How much does a nice Ubiquiti network cost?

so you've decided to build a house and put a nice Network into it but you're looking for maybe some options if you see me on Tick Tock you know that we really promote the ubiquity line of products and I love a nice Network head-in like the one you see right here so I wanted to just take a little time to kind of break down some costs for you what does it cost to put in a nice system like this in your new construction home and have a nice Network head in with Wi-Fi built into the property so today we're going to dive into that we're going to just break down if you were to put this exact same thing in your home with some access points what would something like that cost so here we go hi guys my name is Tim tritch and welcome to the ethernet blueprint Channel where we really focus on helping people get network cabling pulled throughout their new construction home in a way that helps them have a great Network great Wi-Fi we talk about future proofing and just everything you can do during that building process to be able to have a nice functional Network in your home because once the walls go up there's not much you can do after that at least affordably so for today's video we're going to be talking about some costs now if you follow me on Tick Tock or you've seen my other stuff I do um I'm pretty prone to the ubiquity product especially with a new construction home I think their model fits that size of project really well and their equipment is actually fairly affordable there are a few other models out there a few other players in this field that have also made some attractive Solutions so Meraki go for example and tp-link omada have also got some very affordable access points and hit Network head in that's Cloud managed that allows you to remotely manage it it's going to be better than you know going down to Best Buy and picking up some sort of a mess system but also not Enterprise level where you got to pay ridiculous costs and license fees and all this crazy stuff so today we're going to focus on what would it cost to put this system in a house but just know that what we're talking about probably is pretty similar across the line with the networks that you've been looking at um the other thing is that I want to talk about cost wise is actually putting in something like a network rack is it expensive is it cheap is it you know gonna take the price point to another level we're going to talk about that today too so you would know what it takes to build exactly something like this with some Wi-Fi access points in your home to be able to have great Wi-Fi coverage so let's break this down a little bit and talk about some costs so the first cost I want to talk about is with the network rack itself so this rack here is by rackpath it is a 6u open frame rack you can actually work on it from all different angles which I actually really like if you have your cabling done nice and neat an open frame rack is really functional because it's easy to work on and also I think it adds a certain sex appeal to your network you could do a network shelf and I'm sure we can make things look really nice but there's just something about a network rack that makes things look better now this particular Network rack like I said is open frame from rackpath there's a lot of them out there but this particular one is 88 so it really doesn't add a ton of cost to put something like this in there was some assembly required but it only took about five minutes to put together and it's really sturdy not going anywhere and it houses the equipment very nicely now they do make a couple different sizes of this this is a 6u rack or what we refer to as a 6u rack they make 9u 12u 15U and they just keep on going there are other types of racks as well so you can have a fully enclosed rack there's floor rack models that sits on the floor with maybe some casters and then there's ones that are as tall as me be a full size 42u or 48u rack that you could also put in your house if you have a lot of equipment but for something as simple as a network I like to go with something easy and kind of compact like this all my network equipment fits into it really nice and it just gives it a nice clean look so like I said this one here is um 88 and then you're probably going to need some fillers some little things that kind of make it nice so in this particular rack I have some horizontal cable management and I also have a couple what we refer to as a 1u brush plates so brush plate allows you to run cabling through but still kind of gives it that nice solid look I don't like using brush plates if you're running all your cables through because they'll all start to kind of move together and kind of make a big hole but that's where something like this is going to come in handy but between all the plates you see in front of you this these two brush plates and this horizontal management you're talking around between 40 and 50 bucks so again not a lot of cost now you may have a need to put a shelf in yours and shelves would go in here they just mount in and it just gives you a shelf and you can actually set your equipment on it works great for like say a speaker amp or maybe your NVR isn't maybe you have a camera system with an NVR it doesn't rack mount but it's you know sits in here so you can actually set it on a shelf most shelves run between 25 and 30 bucks a piece depending on how deep a one you get or how big but they are a nice addition for equipment that isn't actually rack mountable now just one thing I want to comment on that is if you do if you are stacking stuff on a Shelf typically you might need a little bit more space because when you put things on a shelf they set up and they're actually taking up you know two spots so if your shelf is down here you know you might not be able to put another piece of equipment up um you might have to put it mounted a little higher which means you might need a little bit more rack so depending on what you're trying to fit and your rack will really determine