Automated home 2.0 – #14 Ubiquiti Networking part 1 – Why I’ve chosen UniFi for Our new home Network

name the most essential services going into your home. Water? Sure. Electricity? Of course. but there’s a fair bet “WiFi” would be number 3 on the list for a lot of people these days as an Internet connection has rapidly become a can’t-live-without utility.

A smart home in particular needs WiFi to be ubiquitous. We peaked at around 50 IP connections in our last house, a mixture of smartphones, tablets, laptops, servers, NAS, smart TVs, cameras, printers, DVRs, NVRs, Sonos zones, Chromecasts, energy monitors, weather stations, air quality monitors, doorbells, bulbs and other IoT devices and sensors.

Ground Up Network Design

So then, with our new build it’s a terrific opportunity to design and build a best-in-class home LAN from the ground up. here are some of our requirements and considerations…

Fast – At the heart of the system I’ll need a new Gigabit Switch. I’m putting in another 19″ rack in the new house so it needs to be rack-mountable too. 10gb network equipment is still pretty pricey and I’ve no hardware that supports it yet, so no need for it currently. We are installing CAT6a though (Augmented category 6), so the wires will be in the walls ready for a 10 gig future when it comes.

Roaming – I need a WiFi network with multiple WAPs (wireless access points) deployed around the house, maximising coverage. The system has to be able to use a single SSID and perfectly hand off devices from one WAP to another as they roam around the house. There ought to be scope for other SSIDs for a guest network and possibly another for IoT devices too. Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) won’t be ratified until sometime in 2020 so we’ll be sticking with 802.11ac (Wave 2 MU-MIMO) for now.

Modular – The WiFi in many homes comes from the ISP offered wireless router. In numerous cases this box is the only WAP in the house. On top of that it may also be the firewall and possibly the network switch too. I’m searching for a much more modular approach. Something that separates these roles to allow them to be in different locations and have much more capacity.

Choice & Expandability – A by-product of that modularity ought to be easy expandability. I want a system that can scale to any size, growing with our requirements. additionally there needs to be plenty of choice of WAPs, switches and controllers rather than having to try and fit our install around someone else’s one-box solution. The system ought to allow for easy upgrades too as technology improves.

Managed – Again, many domestic networking equipment does not offer the controls or statistics that I’m looking for. and I want to be able to easily manage and monitor my network from anywhere. All this points towards an enterprise grade solution, one aimed at businesses, or at least prosumers and techies.

Secure – much more than ever before, safety and security ought to be at the heart of a network, whether it’s at your office or your home. So I’m searching for terrific safety and security and monitoring features for our network.

Cameras – any network that we install ought to be ready for powering safety and security cameras and other PoE devices directly, without faffing about with injectors. On top of that the WiFi coverage it offers ought to also have the range and bandwidth to cope with any additional wireless cameras we want to add at a later date. There ought to be no subscriptions required, and all our recordings ought to be stored locally.

Ubiquiti UniFi

So then it’s no surprise, you already know from the title of this post that I’ve chose to install a Ubiquiti UniFi local area network in the Automated home 2.0.

It was one of the easiest decisions in the whole build so far and there was only ever going to be one choice for our new home.

I’ve already setup a commercial and several domestic Ubiquiti networks and been thoroughly impressed. The system exceeds all of our requirements and the seamless integration of all the hardware into the SDN (Software defined Network), plus the fantastic smartphone app implies I can administer it from the same screen as those other systems too. I love the combination of value, performance and reliability and the continuous software and firmware updates that bring improvements to existing features as well as adding new ones.

The next Step

In part 2 of this networking sub-series I’ll choose the components we require from the large range of Ubiquiti devices. The ones we will need to build a hard wired network with all that PoE goodness as well as a top quality Wi-Fi signal across all areas of our block constructed home.

#
Preview
Product
Rating
Price1

Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Lite access point

109 Reviews

£103.49

purchase on Amazon

2

Ubiquiti UniFi nanoHD (UAP-NanoHD) [WLAN AC, 4×4 MU-MIMO, 1733 Mbit/s + 300 Mbit/s]

273 Reviews

£142.03

purchase on Amazon

3

Ubiquiti UniFi 6 Long-Range access point U6-LR

23 Reviews

£200.50

purchase on Amazon

www.ui.com : available from Amazon

Remember to check out our Instagram to follow the project, read the rest of the Automated home 2.0 blog messages and find the links to all the products we’ve used in our self-build.

Make sure to check out all parts in this review series…

Part 1 – Why I’ve chosen UniFi for Our new home NetworkPart 2 – All Our UniFi Hardware has Arrived!Part 3 – airMAX NanoStation AC loco Wireless Network Bridge

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Last update on 2021-10-04 / affiliate links / images from Amazon product advertising API