Optimizing Your Unifi Network

** Note only the Gen 2 Pro switches have layer3 routing not the standard Gen2*
In this video I show you how to Optimizing Your Unifi Network. We go over Wifi channel selection, Some things that may cause bottle necks in your network as well as a few other settings.
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[@VirgilNicolae]

Worth mentioning one thing, though: RF scan is only available for wired AP’s. Mesh / Wireless uplink ones don’t support it 👍🏻

[@MactelecomNetworks]

This is true I should have mentioned it. You get a pinned comment :)

[@NotHimJim]

Excellent!! I couldn't get above 170Mbps on my iPhone until I watched your video and now I can get 400Mbps. :)

[@fffred75]

I am not an IT guy, but the way you present things makes it easy for me to understand. Fantastic work and great presentation skills!

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Thank you. Glad you found it useful

[@bizzfo]

Assuming non-DFS channel usage for 5Ghz there’s only 2 channels that do not overlap if you’re using 80Ghz. Keep in mind there’s a pretty big difference in bandwidth when going from 80Ghz to 40Ghz. 40Ghz has 4 non-DFS channels that do not overlap. If you’re in an environment with low 5GHz usage it would be OK to use overlapping 5Ghz Channels as long as there is some distance between the AP’s and you adjust their power output.

[@dsellars]

This is the video I’ve been waiting for, also pretty much summed up same as Toasty Answers mentioned in his video a few days back but still a HUGE help. Fixed all my wireless issues.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Ya I didn’t realize he made a video about it ( just found out about him) it’s a good watch as well

[@mattsnider5704]

You really do a great job with all your videos. Clear, concise and thorough. Thank you.

[@gswhite]

Excellent overview, like the route optimisation as well. Will change that in my network, thanks.

[@biggig8548]

Cody love the videos man...straight and to the point and have learned a lot. I found this slightly older video and looking for a recommendation. I have an office where initially I installed one UDM-Pro and two USW-24-POE switches all in a single rack. The intent was to use the POE from the switches for AP's and cameras eventually. The site has two floors. 1st floor has the main server rack and 2nd floor I installed a wall rack with four cat6 runs fed from the 1st floor as this is where the main cable feed was coming from. Also installed three unifi AC-Pro's. One on the first floor (using one of the 4 cat6 runs to connect to 2nd floor) and two on the 2nd floor. Had to do it this way because the customer didn't have enough funds to buy everything until recently. They've just purchased two more USW-Pro-24 switches so now my plan is to have one Pro-24 and one 24-POE in each rack for the 1st and 2nd floors. What is the best way to optimize for bandwidth with uplinks? The US-24-POE's only have two 1GB uplinks SFP Ports and the US-24-Pros are Layer3 but also have 2-10GB uplink SFP Ports. My hope was to do 10GB through and through but unfortunately don't have 10GB uplinks between all switches so what would be the best way to connect these optimally? If it's easier would prefer to email. Thanks.

[@QuikTechSolutions]

Cody, excellent job on this video! Good work!

[@Kynetguy]

If you are connecting 3 switches, you need three DACs. Your DACs would be configured as such: 1 to 2 2 to 3 3 to 1 Then if your internet is less than 1Gb/s, use a 1GB port to connect the UDM and use L3 routing if you need to route between VLans. As you are showing with your Visio, if switch 2 goes out, you have lost everything on Switch 2 and you have isolated Switch 3. If Switch 1 goes out, you lose 1 and isolate 2 and 3, effectively bringing down your whole network. The extra cable gives two routes to every switch. STP will do its job and stop the loops.

[@ValorHeart]

With the new controller v6 UI, the description of the Uplink Connectivity Monitor is "Used to make sure your AP's has a valid connection to the gateway" and it also affects that if AP losses connection to gateway it stops broadcasting the SSID's, so this option doesn't affect only Wireless uplink connectivity, and actually it doesn't disable it at all from being used by the AP's

[@DeliberateGeek]

As always, Cody, excellent content overall. I have one comment and one question. First, the comment. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but as I understand it, with the Gen2 switches only the PRO models (which are only available in the 24 & 48 port versions) support L3 and SFP+ modules. Which means that if you have the non-pro Gen2 switches, you won't be able to get the 10Gb uplink speeds or the L3 routing in the switch. Second, the question. Are the SFP ports on the Gen2 switches always on a separate backplane? That would, obviously provide a bit of benefit even if the speed is limited to 1Gb since it wouldn't be a shared backplane with the other ports. I suppose a follow-up question is...are each of the 2 SFP ports on their own backplane, or is it shared between the two? I have tried to find this info in the documentation, but it simply isn't clear.

