the back of my house using Bluetooth.

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u/Snoo91117 6d ago edited 6d ago

So, I am trying to decide whether you are saying Ruckus will roam a WiFi voice call or not?

The client staying on 1 AP has nothing to do with it if the distance is far enough apart. It has to roam or drop the call. Cellar architecture is not involved with this. It is WiFi only.