what size you need so between the rack and the horizontal cable management and the brush plates you're really not looking at much cost it was very simple to install just make sure you hit a stud so it stays securely wherever you're at okay the next thing I want to talk about is the UPS so I'm a big believer in having a UPS in your rack and what this really boils down to is just being able to provide your rack with some nice clean power for the most part all UPS's are different they come in a lot of different flavors and costs I try to co middle of the road and find something affordable so this particular wrap rack Rack mounted UPS is actually made by cyberpower is a 500 VA um UPS rack mountable has a cover so you don't accidentally buff the power and really is a nice addition to our rack here it doesn't take up a lot of space it's not a deep form factor so you got plenty of room to work behind it it comes with four ports on the back that are both battery backup and surge protection as well as two that are just surge protection only so it really makes a nice addition to any rack now before I move on to the equipment I want to touch base about patch panels I can already see the questions coming I have a lot of people ask me where's your patch panel where's your patch panel patch panels are really great matter of fact my normal rack for my home this is my lab environment but my normal rack for my home I do use a patch panel and what that allows me to do is a couple things one you do get some nice Clean Jumpers and it allows me to color coordinate my cable so on my particular rack I ask some you know some yellow cables that are my access points some red cables that run to certain rooms in my house and then I have some different colored cables for my cameras and just things like that so when I look at my switch I can see a whole bunch of different color corded color coordinated cables here and I know which ones are access points and and whatnot so a lot of people will be looking this video and going all right where's your patch panel why aren't you using one so here's my thoughts on that agree or disagree this is my thought so one thing about a patch panel that I don't like is the ports go all the way across so Port one would be over here two three and so on but if I wanted if my switch you can see a lot of times my switches have the ports over to this side so if I'm jumpering I'm having a jumper all the way across to get to those ports I like stuff to look a little bit more vertical more straight up and down I think it gives it a nice cleaner look that's me personal sometimes people that may not bother a lot of you but it's something that kind of bothers me they just this the patch panel people and the switch people need to get together and kind of figure things out so we can just jumper straight down and not have to need certain length of patch cables to go here and then shorter patch cables here it just to me it doesn't look as clean now one thing I will tell you is we are terminating our Riser cable right here and a lot of people will say that's a No-No they'll say that because this is solid core Riser cable that when you crimp the ends they don't go up into the solid core copper part of the cable very well and you leave yourself open to issues down the road when you when you punch this down on a on the back of a patch panel it terminates it in a way where that copper sits in between two metal pins like this and so it ensures because it's a V and it's just kind of pinching it that you get a better connection and I will not disagree with that that is 100 true you will get a better connection with a patch panel than you would by actually crimping the ends on however I will also say this we buy nice ends not the cheap knockoff kind that are you know real they they sell them really cheap these are cat 6 pass-through ends and we spend a little extra money on getting some nicer ones and I am yet in out of the last 10 years that I've been doing this had had to go back and re-end the cable because the connection all of a sudden was loose or got bad I just haven't run into it I haven't found a need to not to not do it this way I just there hasn't been a good enough reason for me to use a patch panel every time so when I look when I'm talking to you guys the home user who's going to be doing this on their own if you can just put ends on Riser cable and not have to buy the patch panel by the punch down tool buy a whole bunch of different jumpers that adds cost to your bill and since we're talking about costs I'm guessing your patch panel is going to be around 40 or 45 bucks your punch down tool I don't even know what those things cost but a nice one's probably going to be 40 or 50 bucks and then you're gonna have to buy a bunch of various length cables you know so you're talking a couple bucks of cable which isn't much but again right now we're just talking about putting some ends on and everything just works so and in my personal opinion it looks cleaner so before all my patch panel haters out there or lovers out there comment on this I just want to let you know where I'm coming from I just haven't found a big enough reason to install one in every single case I just I haven't found it now there's a lot of things in regards to the patch fail it's the last thing I'll say in regards to the patch panel there's a lot of things you can do to still give it a nice clean look I could run cable down into cable management hide the cable around the back and come up into my switch so it goes straight down here and then straight up into my switch however now I need a bigger rack because I have my patch panel I have my cable management for that I have my equipment and then I have my actual cable management for here so instead of buying a 6u rack like I have here maybe I need a 9u or a 12u to house that additional space needed for that patch panel to make it look nice to my specifications so again this is personal preference guys I've been doing this a long time and I just haven't had a really solid