Ubiquiti Unifi Aggregation Switch for my network? - Wait what is an Aggregation Switch?

[@alejandrogaribaldi9930]

Finally someone that explains the difference between the UniFi Switch Aggregation and Link Aggregation

[@johnsfilmsllc]

What other topics do you think need to be uncovered?

[@roger38888]

Seen this switch before. No clue what it did. Finally I get it. Great explanation. Now my wife is going to get piss off at me again 😂. Mo switches, mo money.

[@yenaurapourtoulmonde]

Finally someone who answered my questionning: workstations and file server can be directly attached to the Aggreg Switch! Thanks for that.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Glad I could help! Thanks for watching!

[@Josh.Wilson]

This is pretty much exactly what I'm using the USW-Aggregation for! A relatively cheap 10Gb switch, especially one that integrates in the Unifi ecosystem.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Agree! I couldn’t believe the price when I first saw it...I think people avoid sfp+ because it’s foreign to them and that limits demand a bit...

[@WiredInside]

FINALLY, thank YOU SO MUCH, this helped me a ton because this is exactly what I was looking to use this switch for and I was so confused due to the SFP ports. This is by far the best explanation as it's very new user friendly. I have the same setup (Gen1 UniFi POE switch though). I just bought the aggregate and wanted to run 10GB to the hard drive rack and NAS.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Awesome! I don't know why they don't market it for this use at all...also...it's a weird product to have so cheap! :) i guess it's not a layer 3 switch so they can't command the price? Dunno but I love mine - it's been rock solid for months!

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Just happened to check the stats...that aggregation switch has 6.3TB of data run through it every day due to the security cameras i have recording at 4k :) I'd say it should handle whatever you need!

[@WiredInside]

@@johnsfilmsllc "Awesome! I don't know why they don't market it for this use at all" Understatement of the YEAR. 10GB for $279!? And it's buried on their site too! What's doubly weird is in their marketing images, they'll have it used in a small rack so obviously they knew people would do this. However, they're advertising at such a niche level. I just went with the HD rack too but I'm going to load it up with SSDs. The ONLY thing I'm nervous about is I have the Cat behind the wall but I'd highly doubt I hit 30 meters in length to my PC so I shouldn't run into any interference. After my order comes, my setup will be: UDM Pro UA Patch Panel U24 Port POE (gen 1) Unifi HD rack Power redundancy The gen one switch is going to trigger my OCD since I can't use the SFP links (doesn't seem to work on the downlink from my gen 2 UDM Pro) but I'll upgrade that to gen2 later.

[@JetBlackRage]

I just logged in to say Thanks, this is a great little explainer, and especially with the Aggregation Switch being cheaper and faster than the 24 port pro I may well pick it up instead! Cheers!

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Glad you liked it! Thanks for taking the time to let me know!

[@mtiphotography]

I’m building out almost the same setup. Love this.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

It works like a dream. One thing to note, when my TrueNas server nvme cache fills up I can see a significant drop in throughput :)

[@griffic37]

Awesome video John! Thanks for sharing.

[@RonGabriel]

Thanks for this, this is exactly what I have in mind regarding my home’s network design.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Glad it was helpful! This thing has seriously been "set it and forget it". I ran port aggregation with it for sometime too...it's been rock solid and I def haven't missed higher level routing capability...

[@Oddish08]

Wow just noticed the: Ubiquiti UniFi Aggregation Switch Pro, 28-port 10G SFP+ & 4-port 25G SFP28 Ports, Layer 3 Switch, 760Gbps Switching Capacity 👀... Great video! I also don't need 10gb in my house but implementing it and iperfing away is great fun :D

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Yeah that one is the real deal!!!

[@cpanic1153]

They’d probably sell a lot more of these of they just called it a 10gbe layer 2 switch

[@johnsfilmsllc]

EXACTLY!

[@beydoin]

Thank you for a wonderful explanation

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Thanks for letting me know it helped and thanks for watching!

[@Schyttehometech]

You should take advantage of the USW-PRO-24-POE layer 3 routing capabilities. If placed after the UDM-Pro but before the aggregation switch, inter-vlan traffic dooes not have to go to the UDM-Pro, which can result in lower latency and free resources in the UDM-PRO

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Agreed but since I'm not exactly barn burning it here with data and connections I haven't bothered :) It would be a fun exercise though. Topic for another video - thanks for the idea!

