The ULTIMATE (Smart) Home Network - Part 1: Hardware Selection

today on the hookup I'm gonna tackle a project that I've been putting off for a really long time because it's overwhelming I'm gonna take down my entire network and rebuild it from the ground up over the next few videos I'm gonna tackle different aspects of building the ultimate home network and I'm going to show you exactly how to set up a powerful flexible and secure environment for your smart home this series will be broken down into three different videos hardware selection installation and migration from your old network and then advanced functionality this is part one hardware selection here we go at any given time I have between 65 and 70 devices connected to my network and the vast majority of them are Wi-Fi smart home devices I've been using Google Wi-Fi for a little over two years and honestly it's been really solid if you want an insanely easy to use product that gives acceptable results Google Wi-Fi is probably the best answer but if you're like me and you want complete control over every aspect of your network Google Wi-Fi just can't provide you with that you kind of just plug it in and then leave everything in Google's admittedly capable hands to give you an idea of how hands-off it is there isn't even a way to log into the router locally everything is configured through the cloud-based phone app which has almost no advanced functionality in this video I'm going to focus on equipment selection and due to countless suggestions from subscribers and commoners I've decided to go fold ubiquity I contacted ubiquity about doing this video and they did send me some equipment that you'll see today but it hasn't changed my opinion of any of these products building a network with unify equipment is a lot different than going to Best Buy and picking up their most expensive gaming router a high-end router like the Asus rapture does a little bit of everything it's a firewall which controls which traffic is allowed in and out of your network a router which coordinates the traffic on your network a four port switch which allows your router to send messages down different paths and a Wi-Fi access point unify takes each of these jobs and breaks them out into different pieces of equipment very similar if not exactly what you would find in a commercial network deployment doing this not for each piece to be more powerful but it also allows them to be deployed into different areas of your network before you buy anything your first step should always be to diagram out your network and determine exactly which products you'll need the first piece of equipment we're gonna look at our switches anywhere that you have multiple wired connections that need to be connected together you're gonna need a switch for your network you'll need to decide how many ports you'll need in order to accommodate your physically wired devices in your house and how many of those ports you need to be Power over Ethernet power over ethernet is a method for providing power to your devices without connecting them to an outlet and it comes in three common flavors passive 24-volt 802 3 AF and 802 380 the CliffsNotes version of the differences is that passive p OE constantly sends voltage through the ethernet cable regardless of what device is connected to the other side you need to be careful when configuring a port on your switch to be a passive p OE port because if you plug in a non p OE device to the other end it will likely destroy it or at least damage the network port the other two common standards 802 3 AF and 802 380 involve a handshake process between the p OE device and the router in this hand shake the device request p OE and determines if the router is going to be able to supply the correct voltage before any current actually travels down the cable this handshake prevents you from accidentally cooking your devices and it also removes a step of the configuration process because each device will regulate its own p OE the Ubiquiti unified switches support all three of these common p OE types so unless you're using device that has pretty extreme power requirements the unified switches will be able to deliver whatever flavor of p OE your device needs as a rule of thumb you should budget 6 watts of power for each p OE security camera on your network and 5 watts of power for each wireless access point p OE can also be accomplished without a p OE switch by using a p OE injector most unified wireless access points come with a p OE injector in the box so if you're okay with plugging in an extra AC adapter and you won't have any other POV devices on your network you can probably skip p OE altogether when my house was built in 2012 I had the Builder pre wire my house for security cameras and thankfully I insisted that he use cat 6 drops for those connections instead of the standard analog security cabling that the installer recommended I told them where I wanted each camera placed and where I wanted all the drops to be terminated I assumed since he knew that I wanted all the security camera Dupree wires terminated in one location that he would know that I wanted all the cat 6 drops terminated at the same place but you know what they say about assuming when I came by the house to take pictures of the wiring before they put up drywall I