I think I'm in a similar situation, most of my streaming devices, a couple of nest cams, and two PCs are all connecting to one node.
Yeah, the price is definitely a downside of Ubiquiti. I imagine ease of setup is probably a + for eero/google/orbi as well.
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I think I when I started looking for a standalone wifi solution, netgear was just beginning to market Orbi widely, and I'd already bought my first ubiquiti device, so I didn't pay much attention.
Now I can't imagine switching, although I'm dreading replacing my APs for wifi 6!
The plus for UniFi gear would be that if you get certain APs you can aggregate the two ports on them back to the switch. Also PoE so you could put it in a spot without a power outlet near by.
I canāt remember if the UniFi APs have faux mesh capabilities, thought I read it somewhere.
Care to share where youāre basing this from? Really interested in reading what youāve read. I was under the impression that their privacy reputation is a bit better than the other big players right now.
Didn't mean to imply they were worse than the other "big players (google/apple)" just that eero's focus has ALWAYS been privacy and security and I don't like knowing that a company's "parents" specialize in opposite.
I've own Google Products, I accept their TOS, I'd do the same if I bought an Amazon product. It just disappoints me that a company like eero could be forced to change their underlying policies. This could just be my inner-paranoid speaking out.
IMHO Amazon is in the business to sell products, I think they are less concerned about selling users as a product.
I assume that Amazon is more concerned about using any of your data to make them more money internally rather than sell it externally. I also assume that they are big enough to not have to do this.
I would be very interested to know how using their HA related products stack up to the rest. They do own Ring and Blink, so you can see the push to bring and intergrate very good products into their environment. Hereās to hoping they keep privacy at the top of the list for Eero.
I tend to feel better about the Echo Show in my kitchen than say that Facebook Portal device. This is from both a technical security standpoint and a privacy one.
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All good points...
I don't know enough about the various mesh architectures to decide if Ubiquiti's is Faux or not, but they do have Mesh capability in some of the more recent AP's. My outdoor Hotspot is a Mesh only product, even though it's POE and has a Cat-6 connected to it, it ONLY connects to Mesh enabled hotspots for it's upstream connection.
I've not really needed a Mesh solution, so I've not paid much attention to the Orbi and it's kin. I expect if I had bought my WiFi equipment 6 months later, I too would be on Orbi though, as it seems to achieve some of the same benefits my Ubiquiti equipment does at a significantly lower price point.
I was specifically addressing their UniFi AP meshing capabilities as āfauxā, I believe they have other actual mesh devices in their line up.
IMO, I wouldnāt buy Ubiquiti gear unless you have a specific purpose too simply because of the cost. Most normal actual consumer WiFi and mesh gear is far more mature in feature set anyway at a lower cost.
Amazon has a tremendous amount of data on their customers that is very valuable to advertisers, and they have made that another component of their business. I donāt think thereās a multinational corporation out there that considers itself ābig enoughā or successful/profitable enough to ignore another revenue stream.
Oh yeah I do remember seeing that. I dismissed it after digging a bit deeper into it because it seemed like it was a bit misleading.
Ring started doing that 2yrs before Amazon bought them. So you canāt really blame Amazon for it. The article makes it seem like itās old news coming to light recently.
Also this statement in the article from Ring makes me believe that itās actually a user level issue. No more different than posting a pic publically on Facebook.
āThese videos are sourced exclusively from publicly shared Ring videos from the Neighbors app (in accordance with our terms of service), and from a small fraction of Ring users who have provided their explicit written consent to allow us to access and utilize their videos for such purposes.ā
Interesting, I didnāt think their Ad business was actual that big or external from their site, so my assumption was definitely off.
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This makes a lot of sense. I was almost certain this would be an upcoming move, but wasn't sure which product it would have been. Was thinking it might have been Linksys, since I've heard Belkin is looking to dump them (that product team must be really screwed up, since everyone that buys them wants to dump them two years later).
Companies like Amazon understand they can always do better by understanding your use patterns at increasingly higher levels. This also fits right in with their march toward creating the ubiquitous smart home. I expect to see next gen Echos sold in bundles as they will be all-in-one mesh routers, zigbee bridges, and Echos (with security capabilities) rolled together.
Amazon can now potentially know when you're coming and going (Ring), where you are (Geo-location data), your likes, dislikes, hobbies and interests, and personal needs (shopping), your entertainment preferences (Amazon Prime Music and Video), your online activity (eero), your gaming preferences if you have them (Twitch), your security threshold and neighborhood crime demographic (ring security and location statistics), and your reading preferences. There are more areas to obtain data points, but these stand out the most.
Make no mistake, their business is data in all its forms.
Oh, agreed, I wasn't disagreeing really, just stating I don't have any idea what a proper mesh would be (technically speaking) to evaluate it.
As for cost, yeah. I absolutely get that. On the other hand, in my experience Ubiquiti is simply that they're Bulletproof, and the POE is totally worth it if you have cat-5 or 6 in your ceiling!
I don't know how these mesh devices from Orbi/Eero work, but I love the single SSID network and the way my devices handover seamlessly from hot spot to hot spot is magical. So, expensive or not, I'm certainly sold on Ubiquiti...but at the end of the day, as you point out....the cost...gack.
Scott
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I love my AC HD APs and the UniFi Controller ties all my USG Pro and switches in nicely. But cost to feature set isnāt there outside of the APs.
My pfSense box and TP-Link switches have more capabilities and cost less then the Ubiquiti items that replaced them.
Ubiquiti needs a L3 switch and a 24port switch with 10GB SFP+. Plenty of people have asked for this, they would make a killing off of them.
I would like ACLs on the switches so I donāt have to restrict access to things like Hubitat from inside the USG.
Ubiquiti does have mesh devices.
https://unifi-mesh.ui.com/#products
I'm glad I sold my eero stuff 6 months ago and went Ubiquiti. I have an hp t620 plus running OpnSense box and 2 Unifi Nano Hd, and 1 Unifi Ac-lite out in the garage. Everything works great and is fast..
Wow.. that's disturbing if true. That is one reason why I do NOT want cameras inside the house at all. I do own Ring products for the outside though and have been happy so far.
I have an old Echo and Google Assistant in the kitchen so potential audio recordings but restrict those at night with some scheduling rules on my firewall.
I hacked some WyzeCam pan cameras so they are local only, these are what I use inside the house. I set up a VPN through my Netgear router and will access the cameras away from the house that way. I also want to hook the cameras up to zwave outlets so I can turn them off when we don't need them running.
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