Trying to setup a new and better network in the house. Ditching my ISP router because its just a mess and I want better security.
I keep being suggested Unifi as a setup. Its pricey but I am told its well worth the cost.
My main concern is the privacy side.
How reputable is Ubiquity when it comes to handling data? Any ideas?
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Ubiquiti is reputable and has the infrastructure to manage sensitive data from many companies. The software phones home and is cloud based for logging in and back ups etc, however its network information and settings rather than personal information. This does include data about your devices, sites visited, apps used etc. However, as a b2b rather than a consumer facing company mainly, they are not really into data mining, yet. I’ve used them for my business. It’s a bit pricy for my home needs, but I’m due an upgrade soon and will be looking at their equipment. It works well together, is both powerful and mainly intuitive.
Any internet connecting hardware theoretically has access to all your data passing through it. So, I’d either go ubiquiti or open source. My understanding is that the open source options are playing catch up as most modern routers don’t release open drivers for their components. So, although the software is theoretically equal, practically it isn’t, but that may change with openwrt releasing a new router soon. If you need stuff now, I’d get ubiquiti.
Openwrt made a router and the wrt2 is supposed to be made later this year i think.
I’m not sure what all data they get if you self-host their controller. I’m pretty sure you don’t have to make a unifi cloud account at setup, you can make a local one. You can turn off the collection of diagnostic data at setup. Now that’s not to say they don’t send it anyway,
they send it anyways; or atleast they used to circa 2020.
i did packet captures while evaluating their hardware back then for work and they always phone home no matter what you do.
Unifi is great ive and pretty reputable you can do local account etc but if you want a cheaper option and the potential for more privacy id reccomend using openwrt on one of the supported devices you can find info about it here https://openwrt.org/
Openwrt is my main option. I am looking at it a lot.
But if I’m not at home there’s noone else that can service the router. That’s my main issue
What kind of servicing do you expect it needs that can’t wait until you’re home, that wouldn’t be fixed by the old “turn it off and on again”?
a few years ago (actually, probably 5+, how the time flies) they made some kind of data collection mandatory, but at first totally hidden, afaik not even a changelog entry. then people found out and went angry, so unifi made an opt-out setting for it
I don’t know what happened after that, but to me they have shown it clearly that they are driven by US mentality (not because of current politics, but generally)
They’re reputable. Don’t give anyone any data you aren’t comfortable being leaked. Eventually it all comes out.
The only complaint people have is that the devices are expensive and phone home which they should. You’re buying a piece of internet facing technology, you should want it to check in and make sure it’s up to date etc.
Seriously, make sure you turn on automatic updates and change default passwords.
You can never be private with any device that can connect to the internet out of its own volition. Ubiquity, Alta Labs and Mikrotik should never be trusted unless you’re OK with your data potentially ending up on their servers.
With that said, you can manually upgrade Mikrotik software and selfhost the Mikrotik CHR, Ubiquity controller and Alta Labs controller for a fee (for the latter), which should then in theory invalidate this argument. Even then, I do not trust non-FOSS software for such critical infrastructure so it’s still too much for me, but depending on your risk tolerance this might be a good compromise. I would suggest you to look at Mikrotik seriously - their UI might suck but their hardware and software capabilities are FAR beyond what Ubiquity offers for the same price.
If you want to be private you should get an old computer, buy quad port NIC cards from EBay and run a Linux/BSD router on your own hardware. But that’s not the most friendly way to do it so I don’t blame anyone for looking away
It’s actually not that pricey for what you get from it. The problem is that they have a tendency to be closed mouthed about their plans.
I bought a 2.5 GBE router, to replace my elderly and difficult USG, and was about to buy a 2.5 GBE WAP - there was a problem with them having issues with only one chipset inside the first version, so I didn’t pull the trigger immediately. Within a month there was a 10 GBE WAP being sold. A 10 GBE Router appear soon after. Damn.
The only viable alternative, IMHO, is pfsense (mostly US users) and opensense (not US users) and you need your own hardware.
I run my Gateway without a UI login, a local account. I lose some of the features, but that’s ok with me.
They’re reputable, but focus in cloud based management solutions, so your data will 100% be taken/used if you choose to use those services.
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