reason to go back and put a patch panel on every one of my jobs I just haven't seen the need to add the cost now you may agree or disagree and that's okay but I want to focus on cost and that would be a cost that you would need to factor in if you were looking to add a patch panel to your rack let's talk about costs on our physical equipment that's the part you're probably wanting to know about anyway so this top piece of equipment right here is ubiquiti's udm Pro now there is a couple flavors of it this is the regular udm Pro there is a udm pro se special edition that has a couple more feature sets but really I think you get a lot of bang for your buck with this particular device and some of the benefits that come with the SE um you can accomplish by just getting a little bit nicer switch so I don't know that there's a big reason to make the upgrade however take a look at the differences between the SE and the regular udm if you're curious in your particular case maybe you can avoid buying a switch altogether by paying a little bit extra for the nicer model because it does have it does involve some some stuff with the switch Port here so the udm pro is ubiquities router firewall uh NVR camera recorder network controller it does door access it does it does Voiceover IP phones there's all sorts of pieces built into this device all in one really nice piece of Hardware that only costs 379 bucks so you really get a lot of bang for your buck now that doesn't include your hard drive so if you'd like to put a hard drive in you plan on using some of the ubiquity cameras you'll need to provide a hard drive in here as well and I believe you can put up to an eight terabyte hard drive depending on how much recording how many cameras you have how far back you want to go and that sort of thing right now for my intents and purposes I have a one terabyte hard drive in here because this is just a lab environment now there are some really cool things that this device can do first and foremost it can handle up to 10 gig connection so you can put an SFP in here either copper or fiber that will handle up to 10 gig on your Wan side there's also a 10 gig Lan side port 2 so you can actually run 10 gig between it and your switch and have a nice 10 gig back plane which is really really nice it comes with an eight Port switch built right into it this is a smart switch it can do vlans and all sorts of things that you can do with a Smart Switch none of these ports are poe just so you know and it just really is a powerful device now the Wi-Fi in the network and the switch and all the configurations that we do throughout our entire home are actually done in this udm Pro it is the controller for the network and so basically what that means is you make your configuration changes in one place and it sends out all of that information to all of your equipment so when I make my Wi-Fi name I'm actually logging into this device programming my Wi-Fi name and then it sends that information out to all my access points switches and any device that needs to know about that why Wi-Fi name okay so 379 really really a lot of value for the for what you get and very affordable it can do things like content filtering so you could for example create say like a kids network on this device where and a kids Wi-Fi network and then you could do application protection so you could you know block pornographic content or vpns or things like that so it has some built-in application control and stuff like that as well that make it a really nice uh piece of equipment for any home network especially ones with kids and whatnot 379. the next piece of Hardware in here is ubiquity 16 Port 150 watt Poe fully managed switch now this I like this switch if you're not worried about the 10 gig speeds this switch you really get a lot and the reason I like it is because of how much power it has Poe is becoming more of the norm right now even Poe lighting and stuff like that is becoming more of the norm so our access points cameras all that use Poe to be able to turn on that's power over ethernet so this actually provides 150 watts of power by itself and you get Poe on all 50 all 16 ports which I actually really like a lot of Poe switches only the first eight ports are Poe and then the rest ones are just regular ports and that's how that's what they do to kind of keep costs down all right and a lot of them also Capper out especially this size of switch cap out around 95 watts of power so you're limited on how many devices you can run off a certain switch so you really get a lot of bang for your buck on this now even with it only limited to one gig at 299 dollars you get a lot of switch here fully managed you can do vlans and everything you get all that Poe output it does have the ability to use sfps and run a fiber or copper one gig connection between it and the router just a lot of nice function built into a switch now I want to talk about switches just a little bit in regards to this guy if you need more horsepower or more power or you want that 10 gig capability ubiquity makes a pro series of their switch so there's a 16 Port Pro Series I believe there's I know there's a 24 Port Poe Pro there's a 48 Port Poe Pro obviously the cost is much higher I believe the 24 Port Poe Pro is in the 500 to 600 range so it's going to cost you a little bit more but with that you get some enhancements right you're going to get 10 gig capabilities so you could go from your us your udm pro to your switch and get a 10 gig connection between them either copper or Fiber your choice you're also going to get some Poe plus and Poe plus plus ports so some Poe devices require higher more power than others and so in a case like this if a device is poe plus plus I am unable to power that device with this switch I would have to use a power injector that either comes with a device or I'd have to purchase one separately so the pro series switch while you are paying more money you do get more power I think the 24 Port is like 400 watts so you get quite a bit more power and again all