discovered that my security camera pre wires were terminated in the correct location but the rest of my cat 6 was terminated in the garage normally I would have insisted that these drops be fixed but it happened to also be the day that my wife went into labor so I had some other things on my mind moral of the story I know that in my network I'm gonna need two switches one for the security camera drop and one for the rest of the Ethernet ports in my house for my main switch I opted for a ubiquity unify us 16 150 watts because I know that I want to change my 9 analog cameras over to p OE IP cameras a second smaller switch a unify us 860 watt will connect to my other Ethernet drops and distribute the network out to the wireless access points both of the switches that I selected have power over Ethernet but the u.s. 16 150 watt has POV on every port whereas the u.s. 860 watt only has p OE over the last 4 ports and both of them are going to come in well under their maximum power rating for connected devices so I'm not worried about that once you've determined how all the wired devices will connect you're gonna need to decide which wireless access points you're gonna use in my Google Wi-Fi setup I had three different access points so to do a fair comparison I also wanted three access points in my unify system there are many different options for unify access points but three of them are much more common than the rest and the biggest difference is varying levels of a technology called multiple input multiple output or MIMO which is part of the 802 11 AC standard MIMO comes in two different types there's single-user mimo or su MIMO and multi-user MIMO or mu-mimo and to understand the difference you need to know a little bit about how Wi-Fi communication works in a normal Wi-Fi connection only one device can communicate with the access point at a time so all the other devices have to wait in line imagine a queue of people at City Hall waiting to apply for different permits but there's only one Clerk this means that every person has to wait in the queue in order to communicate with that one clerk thankfully the clerk is really fast but since each permit application process takes some minimum amount of time the more people that are in line the longer it will take for each person to get what they need su MIMO is like adding a second clerk to the equation but there's still only a single queue if a single person needs more than one permit they will ask each clerk to fill out one permit until all of them are finished theoretically this doubles the speed of the queue unfortunately if a person only needs one permit they still hold the first position in line and they occupy both clerks even though one clerk will be doing all the work for that single permit hiring more and more clerks is nice if you have a bunch of people with multiple permits but if each person only has one then it won't actually increase the speed at all in mu-mimo or multiple user mimo some devices can allow another device to use the unoccupied clerks which sounds like a huge deal and a must-have technology but the problem is that mu-mimo only applies to the five gigahertz band and the devices that we're sharing their spots in line have to both be mu-mimo compatible and that's certainly an awesome technology but it has a very limited use in smart homes since most of the smart home devices that we use connect on the 2.4 gigahertz band still MIMO will speed up your network because it will allow those devices that are transmitting a lot of data to do it very quickly here's how MIMO is implemented in the three most popular unified wireless access points the cheapest option is the unify you ap ac-lite which will run you about $80 on Amazon the AP light has two lanes available for 2.4 gigahertz MIMO and two lanes for the 5 gigahertz su MIMO this gives it a maximum theoretical speed of 300 megabits per second on the 2.4 gigahertz network and 867 megabits per second on the 5 gigahertz Network the second and most popular option is the you ap AC Pro which you can pick up on Amazon for about a hundred and thirty-four dollars the UAP AC pro has three lanes available for 2.4 gigahertz MIMO and 3 lanes for 5 gigahertz su MIMO this gives it a maximum theoretical speed of 450 megabits per second on the 2.4 gigahertz Network and 1,300 megabits per second on the 5 gigahertz Network now the third and newest option is the UAP nano HD which costs a hundred and fifty eight dollars and it has two lanes available for the 2.4 gigahertz MIMO and four lanes of that mu-mimo or multi-user MIMO on the 5 gigahertz band this means it's gonna perform the exact same as the AC light for 2.4 gigahertz traffic at 300 megabits per second but it's going to have an unmatched maximum speed of 1733 megabits per second on the 5 gigahertz Channel that's assuming of course that all the devices that are connected to 5 gigahertz are mu-mimo compatible all of these access points can be powered by 802 3a F or ATP OE and they come with injectors if you don't have a POS switch and since the idea of this video series was to build the ultimate smart home network and at the suggestion of ubiquity I decided to go with the Nano HD for my indoor access points and the UAP AC pro for my outdoor access point the UAP AC pro is actually the only one that's rated for