While this is not really HomeSeer related, it really doesn't fit in Off Topic either. It is a very long story, but I will make it as short as possible. Sorry for the big images, but they need to be.
Early last year I switched from a Netgear Wireless Router to Ubiquiti APs. I love them. I built a pfSense router gateway to replace the router portion of the Netgear R7000. Again another wonderful move. I also put a UniFi controller on my HS server so I could administrate the APs. When you have a Ubiquiti controller, you are presented with just how much data you could have if you only had their switches and gateway. The pfSense router gave me a lot of good data once I had installed a few add ins.
Months went by with everything working perfectly, but I was really wanting to get the rest of the information. Late last year, I sold my Cisco POE switch and replaced it with a Ubiquiti US-48-500W. At that time I also added a Cloud Key to offload the controller from the HS server and replaced the pfSense box with a USG. The information was wonderful. I could see at a glance the entire path of connection from any device back to the gateway. The wealth of data and the amount of control was a thing of beauty.
Youi can see devices, how long they have been connected and to which switch port or AP
At a glance network status
And accumulated usage. It was reset for the beginning of a new month this morning. You can drill down to clients and applications.
This is just a portion of the complete map it generates of every connected device ant the path back to the router
Then a few months ago they added GEOIP Filtering and IPS (Intrusion Prevention System). IPS is hardware intensive and disables hardware offload, so my USG was only good for ~85Mbps flow. We have Comcast internet that is promised for 250 Mbps and usually delivers closer to 300. I needed to upgrade to a USG Pro to be able to handle the speed, but I couldn't spend any more money.
As luck would have it I purchased a "for parts only" USG Pro on eBay for $70 shipped. It had damage to the left side rack mount tab and it was dead according to the listing. I disassembled it, repaired the bent tab and a crack in the PC board killing the power supply. It was up and running. I sold the USG. With all the new features enabled, we have had excellent performance 100% uptime and very tight security.
Now to the point of this post. My Wife works from home via a secure tunnel. It is imperative that she stay connected, or she has pack up and drive to work. We save a lot of money with her staying home and she has about an hour more of her own time ecch work day and she can make lunch at home. It has really been nice for all of us. about two weeks ago Comcast became very flakey, not resolving addresses and other silly things. Michelle's tunnel stayed up without issue. This did get us to thinking about what we would do if it was down altogether. I looked at an LTE backup, but didn't like the cost.
Along came CenturyLink with their new bonded, vectored VDSL 100 Mbps service for $55 "for life" with no contract. We have DirecTV giving us a $10 per month credit, making the net cost $45. I purchased a Zyxel C3000Z modem on eBay for $90 so I don't need to lease one for $10.81 per month. I just got it installed today.
It took all of 10 minutes to set the CenturyLink modem to transparent bridge mode, connect it to the secondary WAN port on the USG Pro and to configure the USC for PPPoE credentials and for failover.One can chose weighted load balancing or failover, for now I chose failover so it will default to the higher Comcast speed. I tested it several times and the failover is almost instantaneous. I pulled the plug on the Comcast modem, pulled the coax from the modem and disconnected the modem from the gateway. Each time we never saw a blip in Internet connectivity and it just as quickly rolled back to Comcast when it was restored.
While we could still loose both CenturyLink and Comcast copper due to a disaster, it is unlikely we would ever lose both at any other time. I just love it when a plan comes together.
This is also another testament to the Ubiquiti ecosystem. While it is not perfect, it was very good to begin with and they are rolling out new features almost monthly. It was a bit expensive to make the move, but looking in my rear view mirror, it was well worth it.
Early last year I switched from a Netgear Wireless Router to Ubiquiti APs. I love them. I built a pfSense router gateway to replace the router portion of the Netgear R7000. Again another wonderful move. I also put a UniFi controller on my HS server so I could administrate the APs. When you have a Ubiquiti controller, you are presented with just how much data you could have if you only had their switches and gateway. The pfSense router gave me a lot of good data once I had installed a few add ins.
Months went by with everything working perfectly, but I was really wanting to get the rest of the information. Late last year, I sold my Cisco POE switch and replaced it with a Ubiquiti US-48-500W. At that time I also added a Cloud Key to offload the controller from the HS server and replaced the pfSense box with a USG. The information was wonderful. I could see at a glance the entire path of connection from any device back to the gateway. The wealth of data and the amount of control was a thing of beauty.
Youi can see devices, how long they have been connected and to which switch port or AP
At a glance network status
And accumulated usage. It was reset for the beginning of a new month this morning. You can drill down to clients and applications.
This is just a portion of the complete map it generates of every connected device ant the path back to the router
Then a few months ago they added GEOIP Filtering and IPS (Intrusion Prevention System). IPS is hardware intensive and disables hardware offload, so my USG was only good for ~85Mbps flow. We have Comcast internet that is promised for 250 Mbps and usually delivers closer to 300. I needed to upgrade to a USG Pro to be able to handle the speed, but I couldn't spend any more money.
As luck would have it I purchased a "for parts only" USG Pro on eBay for $70 shipped. It had damage to the left side rack mount tab and it was dead according to the listing. I disassembled it, repaired the bent tab and a crack in the PC board killing the power supply. It was up and running. I sold the USG. With all the new features enabled, we have had excellent performance 100% uptime and very tight security.
Now to the point of this post. My Wife works from home via a secure tunnel. It is imperative that she stay connected, or she has pack up and drive to work. We save a lot of money with her staying home and she has about an hour more of her own time ecch work day and she can make lunch at home. It has really been nice for all of us. about two weeks ago Comcast became very flakey, not resolving addresses and other silly things. Michelle's tunnel stayed up without issue. This did get us to thinking about what we would do if it was down altogether. I looked at an LTE backup, but didn't like the cost.
Along came CenturyLink with their new bonded, vectored VDSL 100 Mbps service for $55 "for life" with no contract. We have DirecTV giving us a $10 per month credit, making the net cost $45. I purchased a Zyxel C3000Z modem on eBay for $90 so I don't need to lease one for $10.81 per month. I just got it installed today.
It took all of 10 minutes to set the CenturyLink modem to transparent bridge mode, connect it to the secondary WAN port on the USG Pro and to configure the USC for PPPoE credentials and for failover.One can chose weighted load balancing or failover, for now I chose failover so it will default to the higher Comcast speed. I tested it several times and the failover is almost instantaneous. I pulled the plug on the Comcast modem, pulled the coax from the modem and disconnected the modem from the gateway. Each time we never saw a blip in Internet connectivity and it just as quickly rolled back to Comcast when it was restored.
While we could still loose both CenturyLink and Comcast copper due to a disaster, it is unlikely we would ever lose both at any other time. I just love it when a plan comes together.
This is also another testament to the Ubiquiti ecosystem. While it is not perfect, it was very good to begin with and they are rolling out new features almost monthly. It was a bit expensive to make the move, but looking in my rear view mirror, it was well worth it.
Comment