the ports are Poe but like I was talking about with the some of the other Poe switches only certain ports are Poe plus plus and other ports in the switch are just regular Poe plus ports so a lot of Poe and plus plusing in that part of the conversation but this particular switch right here 299 dollars you really it's going to power your APS for you it's going to power some cameras for you and it's going to do a really great job and you just get a lot for your money all right next we're going to talk about access points so my go-to access point right now with Wi-Fi 6 being so popular is ubiquiti's U6 LR that is what this is it is a ceiling mounted access point so really great for new construction homes where you actually map out and plan where you want your Wi-Fi to be simply pull like Cat6 or cat 6A line to a ceiling location put it in a single gang box you can mount this AP and you get Wi-Fi in all directions so it allows you to get Wi-Fi positioned in the middle of a room as opposed to a mesh system or a third-party wi-fi system that has to plug into a wall and usually has to sit over near a wall this allows you to get Wi-Fi in the center of the room and they're a really effective way to get Wi-Fi this particular U6 LR 179 dollars for one so if you needed three you kind of do the math now the reason I really like the LR specifically is it's it's a really powerful AP the antennas in it are pretty strong and you get some pretty good distance instances from this thing and it's been um it's been kind of my go-to for any new construction home where we've helped on the project typically I don't do more than three maybe four of them but it'd have to be a pretty big house to need four access points of this nature so three goes a really long way and they and they seem to work really well now if you're interested in specs I don't want to get too into details but this is a four by four memo or multiple user multiple input multiple output so it can handle four simultaneous Wi-Fi six devices at the same time simultaneously nice little power nice little device all run off of Poe Plus all right the next one I want to talk about is the U6 in-wall and the U6 in-wall is a little bit different it's not designed to go on your ceiling it's actually designed to go into a box on the wall now I really like these guys for an office for a couple reasons one there's a four port fully managed switch on the bottom of it so you put one ethernet into it you mount it on the wall and you get a four port switch right out the bottom which is really nice so when you think about an office situation you could run one wire to the office Mount this in here you ensure that office is going to have great Wi-Fi coverage because the access points right there and you have a four port switch to hook up your printer maybe a desktop computer scanner what other stuff may be in your office without having to run all the extra cables so I really really like this guy the U6 in-wall also runs 179 dollars and it's just a really great access point it doesn't have a strong a signal as say the U6 LR ceiling mounted kind so you may need if you're only doing this kind of Wireless in your house you may need to sprinkle a little bit more of them around the other part of it is is because they're on a wall they're kind of the downside that they have the same downside as more of a consumer grade because there are near a wall you don't really put them in the middle of a room as often unless you wired them that way one other really nice benefit to these is we've actually mounted them behind TVs so you actually use the ethernet line behind there for your TV you got good Wi-Fi in your living room and then you can use these ports to physically hardwire your your smart TV or your smart device or your Roku or whatever so they sit pretty flush with the wall and as long as it works with your TV bracket they work really well so I really like the U6 in wall all right last I want to talk about outdoor Wi-Fi Now ubiquity has a ton of access points so if this Peaks you're interested all I encourage you to go down to their store and just take a look at what they have to offer they they really have a ton of stuff including a Wi-Fi 6 Enterprise version of their AP which adds these six gigahertz Channel I believe it's an extra hundred dollars and it's at 279 so it is going to cost you a little bit more but you actually are able to get that six gigahertz frequency that you that's offered with Wi-Fi 6E so kind of a cool thing now let's talk about outdoor Wi-Fi guys when you're building a house you have the perfect opportunity to extend your Wi-Fi from inside to outside so if you plan on entertaining outside maybe you have a pool or a barbecue pit area or something or even a dock maybe there's an area where you have a boat you're on a lake and you want some coverage out at your dock you're going to want to run a line out for outdoor Wi-Fi now this particular access point is Wi-Fi 5 but it's really really powerful and still does a great great job this is the AC mesh Pro and runs 199 dollars now you can see it's pretty good size right it's a good size AP um so it's gonna you know if it sits on your house it's going to take up some space however this thing will shoot signal really far I've shot these things close to 100 yards and still was able to pick up Wi-Fi signals so this guy is pretty powerful just so you know they have a non-pro series of this and it's called the AC mesh outdoor Wi-Fi access point and it's more of a pencil looking so it's really thin and just has a couple antennas that stick out that you can kind of adjust and it's 99 works really well you just don't get quite the distance so if you're if you're outdoor entertaining area is close to the house and you don't want something as big like this attached to the side of your house then maybe elect to go with that outdoor Wi-Fi pencil and pencil style access point to you know cover that area without be and still be a little bit more inconspicuous so really really great outdoor options they're made