Part 1 | Ultimate Home Network 2021 | WiFi 6 and UniFi Dream Machine Pro

today on the hookup is part one of my updated ultimate secure smart home network guide in this two-part series i'm going to walk you through the entire process of setting up a fast secure and reliable home network using unifi products and cyber security best practices today in part one i'm going to take you through product selection wireless technologies and optimal device placement and then in part two i'll cover setup in the new unifi 6.0 controller including virtual lans firewall rules port security and intrusion detection and prevention [Music] in 2019 i put out a three-part series about setting up a unifi home network and a lot's changed since then unify has released some new software and devices wi-fi six is out and i got certified to teach networking and cyber security so it's time for an update this video is sponsored by holidaycore.com holiday core manufactures and sells everything that you need to get started with the holiday light show hobby whether you want to start out with a ready to run controller package or dive in head first and start building your own props holiday coro has you covered as expected prices are lower and technical support is more available during non-peak season so now is the right time to buy for next year if you're watching this video before january 31st check out the pre-season sales on everything that you need to have the best show on the block using the link in the description first things first let's talk about ubiquity unify unify is what's often called prosumer equipment which basically means that it's suitable and probably designed for small to medium-sized businesses but it's also been adopted by general consumers for home use traditionally the gap in pricing between home network and business networking solutions has been pretty substantial but unifi kind of split that difference making it an unbeatable value for small businesses and a compelling option for home users who want more control over their networks and based on some of the recent changes to the unified dashboard i suspect that home users are becoming an increasingly large percentage of their user base but unifies certainly isn't going to be for everybody and just like their pricing they definitely have a sweet spot unify is great but it isn't the most powerful or customizable home network possible if you're a networking professional or a home lab tinkerer with a lot of networking knowledge and experience you're probably better off piecing together your own solution using pf sense as your firewall and router conversely if you don't want to mess with any settings and you just want your router to work right out of the box then you should probably just opt for one of the many mesh wi-fi systems on the market linksys velup is the one that my network contractor friends recommend the most these days but i've also had pretty good luck with the nest and aero solutions that i've deployed for both my friends and my family however if you're in that sweet spot where you want more granular control over your networks and devices and you're able to follow tutorials and you want to have confidence in the security and reliability of your network then unify is probably for you if that sounds like your niche stay tuned and let's talk about hardware selection for equipment every network is going to consist of a few important parts including the router firewall switches and wireless access points a traditional router like you get from your internet service provider or one of those spaceship looking devices from asus actually combines all those parts into one device in the unifi lineup each part was a separate piece of equipment as of my 2019 videos and it even required an additional component called a controller that's used to manage and send configurations to each unified device but in 2020 unify released the dream machine and dream machine pro which combined the router and firewall with an 8-port switch a controller and in the case of the non-pro model a wireless access point while it's nice that these dream machine packages come at a slightly lower price than getting each piece of equipment separately the real reason to choose the dream machine or dream machine pro is the fact that they're equipped with much faster processors than the old unifi security gateway which enables them to run security related software like deep packet inspection and intrusion prevention systems that we'll talk about more in part two in fact the dream machine pro did away with all the fancy hardware offloading that their old usg routers used to do and it tackles all of your routing using a quad core arm processor running at 1.7 gigahertz this processor is the reason that the udm pro can examine all of your network traffic and check for malicious activity while maintaining three and a half gigabits per second of throughput compared to the usg whose dual core 500 megahertz processor can only muster 85 megabits of throughput with intrusion prevention enabled if you saw my last video on the dream machine you know that my first experience was not great and after two weeks of intermittent issues i reinstalled my old network equipment after a few messages with unifi support determined that i had a defective unit and i received an rma for a new one things got busy so the new replacement unit sat in the closet for the last three months but i'm happy to report that