UNIFI Preview Michael Kummer: Hey guys. It’s Michael Kummer
here and in today’s video I wanna tell you everything there is to know about how I’ve
implemented UniFi or Unifi’s networking equipment in our home to cover the house in
spotless Wi-Fi. But before we get started make sure you subscribe
to this channel and you click on the little alert button so you get notified when I publish
more tech videos like this. (Music plays and “Michael Kummer Tech”
displays on the screen) All right guys, before we get on to the house
tour where I show you how I’ve deployed UniFi in the various rooms and how my network
rack etc. looks like, I wanna just briefly tell you how I ended up with UniFi.
A couple of years ago, when we moved in from an apartment into our house, we realized that
a single router especially the one supplied by the ISP wasn’t able to cover the whole
house in Wi-Fi. If you’re watching this video you’re probably aware of the issue.
If you have anything that’s greater than the studio apartment using a single router
or a single access point or Wi-Fi router to cover everything is almost impossible. You’re
gonna have dead spots. You’re gonna have issues; weak signals, etc. And that’s something
I wanted to avoid. Right at that time some companies came out
with mesh networking technologies, like Ubiquity came out with AmpliFi. That’s a mesh networking
equipment that I’ve reviewed a lot. So check out my reviews on AmpliFi to learn more about
that. But it’s basically consumer consumer-grade,
mesh networking technology where you can deploy different nodes or mesh points if you will
and they communicate with each other and provide very good Wi-Fi coverage.
As part of my deployment of AmpliFi, I realized that Ubiquity also had a commercial brand,
UniFi. UniFi is more geared towards the mid-market, I wanna say, small, medium enterprises and
prosumers; like I would consider myself a prosumer. As a prosumer, I’ve somewhat of
a technical background. So I can configure networking equipment etc.
And so I figured, maybe UniFi would be a good choice for me because it gives you a lot of
flexibility. It’s not one device that does it all. Well, the UniFi Dream Machine kind
of is. It’s like an all-in-one, entry level, gateway drug into the UniFi platform, if you
will. But generally speaking, you get different
components with UniFi that you can swap out and upgrade as you see fit. Much like if you
put together a gaming PC you know, if you’ve different components that you can upgrade
when you see fit, instead of having a MacBook or a Mac where you can’t do anything except
upgrading the memory maybe. So I stumbled across UniFi and I decided to
give UniFi a go. And I started out with a UniFi Security Gateway, which is the router
and firewall, and a UniFi switch, an 8-port switch with Power over Ethernet.
And it had 3 Access Points: the UniFi AP HD, the high-density version, and then two Access
Point Pros that I deployed. We had, back then, at that time we had a ranch style home. 3300
square feet approximately. And so with those three access points I could cover the whole
house in Wi-Fi. I connected everything via Ethernet and the
distance between the different nodes wasn’t an issue.
And in January of this year, of 2020, we moved into a new house with three levels. It’s
the main level where most of our life happens. And then we have a partially finished basement
and a loft area and an unfinished attic that has been spray foamed that makes it easy to…you
know, laying cables and stuff. So that’s kind of the challenge that I had
at that point when we moved. I brought over all of my UniFi equipment. And I wanted to
figure out how I can best deploy them and what upgrades I would make to cover those
— at the end of the day — three levels of the house in good Wi-Fi. I also wanted
to have good Wi-Fi signal outside, you know in the backyard as well as in the front side
of the house. So let me walk you through it. And I’ll
explain you exactly how I deployed it? What devices I deployed? Why I chose them? What
I upgraded? And everything else that you need to know.
So let’s get going. (Music plays)
All right so let’s start with the house tour and I’ll point out the infrastructure
as we see it. So the first one is up here actually, just outside of the room here. That’s
one of the UniFi Access Points Pros that I have installed here, and that pretty much
covers the finished and unfinished basement. So this is part here of our basement with...you
know, kids room and everything and behind here is my YouTube studio.
So let’s walk into the unfinished section. And I’ll show you where my server rack is.