[@Marzen216]

thanks for the rundown Cody

[@oOManiacMikeOo]

Great video! Would you know why my UDRs latency gets horrible from like 7pm to like 4am? Been going on for months

[@Warfalcon]

Is there a way to opt out of beta so you do not accidently updated to beta firmware?

[@xbmcnut]

Thanks for the video. To be clear, it's only the Pro switches that have 10Gb SFP capability?

[@ukdanjones]

If you're using those channels you can only use 20MHz wide channels (in 5GHz) otherwise they'll overlap. channel 36 with an 80MHz wide channel uses 36,40,44,48 Channel 36 with 40 MHz channels uses 36,40 Why wouldn't you use DFS channels? If it gets a radar event it'll move to another free channel.

[@ukdanjones]

Also fast roaming.... That only works with 802.1X networks...

[@ukdanjones]

If you want to see channel utilisation use either wifi explorer (macos) or winfi (windows)

[@bytes86]

Hi, is there any option to choose a range of channels? like from 48-60 for example, if i have only access point in my network, thanks!

[@VirgilNicolae]

Thank you, Cody!

[@MactelecomNetworks]

No problem

[@stefanoviolaphoto]

Thank you so much Cody for this video...I wasn't aware of the UDM-pro switch port bottleneck at all. May I ask you then which is the best way to connect the UDM-pro to the Unifi Switch US-24 (non POE version). Should I use a DAC or it's better to stick with a simple ethernet cable?

[@jacobusdevilliers4918]

Hi Cody. Thanks for awesome video. I have NO IT background. In the medical field. I have almost exactly your setup, except only 3 AP, for a 3 storey home. 2x UAP-AC-HD and 1x UAP-AC-IW. I have set my AP's radio's to broadcast these selected channels as you suggested, and I notice that the speed test (Ookla) using my iPhone significantly dropped. I am supposed to get 150 MPS down and 25 MPS up. But only get 10-50 Up (varying a lot) and 5-10 up. Any suggestions?

[@timschulenburg3240]

Could you make a video about a AP and Switch configuration for a huge hotspot scenario: -client isolation? -port isolation on switches? - maybe tweaks for high capacity networks? -DHCP lease time -dhcp number of adresses... I thougth about an campground with 150 campers = maybe so 500 clients peak on 15-20 APs (HotSpot config and VLAN is already set up)

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Ya I may be able to do that. I’ll put it in my video ideas list

[@gswhite]

One point from this video and the tips provided. All my networks reside on my Layer 3 Switch. Now they reside on that switch all my 'LAN In' Rules for dropping inter-vlan traffic are ignored. This appears to be an Inter-VLAN Route that is auto created which circumvents the rules for some reason?

[@viclr33]

Can you do a comparison between high end gaming consumer routers like the asus ROG AX11000 vs the UDM pro and switch for console/pc gaming for those of us who are thinking of jumping to more specialized gear? Would like to see if latency/lag and open NAT for console is comparable.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

I may be able to. I will have to buy one of those gaming routers but may make for an interesting topic

[@viclr33]

@@MactelecomNetworks thanks! Truly on the verge on jumping from the top asus router, the ROG AX11000, to the unify system with the udm pro, Poe switch and APs but want to see if it’s easy to keep open NATs and latency compared to this asus marketed for gaming. Will look forward to your video!

[@MactelecomNetworks]

They had a ROG AX11000 at my local computer store soooo I bought it 😅 Not the cheapest piece of equipment but I will do some videos on it shortly

[@viclr33]

@@MactelecomNetworks excited to see some benchmarks and comparisons!

[@MactelecomNetworks]

You just need to make sure you do your port forwarding correct on the UDM pro to have open NAT its not to tricky

[@heikoschafer7200]

Way you ste the Access Prints to different Channel ?

[@crudge]

Thx Cody -great video

[@HexapoDD]

Hi, thanks for the video. I'm in the middle of planning my new network in a new house. Several Nano-HD APs are planned. I wonder what would happen if I left everything on "Auto" for now. I wouldn't start clicking until problems came into play. At least that was my original plan. Would you advise against it? :-)

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Everything on auto is fine. Typically I set channels if I notice an issue

[@mattrogers6565]

Thanks for the video, some very interesting points. One that I need to look into more is your information about the ports on the UDMPro. I currently have my priority systems (such as NAS, CCTV,etc) connected direct to the ports on the UDMPro and not the ports on the connected Unifi 150W 16 port POE switch I have. I assumed this would be faster than going through the switch, is this not true? Also if I were to connect the two via an SFP cable, would that increase the speed? (I currently have them connected via ethernet). Thanks

[@tzabbi]

Nice Video! Do you say that the UdmPro has eight 1GB Ports where I can use per port 1 gbit in the same time or that they share 1gbit about these eigth ports?