this time the install went perfectly without any issues and i was able to migrate all of my settings to the udm pro in less than an hour this could have been due to firmware updates non-defective equipment or just good luck but it was much more the experience that i was hoping for when i installed the first udn pro and what you should expect from a device that costs almost 400 all that is a long-winded way of saying that if you want to use unifi the udn pro is currently the best option for your router firewall switch and controller if you already have a unifi system in place you'll need to decide if the additional security features are worth the upgrade but if you're building a new system from scratch you should choose the udm pro over the unified security gateway in almost all cases a major complaint at the time of launch was that the udm pro required a ubiquity cloud account to be able to log in and manage your system but i'm happy to report that you can now add local administrators and completely disable the cloud account unfortunately you will still need a unifi account for the initial onboarding process but at least it can be disabled after that next let's talk about access points and wireless technology and all the hype around wi-fi six wi-fi has gone through lots of different standards over the years g 802.11b n all operate within the 2.4 gigahertz band but offered improvements in security speed and data rate by implementing new technology and protocols 802.11 ac is a set of standards that operate strictly in the 5 gigahertz frequency band but all wireless access points that are labeled as 802.11 ac also include an 802.11n router for compatibility with old 2.4 gigahertz devices as far as connection goes the 5 gigahertz frequency is superior in almost every way it has more non-overlapping channels allowing for communication with less interference it has the ability to serve multiple clients simultaneously if they support the multi-user multiple in multiple out technology and the single connection radio rate is almost three times faster than the 2.4 gigahertz band so why do 2.4 gigahertz devices still exist first physics dictates that as a waves frequency increases the amount of energy transferred from the wave to objects that it passes through will increase this is called attenuation and the more that the signal gets attenuated the less distance it will travel and the less useful and understandable the signal will be when it reaches its destination so if speed isn't the name of the game the 2.4 gigahertz band is much better at range and penetration second older 802.11n chipsets are much cheaper so if you want your iot devices to cost under 20 they're going to be using old tech which unfortunately means they won't benefit from any of the fancy new wi-fi standards 802.11ax which is being called wi-fi 6 has some revolutionary changes that will increase the speed signal and density of wi-fi networks wi-fi 6 is also the first standard that covers multiple frequency ranges from 1 to six gigahertz but as great as wi-fi six sounds it actually isn't as big of a deal as most people are suggesting because just like all the other new standards before it even though it's backwards compatible with older devices only new devices will support the new wi-fi six improvements unifi recently released their first wi-fi 6 enabled access point the unifi ap6 lite the ap6 lite has two 2.4 gigahertz antennas and two 5 gigahertz antennas for non wi-fi 6 traffic which means that compared with the unifi nano hd which has four five gigahertz antennas it will have slightly lower total throughput speeds on the five gigahertz wi-fi band for non-wi-fi six devices but if your home has a lot of iot devices which almost exclusively use that 802.11n standard and the 2.4 gigahertz frequency then the ap6 light is going to perform exactly the same as other access points like the nano hd and the flex hd with the added benefit of adding wi-fi 6 for your compatible devices and it does it at about half the cost if you already have unifi access points then upgrading your home network to wi-fi 6 is probably going to have very little effect since it's likely going to be 5 to 10 years before wi-fi 6 chipsets start appearing in low-cost iot devices but if you're deploying a network with a lot of high-performance devices like a business where customers and employees are using their cell phones and laptops then wi-fi 6 is going to give you a significant performance boost if you're building a new system there's virtually no reason to buy the nano hd or the flex hd over the cheaper and more future proof unifi 6 light and the soon to be released unifi 6 long range has the potential to increase the throughput for all of your devices with its 4x4 multiple in multiple out technology on both the 2.4 gigahertz band and the 5 gigahertz band but it's still in early access and i haven't tested it the last piece of hardware that you might need to add to your network are additional switches though it is a massive oversimplification you can think of a switch like a power strip for your network if you want to plug in a bunch of devices and you only have one outlet plugging in a power strip can give you a bunch of outlets similarly installing a switch where you have a single ethernet port will give you a bunch of ethernet ports at that location the reason i say it's a massive oversimplification is that each port on a switch has a specific address so it