(Music plays) All right so this is our… the unfinished
part of our basement. So I chose to put my server rack here simply because the temperature
is around between 67 and 72 degrees without any AC here. So it stays relatively cool.
So here is my server rack where I have most of my equipment, and the core of it is a UniFi
Dream Machine Pro that I just recently put in by replacing the UniFi Dream Machine that
I had before. But I took out that up here. You can still see the box.
I had the UniFi Dream Machine but it was inside of the cage. The UDM has a wireless radios
built in. And there is obviously no sense in having wireless radios if you put the device
inside of a steel cage. And so I replaced it with a UniFi Dream Machine
Pro also because the UDM Pro can act as my UniFi protect machine as well. So all my UniFi
security cameras like the one up here and then the ones I have outside, they all feed
in to a 4 Terabyte drive that’s inside of the UDM Pro.
So the UDM Pro is my switch, my router, security gateway, my UniFi protect storage and controller
and the UniFi controller as well. So all that’s in here.
As I mentioned in the intro I started with a UniFi security gateway back in the days
and a separate Cloud Key. And over time I replaced it with the Cloud Key Generation
2. So you can see that here. It’s still plugged in but not used anymore. So that used
to be my UniFi protect storage before, before I replaced it with the UDM.
And up here I have a UniFi Switch Pro that in fact I bought by accident because I thought
it had Power over Ethernet ports but it doesn’t. So I’m just using it as a regular switch
and I still use the original UniFi switch that I got a couple of years ago because this
one has Power over Ethernet. So it feeds all of my access points or most of them, the Cloud
Key here that’s still plugged in, and some of the cameras.
Now from an electricity and wiring perspective, I’ve done here something that’s probably
unconventional. And I’m not sure if it’s best practice but I did it anyway because
I wanted to remove as much equipment from my office, which is upstairs, as possible,
including any uninterruptible power supplies. So I have three battery APC’s in here that
provide power in case there is an outage. And one of them is actually plugged in where
there is a cable that goes from the back of the UPS into this power outlet. And this power
outlet feeds up into my office where my iMac and all the other equipment are plugged in.
So if I unplug this guy — which would be a hot plug because it’s fed by the UPS — then
all of my office or most of my office would be powered off, offline. So I decided to do
this because I can then have the UPS down here. I don’t need it upstairs. And all
my power basically is controlled from here. The lower one; that’s the grid power. So
that feeds into a panel. In fact it feeds into this panel here. A power panel that’s
called…I labeled it with Grid. And all three UPS’s are plugged in here.
So they all feed off this appliance here that gets fed by the grid.
And then every UPS, or I have two more of these power panels and they are plugged into
one of the UPS’s each so that I can plug in all the other devices.
So basically all of my devices are battery backed up but spread out across three different
UPS’s. One is dedicated to my office, and then two for everything that I have here.
And then here is my cable modem that’s connected directly with the UDM Pro obviously. And…and
yeah, that’s pretty much it down here. And with that I would say let’s walk up.
And I’ll show you some of the other stuff that I have installed.
One thing I wanted to point out as well is you see these Ethernet cables that run across
the whole house. When we moved into this house I told the electrician that I want to have
Ethernet outlets and at least one outlet in every room. And then for every access point
and all the security cameras on the outside, I wanted to have Ethernet as well. So some
of those cables feed into my server rack obviously. The advantage of having a house with an unfinished
attic and a partially finished basement is that you get access to the main level from
both sides. So here we can…I’m sure you can see that very well. This is here a completely
unfinished area of our basement. And that sits directly underneath my office. So we
can go straight up with Ethernet and run the cables across the house. It’s super easy
and I’m really happy that’s the case here. (Music plays)
So this is the main level of the house. So my strongest access point is up there. It’s
a UniFi Access Point HD. I know that you’re supposed to install it that way but it fit
nicer like so. And it provides really good coverage across the main level here.
And then just as a sort of backup we have a second access point in the loft area. I’m
gonna show you that. So that’s up here. That used to be part of the unfinished attic.
The previous owners finished that part and put in a loft. And there is another access
point that provides pretty good coverage in addition to the one in our family room.