[@shaunlavoie6183]

What are your thoughts on Daisy chaining switches vs an aggregation switch?

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Shouldn't daisy chain agg switch all the way. But really depends on your network and budget

[@robertliess889]

I like the unifi pictures, for the network devices. Can you provide them for download?

[@MactelecomNetworks]

www.ui.com/marketing And just search the product up

[@hankbank63]

How do you decide what is the proper balance between channel width and power? Also noticed you left the 5g channel power to Auto.... was that intentional? Thanks

[@andreg20]

Hi Cody, great video. I’m still having issues with my wifi and can’t figure out wth is going on. I have 940 mbps from ISP and via wired connections I’m very close to the 940. When I run speed tests on wifi I hit a ceiling of 200-250 mbps. I ran iperf3 tests and it also shows 173-225 mbps so I guess it confirms issues with WiFi. I’m using one AC Pro and don’t know exactly what else to do to identify the culprit.

[@martinpalmer3575]

What version of the software is this? i'm trying to configure mine and it looks totally different,.

[@jordanmelville5786]

When you say not to use a "copper connection" on the middle switch, you're referring to a tradition 10Base-T 1GB ethernet cable, and not a SFP+ direct attach twinax cable, which I believe uses copper as the medium the data travels through?

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Hey I probably should have been more specific. I meant to not use a cat 5e or cat 6 cable which will only run 1gb as that would cause a bottle neck in your network ( with the design I was going with) I’m thinking about doing another video on switch design and how to connect everything based off of 10gb uplinks

[@jordanmelville5786]

@@MactelecomNetworks Thank you for the clarification - that was what I thought, but having spent most of the Covid lockdown redoing my home network to crazy levels, it's still a learning process for me since I have no formal training in IT. Your channel is really great. Thank you!

[@MactelecomNetworks]

@@jordanmelville5786 thanks !!

[@labalo5]

Do all switches need to be layer 3 to have intelligent switching? I’m not sure I have my VLANs set to specific hardware switches.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Hey nope not at all. I was just putting out there if your switch has the capability of layer 3 switching you can optimize the network a little better. You most likely would not even notice the difference between it routing through your switch or your router ( UDM, UDM pro or USG)

[@RavingMad]

Dual band doesn't mean 2 spatial streams. MU-MIMO is about spatial streams.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

You’re correct I should have started my analogy at the 3x3mimo thanks for the comment

[@joejoe6949]

Does anyone know why my I’m getting slow internet speed from my modem to wan. Gig down/40 mbps up but I’m getting only 300 down and 7 Up ? On my UDM pro

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Are those speeds on wifi or hard wired?

[@joejoe6949]

HARD WIRE

[@joejoe6949]

Last night i had my udm pro connected from my lan to my old router/Modem combo and it ran perfect today i bought a new modem and connected it I’m not getting gig speed anymore.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

@@joejoe6949 are the interface speeds of the new modem capable of 1000mbps?

[@joejoe6949]

2.5 gig Arris s33

[@Ed-sh8jt]

what does layer 3 really provide over layer 2?

[@Zizzily]

It's important when you have VLANs. Routing is at layer 3, so if you're moving across VLANs and only have layer 2 switches, all that traffic has to go through the router. If you have a layer 3 switch, it doesn't have to.

[@kittysreview9055]

This is a bit inaccurate. Why bother with 10gbps ports when you gimp your throughput by setting 5GHz to 40MHz width? Set it to 80MHz and set the different access points in your home to use different channels so there is no overlap. Use DFS channels if you need to. Your access point will switch to non-DFS automatically if there are any military installations in your area.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Well you’ll never get 10gb on access points ever. The uplink will pass the vlan traffic faster between the switches.

[@Anaesthetist98]

Great video as always, but... maybe its just bad timing however seems like the idea is copied from Toasty Answers channel Dec 2nd.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

No idea who that is. Viewers have been requesting it for months

[@Anaesthetist98]

@@MactelecomNetworks Glad to hear it! :)

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Maybe I’ll check them out. I was either releasing this today or access point comparison. But even in my live streams I’ve been asked for this many times

[@LeonLamothe]

I was looking around and it looks like the 24 port poe switch only has a SFP+ of 1 Gb.... if you want the 10 Gb you need to buy the 48 ports... is that an error? store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-switching/products/usw-24-poe