UniFi Dream Router - THIS is ALL you need!

so last year when i made a video about my unifi home network i mentioned that even after two years i wasn't going to upgrade anything because everything was working great well more than a year has passed since that video and although it's still been working great i just couldn't resist upgrading a few things in my last video i upgraded my non-unifi 10 gig switch to the unifi switch aggregation and in this video i'm gonna talk about my latest upgrade this thing the unifi dream router which just may be the only unified device that most people need hi everyone welcome to another tech talk with samir where i talk about anything and everything related to technology and my life so i keep saying this over and over again but unify is like a black hole once you dip your toes into the ecosystem you get sucked right in and i'm definitely a victim of this so when i first got into the unifi ecosystem all i was looking for was a way to have multiple access points for my home to have even coverage throughout the house i initially just hooked up the access points to the asus router i had at the time and it did exactly what i needed it to do but to even set up the access points i needed to install the unified controller on a computer on the network after you set up the controller and start digging around you get hooked onto all the beautiful visualizations with different stats and graphs within the controller interface the other thing that becomes very apparent very quickly is how much more you can potentially see within the interface if you had compatible unified devices and that's how they get you so i went ahead and got a unified poe switch so that i didn't have to use the poe injectors for the access points then i decided to get a 24 port switch because i wanted to wire up more of my devices then i found out that to do firewall configurations within the controller you need to have a unifier router so i ended up replacing my asus router all together with an unifi router the unifi security gateway or usg for short that completed my chain of unified devices i had my routers switches and access points all switched over to unified devices and i bet i'm not the only one that went through this chain of events so what if there was one device that kind of consolidated all of these things well here it is this is the unifi dream router this box is actually empty i actually took it out and have been using it for a few days now but let's pretend it's still in there long story short this is a router a switch and an access point all in one device but you might say hey samir the little modem from my internet provider is also all three of those things in one device on top of being a modem to you i say yeah you're absolutely right but you're also probably one of those people that are complaining about how bad your wifi is at home let's face it the all-in-one modems that your isp provides aren't exactly the best devices and are generally quite limited in functionality this device on the other hand opens up a whole world of possibilities some are probably beyond what you need for your home the udi just recently became available for purchase and i was lucky enough to order one before it totally sold out it cost 200 bucks but some people were able to get it for around 80 bucks when it was offered as an early access product a while back but as you'll see even at 200 bucks this thing might be a steal compared to other unifi alternatives out of the box you get just the udr itself along with a power cable i'm actually pretty surprised by how compact the udr is honestly looking at the photos on the website i thought this was physically a lot bigger than it actually is i think it's because i expected the footprint to resemble their access points but it's definitely a much smaller footprint looking at the udr itself you have a small lcd display in the front as i mentioned in my last video unifi is adding these small screens to many of their devices to show you things like throughput and some other information it can be handy for troubleshooting from time to time but it's not a screen that you'll be looking at too often also the screen on the udr is not a touch screen unlike the one from my switch from my last video on the back of the udr you have five rj45 ports one of them is your wan input so that's where you'll be plugging in the connection from your isp's modem the other four ports are basically a four port switch and two out of the four ports are actually power over ethernet specifically 802.11 af poe so you can use it to power a couple of access points or cameras if you have devices compatible with that standard of poe right above the rj45 ports you have a micro sd slot this is actually to store video footage for their security cameras through unifi protect if you open up that kind of worms now the udr does have gigabytes of built-in storage so you don't necessarily need to put in a card in there but as we all know video footage can take up a lot of space so 128 gigs might not be enough if you plan on having 24 7 recording however it might be enough for just motion triggered recording for a couple of cameras one thing to note is that even if you add a micro sd card it doesn't exactly expand on the onboard storage it's just one or the other so if you put in another 128 gig micro sd card it's not going to give you 256 gigs of storage in total you'll still only have 128 gigs of usable space so if you're planning on using a micro sd card make sure to get one that's larger than 128 gigs currently i'm not using any unifi cameras to test out unify protect but i do plan on switching my ring doorbell to an unified doorbell eventually so this may come in handy for me down the road looking at the top of the udr i believe this is where the access point antenna is located it's dome shaped with a blue ring light surrounding it similar to their ceiling mount access points but much smaller the built-in access point is capable of wi-fi 6 with 4x4 mimo technology if i'm just reading the spec sheet it seems similar to their unifi 6 long range access point but i don't have one of those to compare to so we'll just have to test this out by itself to see how it performs overall the udr looks a bit like smart home speakers similar to apple's homepod and is definitely something you can potentially put in your living room but on the other hand you can't really wall mounted or rack mounted so it's basically catered more towards people that want to keep it in the open rather than someone like me who intends on hiding it in a closet and you probably should keep it in the open to maximize the wi-fi range from the udr by the way this isn't the first device unifi has made with this type of form factor the original dream machine was also like this let's go ahead and hook this up and configure everything since i have an existing unifi router and controller in my environment what i'm going to do is migrate everything over to the udr so that all my settings and configurations remain the same to do that i first had to make a backup of my existing controller which is just the software installed on a windows computer one thing to keep in mind is that if there's a mismatch of the controller versions from the old one to the new one there might be issues restoring the backup later so it's always best to update your controller before doing the backup once i had the backup it was time to wire up the udr for the initial setup now you can take apart your existing setup and just connect everything the way it's eventually gonna be but that will take down your network for however long it takes you to configure the least intrusive way to do this is to connect the wan port of the udr to a lan port of your existing network and connect the computer you'll be