[@bentheguru4986]

L3 on the switch in mention is still in development.

[@sean-delaney]

Hello. I have a question regarding this setup. If you put the Aggregation switch after the USW-PRO-24-POE, does the Aggregation switch still work the same? I have a UDM-PRO and needing to upgrade my USW-LITE-16-POE switch to a USW-PRO-24-POE switch so I get that L3 routing functionality for my vLANs. I see the benefits of having a Aggregration switch in between the UDM-PRO and USW-PRO-24-POE but struggling to wrap my head around the Aggregation after the USW-PRO-24-POE though? Thanks

[@droidchevere]

No you don’t get a 20Gb connection with two 10Gb , you get two 10Gb lanes of traffic that will not perform a single task at 20 theyll saturate and then divide two tasks into two connections .

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Good distinction. In this network it’s overkill anyway :)

[@xVertigo101]

I just bought the aggregation for home use too. Udm pro. Aggregation Usw 24 poe Unvr 10G Streaming pc 2.5G Two gaming pc's at 2.5gb Network storage device 10g planned. Two 1500w battery backups Rps planned for power redundancy on udm pro + unvr. I may get a pro 24 switch later to take advantage of power redundancy as my family started working from home. Internet 2.5g fiber

[@johnsfilmsllc]

WOw 2.5g fiber must be nice, do you saturate it or it's future proofing? On the Aggregation switch it's a a layer 2 switch sure but...man it gives the speed for cheap! Love it!

[@xVertigo101]

@@johnsfilmsllc TO answer your question Fiber has yet to be installed as it's delayed by at least another week. I saw a bucket van moving slowly down the Rd a few minutes ago scoping out the lines so maybe were close. 2.5GB networking cards are mostly for faster backups to the 2.5Gb Nas however being able to have 2.5Gb across all of our primary devices is awesome for a family of 4 that work with large cad files. I can't stress enough how much the upload saves time especially when your remote server has fiber as well

[@Red1Wollip]

Very, very nice explanation of a technology feature.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Thanks! I appreciate the feedback!

[@Sevenfeet0]

I'm new to Unifi having purchased a UDM-Pro and USW-24 Pro (non PoE) last month. The 8 port aggregation switch also caught my eye for the same reasons. At $269 USD, it's a cheap way to get into 10 gbit Ethernet. And even though it has far fewer ports than the older US-16-XG, how many 10 gig ports do most home labbers really need? I am only using one right now and can only think of expansion to 3 more in the near future. Everything else in the house is gigabit only and will likely be that for years to come. Maybe Wifi 6e might change that in the future but there are a couple of ports to spare for that. One more thing....the Unifi Aggregation Switch can support all ports on copper transceivers unlike the old US-16-XG which was limited to only 4 ports. Copper transceiver have far less distance than can support, but how many of us need more than 30 meters in a residential installation?

[@johnsfilmsllc]

I agree with you the price totally overrides the wanted expense for the US-16-XG though. Especially when neither of them provide layer 3 capabilities. Quite awesome

[@kn4yba80]

Good video John!

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Glad you enjoyed it, thank you for the feedback!

[@LumecriStudio]

thanks, this is the best video I've seen so far explaining this. I'm still firming up my understanding of Layer 2 & 3, but I think this will work for us. We have a photo/video studio (we have 4 BlackMagics and shoot in BRAW as well, BTW!) w/ 3 MacStudio computers (come with 10GB RJ45 built-in). I just installed a Synology rack mount NAS w/ 10GB PCI card. We also have a UDM Pro. I'm hoping to get 10GB speeds between the Macs & the NAS by connecting the Macs to this switch (with RJ45 adapters), then using SFP+ patch cable to the UDM Pro. I'm still a little unsure how the Layer 2 only will affect this setup though.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

This will do it and for a killer bargain. I have a Unifi XG switch under it with clients on it that all get 10GB back to the server which is connected at a peer level to the XG. You will want to put some sort of cache in that Synology box to help the actual disk reads/writes (even with a RAID config) as those will be the slowest thing going forward….This switch is a deal and a half when you don’t have extremely high transaction with multiple client routing to do and instead need speed like us for video footage stuff (any large files). I edit now with a full b roll library on my zfs array and it’s like it’s sitting on the workstation in front of me on an SSD