to be out in the elements here in the Midwest we get snow and all that stuff we we leave them out all year long they're not going to hurt anything so really really nice access points also able to be powered off a Poe plus switch so you don't even need a special switch to power them which is nice okay so that about covers pricing now the next thing I want to do is let's put this all together let's kind of wrap this up so what would stuff cost if what would all this cost if you were wanting to just put the rack the switch everything if you do the math and add up everything individually and let's say you're running three access points without the outdoor Wi-Fi you're going to be looking around 1500 bucks around 1700 if you run the outdoor access point so I know that maybe seems like a lot of money but at the end of the day you're building in an architecture and an infrastructure that's going to last you for years to come the important part and the part that we preach about is the wiring okay so the wiring is the important part you're building this home you have exposed beams you can get wires wherever you need them very very easy so at ethernet blueprint we really really encourage you to plan this out let's let's get this picked out let's design this thing from the start how many switch ports are you going to need how much power are you going to need are you running cameras let's future proof your home and in fact we have a guide that actually is designed to help you there's a link in the description here that is actually designed to help you do just that it is our ethernet blueprint complete planning guide that's literally designed to help someone from start to finish make sure they have wiring in the right place including making suggestions where you're on wiring in your house how to wire up the dmarc so you make sure that any internet provider can get their service back to your rack how to plan a nice Network head end where to put your network head in and everything so it really covers the gamut so when you're building your home it takes a lot of the guesswork out and ask the right questions and talks you through the right processes so you can plan this thing from the start because once the walls go up it's kind of too late and things start to get expensive we even talk about future proofing and best ways to do that so on that subject the last thing I'm going to talk about is the physical cabling I know we're talking about pricing of equipment but this kind of ties into pricing as well typically our standard has been pulling Cat6 cabling into a new construction home it's been the standard now for a while up from Cat5e however with 10 gig on the rise cat 6 can only do one gig for 100 meters and so typically that's more than enough distance in your home to be able to run one gigabit connections everywhere now one gig is plenty fast it's going to help you stream it's going to help you run your music it's going to help you do that sort of thing but there's a lot of people out there who like the idea of future proofing their home so they never need to worry about this again the the common example that comes up is the intercom system man when intercoms were the rage back in the day they stuck one in every house and now we can't even reuse the wiring for an intercom system and most of the times we're either pulling them out and patching up the holes in the wall we just don't use them anymore and so you know people as if you're building your forever home you know what can we do right now to get a little bit more future proof and the answer is cat6a you're going to want to run cat6a to the locations in your home specifically TVs access points maybe in your maybe in your office I mean I don't think everywhere in your house needs 10 gig but if you're running cables anyway you might as well just run it everywhere and it gives you the ability for cat or for 10 gig speeds everywhere throughout your home guys that is going to protect you for years to come I just don't really see the homes needing 40 gig or 100 Gig for what we use now I don't have a crystal ball any more than the next guy but I just don't really see things going that crazy when I was a data center guy that was at the speeds we were doing in a data center that had multiple sites connecting back I mean a standard home needing that I just can't see it but 10 gig I can absolutely see so if it's something that concerns you maybe spend a little bit extra money because it is going to cost you a little bit more and pull cat 6A to all your locations instead of just regular Cat6 all right so that wraps up this video on costs again we have some help in the guide we are also putting together some courses about how to build a network head in that looks just like this whether it's a rack or a network shelf so you can no matter what equipment you use you don't have to use ubiquity for that it'll work with any equipment it just teaches you how to plan this out and how to make this thing look really nice just like the model right here behind me we also have a course on how to um install ubiquity specifically I think a lot of people get intimidated by like I don't know anything about that we actually have a course that will show you start to finish how to buy this exact equipment and set it up from start to finish including vlans kids networks how to do some of the the advanced settings like um some of the application blocking and stuff like that and you don't need to be a network genius by any means you don't even have to have a network background we'll kind of walk you through how to do it start to finish so you anyone can have a nice Network like this built in your home so I encourage you to check out those links thank you for making if you made it to the end of this video thank you for sticking with us and we hope to see you in future videos

Channel: Ethernet Blueprint

Views: 25,582

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Id: lyLL94TFMxs

Length: 30min 26sec (1826 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 01 2023