And then right here is my office. There is a little bit of an echo inside so the audio
might not be as good but bear with me. This is basically where most of the magic happens
in terms of all the work that I do from here. And if you wanna come around here you’ll
see that this is where, interestingly, most of my Ethernet cables end up. So I have here
a panel, obviously labeled because otherwise I would not know what’s going on.
And so all of these cables, they… some of them go down to the basement. So you can see
here there is the basement, two basement ports. So we have 2 Gigabit connections between the
switch up here and the switch down there. And then some of the other rooms and access
points that we have here. And then here I have the UniFi switch that
does have Power over Ethernet ports; eight of them and then eight regular ones. And then
one of the old UniFi switches with 8 ports that I am not using right now. But basically
here, most of the Ethernet comes in here and then from here into the basement.
The other thing I wanna point out is down there. You can see the power outlet. And this
is the outlet that is connected with the basement. So if I unplugged this guy then obviously
all of that would be dead, no power. But also the power outlet here in the floor
next to my desk that’s fed by the basement as well. And then I think there is another
one back there in the wall. All of those feed directly into the basement.
If I unplug the basement, we’d be in the dark here. Well we’d not be in the dark
but networking wise and power wise, yeah, we’d be offline.
Yeah. That’s pretty much it. And there is one more thing that I wanted
to show you that I have used to extend the reach a little bit towards the other side
of the house; the garage. So I can feed all of my IoT equipment like the garage door opener
that’s HomeKit enabled, etc. So those devices are a little bit finicky and you know…need
good connectivity. So I’ve extended that a little bit.
So let’s head out and I’ll show you that. Now we’re at the other side of the house.
This is the garage where I have the HomeKit enabled garaged door opener. Some of those
light switches are HomeKit enabled. So they are not too far away from the access point
over there but that’s like providing coverage more towards this side of the house.
So what I’ve done is down here. I think they call it the UniFi Beacon here, hidden
behind the shoe rack a little bit. But this is an access point as well that connects wireless.
So this is the only UniFi device really that is not wired up and that communicates with
the access point up there that I’ve shown you before in the family room. And that provides
more coverage on this side. So when I come in and I use Siri to open the garage or close
the garage then I have proper coverage over there.
And yeah, that was pretty much it — so a couple of access points, a couple of switches,
a UniFi Dream Machine Pro to do all the cool networking and routing and controlling, etc.
And with that let’s wrap it up. All right guys, I hope you enjoyed the house
tour. I hope you could get some tips and tricks out of what I showed you. Maybe to get ideas
on how you wanna deploy UniFi in your home or in your place of business.
Again, the reason why I chose UniFi, why I really liked the brand and their hardware
and software is because it’s super flexible. They constantly come up with new devices,
with new technology that spans beyond core networking. They have an entry solution, you
know… for doors. They have a UniFi Protect video surveillance system that I also have
deployed here. They have LED lighting panels. They have a lot of things that all integrate
nicely together. So you can really go in a lot of different directions with UniFi.
And one of the things that I really appreciate about UniFi is it’s very feature-rich – the
platform is. You can do a lot of things that are often reserved for more enterprise-grade
equipment like intrusion detection, intrusion prevention; all at wire speed basically.
So very high performance but at the same time, it’s super easy to configure.
So even if you don’t have a PhD in IT or in Networking, you can figure it out. It has
great software, great web portals and everything that makes the configuration relatively simple
if you just know a little bit about networking like IP addressing and net masks etc. If you
know that then you’re pretty much good to go and you can set up UniFi.
So let me know how you like this video by leaving a comment below and giving it a thumbs
up or thumbs down. If you have any questions about deploying UniFi, any questions about
what devices to pick, or if you wanna use the…or should you use the UniFi Dream Machine
versus UniFi Dream Machine Pro versus the UniFi Security Gateway Pro. Whatever it is
leave me a comment and I’ll either reply directly, or if I don’t know the answer
I’ll get it for you. (Music plays and “Michael Kummer Tech”
displays on screen) (End of Audio)