using to set up to one of the lan ports of the udr this way the udr still gets internet from your current network during the setup without interrupting your current network after getting the udr physically connected and powered on it's just a matter of opening up a browser and going to the ip address 192.168.1.1 after that just follow the prompts on the screen to do the initial setup along the way it does ask you if you want to restore from a backup but you can also skip it and do it at a later time from the settings which is what i did because i wanted to see what the initial setup process looks like so after the initial setup you get to what unify calls unify os within unifios the network controller is an app that runs on it along with protect which is their security camera system controller talk which is their voice over ip controller and access which is their physical access controller now if i were to make a bet i don't think anyone will be getting this device to use for talk and access but it's there for anyone that wants to try one thing to keep in mind is that you can only have two of these applications running at the same time and my guess is that for most people it will just be network and maybe protect anyways going back to the network controller the first thing you should do is check for updates because like i said earlier a mismatch inversions between the old controller and the udr might cause some issues while restoring once everything is up to date it's just a matter of restoring from the backup we took from the old controller after the restore the ip address of the udr will actually change to the previous router's ip address so the page might not refresh on its own because the default ip address is no longer valid unless of course if your old router's ip address was also the default one at this time go ahead and disconnect your current router and controller and wire up the udr in the place of your old router so the wan port goes to your modem and the lan ports connect to everything else downstream after that if you use your old router's ip address on a browser you should be able to log into the controller again and everything should pick right back up exactly how it was with your old controller let's talk about performance one issue i had with the old usg was that if i turned on intrusion detection and prevention i couldn't get the advertised speeds from my internet provider because of this i had to keep those settings turned off on the udr however i get full speeds turning on those settings didn't have any effect on my internet performance at all now keep in mind i only have 350 megabit internet connection so i'm not exactly pushing too many limits however i did read online that some people with gigabit internet was experiencing some performance issues so if you're someone with gigabit internet it's possible that you might sacrifice some speeds with the intrusion detection and prevention turned on but if your internet speeds are similar to mine the udr will not be limiting your speeds if you have those settings turned on when it comes to wi-fi like i said before the udr does have a built-in access point well the only way i could really test this was by disconnecting my other access points and seeing the range and throughput i get with just the udr itself now keep in mind my udr is located in a closet which is closed off from the rest of the house with doors and walls so it's not exactly an ideal location to do range tests that being said whatever results i get the chances are that a more practical placement will probably get better results so i used unify's wi-fi man mobile app to do this test it uses ar to map out a heat map of the wi-fi strength as you walk around the house and i was actually quite surprised at how usable the signal strength was even at the most extreme locations within the house i live in a relatively large two-story house so it's not exactly ideal to use just one access point for a house like this but even then the udr performed very well even the throughput was fine for casual use wherever the signal was the lowest one thing to keep in mind is that my phone is connecting using the 5 gigahertz band so it's not as good at penetrating walls as 2.4 gigahertz that being said with 2.4 gigahertz you're likely to get more interference so factor that in if you're trying to evaluate how this will perform in terms of range and throughput in your home but overall i think for a lot of people the udr might just be enough for wi-fi coverage especially if they live in an apartment or a smaller house so what's going to be the role of the udr in my setup well my goal was to consolidate some of my devices to simplify my network previously i had the usg for my router i had the controller running on a windows computer and i had a small poe switch to power my access points and with the udr i'm able to consolidate all three of these functionalities in just one device like i said the udr has two poe lan ports so i'm just connecting my access points to that by the way i can only do that because my access points support 802.11 af poe so depending on your access points you may still need to buy a separate poe switch or poe injectors so my network currently looks like this i have my isps router going into the wan port of the udr then i have my two access points connecting to the udr directly using the poe ports then i have my 24 port switch connecting to one of the other lan ports on the udr most of my wired lan devices connect to this switch and from the 24 port switch i have an sfp connection connecting to my 10 gig switch for all my 10 gig devices and that's it my home network setup went from having six core components to just four by switching to the udr my modem the udr the 24 port switch and my 10 gig switch however my setup isn't exactly what the average person will need for the average person getting just the udr might be enough for their networking needs you have the router a seemingly impressive access point a built-in network controller and some ethernet ports it's a great starting point to get into unifi and the flexibility will be there for anyone looking to expand within the unifi ecosystem for those looking for a more prosumer type of router device unify has a few other options like the dream machine pro and the dream machine pro sc and their new uxg pro but those are significantly more expensive and they require separate access points to even get started with wi-fi they're basically geared towards people that are either network enthusiasts or it admins for small businesses even the original unified dream machine is priced hundred dollars more than the udr and that thing is actually not as feature packed as this one so for majority of the people looking for home setups the udr just might be the best unified device for their needs by the way i'm not a network engineer so i'm basically just learning all of this stuff on the fly so if you have any suggestions on anything i could do better with my unifi setup leave them in the comments below anyways i hope you enjoyed this video please make sure to subscribe to the channel and hit the thumbs up button for the youtube algorithm this is a very small channel and every bit of your support goes a long way as always stay safe and i'll see you again on the next one

Channel: TechTalk with Samir

Views: 72,289

Keywords: 10 gigabit networking, unifi, unifi dream router, unifi 10 gig swich, unifi switch aggregation, unifi dream machine, UDR, ubiquiti, home networking, unifi 10 gigabit switch, affordable unifi router, all in one unifi router, small business network, home network upgrade, fiber internet, home network revamp, USG, unifi dream machine pro, unifi dream machine pro SE

Id: tI9mY_IA2D4

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 02 2022