outdoor use so it's a pretty simple decision I firmly believe however that for smart home usage the UAP AC light will give you a very similar performance to the AC pro or Nano since the vast majority of smart devices are gonna only utilize the 2.4 gigahertz band and you'll save quite a bit of money going with the light so now you've got a plan for how your devices will connect to your network you're gonna need to decide which router you're gonna use to coordinate all that traffic a popular choice for many smart home enthusiasts is the ubiquity edge max router series the edge router light is a very powerful and capable router but it isn't technically in the unified family of products so it won't interface directly with the unified controller software I'm not opposed to lengthy configurations but I am a sucker for products that work well together and for that reason alone I opted to go for the unified security gateway over the edge router you'd save about 10 dollars by getting an edge router light but for me the integration into the unified controller was well worth the extra 10 dollars speaking of the unified controller one of the products that I probably wouldn't have just myself if you BIC what he hadn't provided it for me was the unify cloud key gen 2 plus unified networks require the installation of controller software that handles all the settings configuration and monitoring of the network these controllers can be standalone devices like the cloud key or software that can be installed on hardware like a Raspberry Pi or even on your Mac or PC in fact there's even a unified controller add-on for haseo so you've got lots of options the one aspect of the cloud key gen 2 plus that isn't replicated by any of these other controllers is the integration of a relatively new unified product called unify protect this software is ubiquitous integrated NVR the cloud key gen 2 plus it comes with a one terabyte hard drive for recording video for all the unified compatible security cameras I'll be testing out those cameras against other popular POV camera brands in an upcoming video so make sure you're subscribed if you're interested in that so now you've got your hardware all planned out and it's time to address the elephant in the room price the system as I've configured it cost one thousand one hundred and forty dollars which is maybe acceptable if you set out to build the ultimate smart home network but it's a lot more than the $300 that you'd spend for three Google Wi-Fi access points and a cheap eight port switch so what are you getting for all that increase in cost first the unify system that I selected has 20 Power over Ethernet ports available for security cameras and other POV devices second the theoretical maximum speed is going to be greater with the access points that I've chosen and third and most importantly the unify system has a tremendous amount of advanced control options if you're never going to touch any of these options I probably recommend going with the Google Wi-Fi system it's plug and play and Google handles all the things like firmware updates and security patches literally without even telling you about them but if you want to take control of your network and dive into things like customized local DNS VLANs and advanced traffic monitoring you're gonna want to go with the unify system if you're feeling discouraged by the price of my system don't a very capable unify system can be built under $500 by combining a u.s. 860 watt 3 AP lights and a USG and next video I'm gonna cover the initial setup of the unify system and how to make the transition from your old network to your new one as painless as possible in the third installment in this series I'm gonna walk you through all the advanced features that I mentioned and how to set them up to make the most functional and secure IOT network possible if you're interested in purchasing any of the equipment that I talked about in this video I've got Amazon affiliate links down in the description buying from those links doesn't cost you anything extra but I do get a small percentage of the profit if you've got a question or I got something wrong make sure to leave a comment below thank you to all of my wonderful patrons over at patreon for your continued support of my channel if you're interested in supporting my 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 hook out [Music]

Channel: The Hook Up

Views: 466,796

Keywords: home assistant, hassio, home automation, hass.io, smart home, diy, electronics, arduino, esp8266, nodemcu, wemos d1, automation, unifi, ubiquiti, unify, ubiquity, router, switch, mimo, su-mimo, mu-mimo, poe, poe+, access point, ap, wifi, 802.11ac, 802.3af, 802.3at, 802.3, 16 port, 8 port, network, buy, best

Id: Z_6eDtWumsA

Length: 14min 15sec (855 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/gbdavidx]

Hopefully you talk about creating vlans and how to separate your network from smart home products

[u/mrjessup44]

Great video sums up what I’ve learned over the past year besides GLANS. When you make your vlan video make sure to cover how to separate ipcams

[u/Gametris]

Well done on the video.

[u/RedRocker55]

Nice video

[u/Wildcard36qs]

Great breakdown of information making it easier for the average person to understand. Looking forward to your next videos.