doesn't send every message that it receives to every connected device that would be called a hub switches come in two main varieties there's managed and unmanaged a managed switch will allow you to update its configuration to restrict ports to specific devices or virtual networks while an unmanaged switch is just plug and play without any additional configuration and while you can put an entire unmanaged switch onto one vlan you can't configure it per port the second big difference in switches is whether they have power over ethernet which means they can provide both power and data over a single ethernet line to your compatible devices my biggest complaint about the dream machine pro is that despite the inclusion of an eight port managed switch there are zero power over ethernet ports which are required if you want to connect a unifi access point without a separate poe injector in a similar failure unify's new 16 port poe switches reduced the number of poe ports from 16 to 8 without adding any additional functionality or lowering the price they did add a small lcd panel to the front but i'd definitely prefer having eight additional poe ports to a small clunky touch panel thankfully you can still buy the usw 16 150 watt which provides the exact same switching capability with 16 poe ports to power all of your security cameras access points and other poe devices adding it all up in a medium to large size house you're looking at just under a thousand dollars for a dream machine pro 16 port poe switch and three wi-fi six access points as i said before this is significantly more expensive than a mesh solution from linksys google or tp-link but much less expensive than a commercial solution from companies like aruba or cisco and the unified system is going to perform much more similarly to the commercial solutions than it will to the mesh systems placement of networking gear is something that's often overlooked but it can have a large impact on your satisfaction and the longevity of your equipment the placement of the dream machine pro and switch may depend on where your house terminates its ethernet drops but here are a few quick tips on placement the udm pro and the 16 port switch both have active cooling fans that ramp up as the internal temperature increases if you install your equipment rack in a space that you need to be silent you're going to be irritated listening to the fans ramp up and down as your network traffic changes for me the udm pro and the 16 port switch are not nearly as loud as my desktop computer so mounting them in the same rack barely changes the overall sound output putting your gear in a closet might seem like an obvious choice but be aware that most closets don't have proper ventilation and air conditioning so you may run into heat issues with your unifi equipment the maximum ambient operating temperature for a dream machine pro and the 16 port switch is only 104 degrees fahrenheit which is not to say that your entire closet would reach 104 degrees fahrenheit but the area directly surrounding your network equipment could next is placement of your access points and ubiquity has provided some specific instructions for the two mounting configurations of their disk shaped access points the strength of the signal is highest radiating out of the front of the device so ubiquity suggests mounting them on the ceiling pointed down for high density wireless environments but they recommend mounting them on the wall facing out for the longest range your specific setup might prevent you from being able to accomplish these exact configurations but as a rule of thumb if you need to mount your access point in a centralized location it should be flat against the ceiling and if you need to mount it near the edge of your coverage area you should put it vertically on the wall pointing in concrete and metal walls are going to cause wireless signal degradation in all frequencies but as i talked about before significantly more in the 5 gigahertz band if at all possible you should definitely avoid placing your access points in a room surrounded by concrete and don't attempt to provide long range coverage through a concrete wall the last thing to remember is that wi-fi is a two-way communication protocol even if you get an access point with a powerful transmitter the devices need to be able to communicate back to it it's for this reason that a few lower power access points will provide much better coverage than a single high power access point and in part two of this series i'll show you how to set up your access points with non-overlapping channels and tweak the transmitting power to ensure that they don't interfere with one another if you still have questions relating to equipment selection wireless protocols or placement leave me a comment or come join me on the hookup home automation facebook group and i'll try to answer your question as well as i can thank you so much to my awesome patrons over at patreon for your continued support on my channel if you're interested in supporting this channel please check out the links down in the description if you enjoyed this video please consider subscribing and as always thanks for watching the hotcaps

Channel: The Hook Up

Views: 322,105

Keywords: home assistant, hassio, home automation, hass.io, smart home, diy, electronics, arduino, esp8266, nodemcu, wemos d1, automation

Id: ufJ3dPAgFiM

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 27 2021