[@KenBrooksFTW]

@@johnsfilmsllc sounds great! I ordered one this afternoon and will hopefully have it by Tuesday. I do have dual 400gb m.2 nvme from synology running read/write cache. Speaking of cache though, I read that it’s less effective for large sequential such as video files. I figured it would still help at least with smaller assets, photos, and project files.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

@@KenBrooksFTW Very true on the read, on the write I can watch the cache get filled immediately at smoking speeds and then…BRAKESSSSS as the 512GB cache I have fills and I start writing/buffering slower

[@JamesireV]

Layer 2 only is a better way to go in this case! Layer2 switch is (generally speaking) MUCH simpler and faster than layer 3 switching, and therefore within a LAN (local area network), layer 2 is always better. Here's a great playlist by Networkchuk explaining networking: kzbin.info/aero/PLIhvC56v63IJVXv0GJcl9vO5Z6znCVb1P Also, as a friendly reminder, 10Gb and 10GB means very different things! The Mac Studio includes 10Gbe ports, and the Sfp+ cages here provide 10Gb connections.

[@Legendary_UA]

Nice explanation

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Thanks!

[@jerrymiller8313]

If you tie two ten gig ports together do you really get 20gig or do you get more through put at ten gig? I guess I am talking about speed vs number of packets sent and received?

[@stratcast667]

I bought this to finally go from direct 10Gbps between 2 hosts (and additonal 1Gbps for internet/LAN) to true 10Gbps in the home for all desktop computers + the file server. Expensive, but worth it :) Only negative = at least half of the ports should be RJ45.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

True if it's just to add it to the network it kinda is but as far as 10GBE managed switches this is really cheap! :)

[@Sevenfeet0]

The problem with RJ45 10 gigabit ethernet is that the cost per port is still pretty high.....around $85 for most applications I've seen. This aggregate switch is $34 using just SFP+. If you need copper, you can go to an transceiver for about $40. The main downside is that copper is limited to about 30 meters for a connection, which isn't a problem with most residential connections.

[@stratcast667]

@@Sevenfeet0 The Ubiquiti 10G RJ45 tranceiver was about 80USD in Norway (probably cheaper in the US?), but using this only for the WIN10 clients. For the file server I'm using some Intel 10Gbps fiber transceivers I already had. Really depends on each setup/environment, but with CAT6 in the walls to all rooms I did not have much choice but to pay up :) In the end it's a big hole in Ubiquiti's switch offering: No 8 Port RJ45 10Gbps switch (without PoE to keep cost down). Could of course have used Netgear or MikroTik but wanted to see everything in one dashboard. That said, if anyone outside the Unifi eco-system reads this and is considering jumping in: I would not have gone this route if I started out today as Ubiquiti is becoming more customer unfriendly every month that passes.

[@jonlikestech]

Thank you!

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Hope it helps! Let me know if you have any questions

[@anwar.shamim]

nice - what is the layer 2 vs layer 3 aggregation switch difference?

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Layer 2 switches don't have the ability to route on the IP layer, only on the mac address. Meaning Layer 2 are kinda "dumb" switches that don't make decisions related to VLAN's or other routing based decisions. Instead the layer 2 would hand that up to the network controller to make the decision thus introducing extra hops in your traffic. For my home network that doesn't matter... ;) Another consideration of the aggregation switch...the backbone...it is an indicator of how much traffic the device can handle at a time...

[@ProjectArjun]

You still need clients that support 10 gigabit speeds for this switch to use it’s full potential. If I route an LC to LC fiber from this aggregate switch to a 1 gigabit switch, I’m still limited to 1 gigabit speeds

[@johnsfilmsllc]

100% agree - thats why all my motherboards have a 10GBE NIC in them,. I should add this now bridges to a XG switch spreading 10GBE across my lab…

[@mozuconfig3222]

so we need two switch for distribution switch ?

[@johnsfilmsllc]

It really depends on your network configuration and needs. If I single UDM pro handles your traffic great, in my case I wanted 10GBE for my video editing as I edit using files off my server quite a bit and it’s in another part of the house.

