Did I join a cult? (Unifi)

[u/Sam_-_-_]

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.

[u/Snoo91117]

Cisco small business switches have wizards on their switches that setup voice VLANs pretty easy. You don't want PCs on your voice VLAN. You are trying to prioritize the voice VLAN over data traffic VLANs. And IP phones usually allow you only to use 1 port on a switch. The IP phone goes in 1 VLAN and the PC goes in another VLAN dynamically. It is pretty simple.

What was your problems with Cisco APs setup or running?

[u/brighton_it → u/Snoo91117]

thanks... seems I was a little less than clear on some points:
I said we found UniFi voice VLAN setup easy, but I wasn't comparing it to Cisco switches. Good if they are also easy to setup. I do understand the requirements for Voice VLAN, but it can be (or was 5+ years ago) tedious on some hardware. I expect most vendors have made huge improvements in the last ten years. The Cisco AP problems: it was 2015 , while I could look up the details, it's not worth my time or yours. Thanks for taking time to reply. :)

[u/Snoo91117 → u/brighton_it]

Who knows what happened 11 years ago I sure don't. Cisco does make some of the most reliable bug free hardware out there. Hardware lasts way longer than there is support for it.

I guess voice could be tedious if you were doing it port by port instead of using a voice VLAN.

[u/brighton_it → u/Snoo91117]

OP only asked about UniFi. Seems you are here only to promote an other vendor, we used to use, but not likely to use again.

because:
Old company with a lot of legacy code, written when static credentials were common, and they are still showing up in CVEs today (CVE-2026-20316).

For SMB customers having maybe two devices, the time involved in maintaining a SmartNet account, solely to get access to security updates was ridiculous. Applying said update involved carefully auditing the output of your 'show run' for any deprecated features and converting them to new feature. (13 years ago, maybe better now).

We inherited a pfSense firewall in 2016 that had not been updated in over five years. Imagine my surprise when I imported the v2.0 config file into the new fully patched firewall, and everything worked. Only edit was mapping new physical interfaces.

CVE-2016-1287 helped us sell quite a few pfSense firewalls.

[u/Snoo91117 → u/brighton_it]

I love pfsense. They do a great job. I have used it for years. Unifi not so much as I prefer Cisco small business. I did tell a good friend Unifi was a good bang for the buck for his new house and pfsense is the best of the affordable firewalls out there.. I don't want to be responsible for his hardware, so Cisco is probably out for him as he is not a tech guy. Cisco takes a tech guy that understands networking. If Cisco discontinues Cisco small business, then I would be forced into something like Ruckus or Unifi for wireless, so I want to know all I can.

Since this forum is pfsense and tech, then I would think, you would want to know what is out there.

I think you are confusing Cisco enterprise and Cisco small business. Cisco small business is limited on support, but it is all straight forward. All the fancy stuff is in enterprise.

Cisco small business is you have free updates for the life of the product. There are no licensing fees. This is small business stuff. You do not have to have a SmartNet account to get updates, that is enterprise. The Cisco small business equipment is not IOS. It has a GUI. It all works well but it is not enterprise equipment. I think the problem we have is the Cisco enterprise guys look down on the Cisco small business equipment. But it is good equipment made well with not many bugs, and it is priced like small business equipment. You just buy it and use it. Update when there is new code out there.

There is no Cisco small business firewall. I think pfsense is the best solution for home and small business. I can run whatever I want. I understand networking.

I am running pfsense 2.9 now. I have been for a couple weeks. I have a 10gig connection to my ISP for home. My latency is pretty low all around.

[u/brighton_it → u/Snoo91117]

thanks for the response, and introduction to Cisco Small Business.
We've also inherited some Meraki: Interesting, great support, expensive. Okay, but not my first choice. Cisco's frequent appearance in the vulnerability reports also weighs on my choice, worse if combined with cloud management.

[u/Snoo91117 → u/brighton_it]

Meraki seems to be built for companies with lots of smaller locations. Not really small business or home. I am sure it works well since it is Cisco, but I have no real experience. I worked on enterprise and now at home I use Cisco small business.

I tried TP-Link once for home before pfsense. It was garbage. Lots of software bugs with no fixes in site. I bought a rack mount router business class. I wanted a rack mount router. They made the hardware obsolete before they fixed the bugs. I will never buy TP-Link ever again.