[@DerekDavis213]

I just want the Aggregation switch, I don't have anything else Ubiquiti on my network. After initial adoption and configuration and firmware update, can I disconnect the Cloud Key from my network permanently?

[@johnsfilmsllc]

The AP’s can run that way but I’m not sure about this device. At worst just stand up the controller software on a raspberry pi if it HAS to exist but frankly…my guess is it works

[@Polkster13]

Do you think Ubiquity will ever come out with a Pro version that has the Redundant Power System plug in back so you can plug it into a UDM RPS? The UDM-PRO, USW-Pro-24-PoE, and UNVR all have this capability but the USW-Aggregation Switch does not. So if the main power supply of the USW-Aggregation switch goes down, then everything that is routed through it to the UDM-PRO would be cut off from it. This would be the main reason why I would not put it into my business network. Thoughts?

[@uberseehandel]

The Redundant Power System does not have any hot swap power modules, so a power power module failure in the RPS does not offer true redundancy. (shakes head, it ain't rocket science)

[@Sevenfeet0]

The short answer is yes. Ubiquity sometimes gets flak for not sharing a product roadmap, but it's not hard to figure out what they are trying to do. Their Early Access program will sell you hardware that is ready for GA but the software is still beta (or more likely, alpha quality). One of those products is the Unifi Switch Aggreation PRO which comes with 28 SFP+ ports and 4 25G SFP28 ports as uplinks. It also supports their SmartPower RPS system. It costs $899 and is way overkill for home users but for medium size to larger corporate buildings, on paper it looks like a cost effective alternative to brands like Cisco. Anyone can view their Early Access (EA) products on their company store....KZbinrs and reviewers can't discuss them until they clear for general release.

[@Sevenfeet0]

@@uberseehandel True. You could get around it with dual aggregate switches running as leaf switches and each having their own UPS. If one failed, you'd have enough redundant connections to maintain the network.

[@linerror]

Picked one up until I can get a leaf. Then I'll put it in my bench.

[@lindersson]

In a slightly smaller but similar setup could I just have the udm and the aggregation switch without the “third” switch and just run my three APs from the udm? (Yes I don’t know much about this stuff but want 10GB from the NAS in the utility closet to my office)

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Yes, you will need to use power injectors on the AP’s (come with depending on the AP). If you only needed the 10GBE NAS and all clients are wireless/gigabit you wouldn’t need the aggregation switch however, I’m betting you have 10GBE in your editing rig and need to get something easy you can bridge. This will work, I’m obligated to tell you however the reason it’s cheaper than the XG series with 10GBE is because it routes on the Layer 2 info (Mac address) rather than layer 3 (IP). If you know what that is you know what you are giving up, if not you probably don’t need it :)

[@lindersson]

@@johnsfilmsllc ok. Its the UDM Pro SE (arrived yesterday) so I don’t think injectors will be needed as the ap’s really don’t use a lot of watts. I did look up what layer 3 means and probably wouldn’t miss it in this setup (future me will find this funny). Also the idea is to get a 10gb network card for the NAS and use a sonnet 10gb to thunderbolt adapter for the laptop in my office. Hoping it will turn out useful and not just become an even more expensive backup. Thanks for the answer!

[@johnsfilmsllc]

@@lindersson You are right! SE will run AP’s just fine. Hahah perfect, I edit footage off my array on the other side of the house with 10GBE …works great!

[@FuriouslyFurious]

What if I have the dream machine pro max and 2 48 port pro switches. Should I daisy chain switch to switch to dream machine all at SFP+, or should I connect both switches to the aggregation switch, then run 1 SFP+ to the dream machine?

[@johnsfilmsllc]

This is exactly the type of question my brain loves to run with. I don’t have time to check at this point what the backbone is and routing capabilities of each but I started the brain down the path of “which way is the traffic from the 96 devices going? To each other? To a single App server or storage/db? Are they going external WAN? It makes sense to me if the devices on the two layer three switches are talking directly to each other connecting them directly via 10GB sfp would seem smart. If there is a single or a few servers with 10GBE that get the majority of the access maybe the two switches route to aggregation switch. Finally if it’s all out the gateway, depending on the traffic, if it’s sporadic and small bits I could envision a reality where connecting the two switches directly to the pro max (even via GBE). Seems like applying speed when needed for the traffic and minimizing the hops for those uses is best.

[@FuriouslyFurious]

@@johnsfilmsllc lots to think about! In my case, most of the traffic will be to the WAN, with the exception of the cameras going from switch to dream machine for recording. At some point, we'll be setting up some type of NAS instead of all cloud storage, but for now, the majority of file storage/access is cloud based.

[@jad3tx]

I’d probably use an aggregation switch in that case and plan to hang the nas off one of the aggregation 10GBE (looking into truenas scale with zfs)

[@FuriouslyFurious]

@@jad3tx I was leaning towards an aggregation switch for the future NAS reason, but just wasn't sure if using one of the available 48 pro max SFP+ ports would be the same? I guess potentially it could eat up some of the switches throughput if I did it that way?

[@johnsfilmsllc]

@@FuriouslyFurious My logic on that, if you route one 48 through the other, you are basically putting another hop between 48 of your devices and it's destination that is going to be potentially constraining the throughput (like you mention :)) hence the aggregation

[@thetango8017]

Does the USW Switch Aggregation support for 2.5 or 5 gbps ?

[@tcntad87]

Not difficult lookin it up, he also says the supported speed:) store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-switching/products/unifi-switch-aggregation

[@benjamincorteslyon6777]

I'm expecting to see new PC for Davinci Resolve 2021!

[@johnsfilmsllc]

As soon as the hardware chips become available thats in the cards...The issue at this point - I can’t recommend anything because no one can get the parts. I don’t want to push something people can’t buy

[@bugs181]

Excellent video. Just the info I was looking for! Liked + subscribed Edit: I’m assuming this setup wouldn’t work with VLANS though since it’s only a layer 2 switch. Anything with VLANS would need a Layer 3 otherwise you get throttled by the 1Gbit port on the UDM Pro, correct?

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Because the connection between the UDM pro from the USW-AGG is 10GBE and the backplane on the UDM pro is fat enough (I swear I used to know this and now i can't find it anywhere on the UI.com site...even the datasheet) but I haven't seen it snag up through the udm pro at all and I run all the vlans.... ;)

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Thanks for joining the party and thanks for watching!

[@samsampier7147]

I know this is two years old. But I’ll reply anyway. If you use the same vlan it will never touch the UDM Pro. Any systems in the same subnet connect direct on layer 2 in the same vlan (tagged or untagged). Your device arp table would know that MAC address. However, any system not in the same subnet needs a default gateway. In this case reach out to the UDM Pro. Therefore use the same subnet tied to the same vlan. The servers will need different ip addresses on their 10 gig nics anyway.

[@twilight1230]

I tried setting up my switch and switch agg. in the same way and I only get a 10gb link. One box is white and the other greys out.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

make sure they are ports next to each other on both switches

[@twilight1230]

@@johnsfilmsllc thanks. I got it to work. I first tried on the Aggregate switch ports 7-8 and it didn’t work so I moved them to 1-2 and it worked.

[@friedrich1277]

Is it possible to use SFP+ (to copper) modules for 2.5 GBase-T Ethernet? Or is the switch really limited to 1 and 10 GBit only?

[@Sevenfeet0]

Yes. Some SFP+ copper transceivers can do multi-gigabit (2.5, 5 and 10 gb). I use a Wiitek transceiver in my UDM-Pro to connect to my Comcast XB-7 cable modem which has a 2.5 gb port and if you subscribe to gigabit Ethernet in certain markets, that port will provision at 1.25 gb/sec (downlink, still 40 mbit/sec up) which is a nice little boost, assuming you have the equipment that can support it.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Yes, in fact I use an RJ45 to SFP+ adapter for 10GBE....coming off my server

[@bentheguru4986]

The switch is poorly named, just a 8-port 10GbE switch that is only L2. Not suited to aggregation unless you only running the single VLAN and/or no need to cross VLAN's. The XG16 has been around a while and is L2/L3 as well as more ports including some RJ45 for local servers.

[@johnsfilmsllc]

Agreed and TWICE the price :)

[@NCap1]

Do any of the sfp+ ports support Poe on the usw-aggregation ?

[@johnsfilmsllc]

No they dont