For those outside the IT/networking realms, SFP use uniform connectors for both the networking device and the fiber cable, but the major vendors (Cisco and friends) have used firmware flags and settings to provide vendor lock-in for at least the last 15 years.
It used to be that in the event of a major outage or hardware failure you would need to issue additional debug commands to the effect of "I know this isn't your approved SFP but please just try it," if you were trying to replace a first party SFP with a third party one. TAC would more or less laugh at you and hang up if you sought support.
I'm not sure if this product will _actually_ change any of that, but here's hoping.
> TAC would more or less laugh at you and hang up if you sought support.
This is common belief and even a dire warning when filing TAC tickets. However, unless the third-party SFP is the prime suspect, I have never experienced a TAC from any major networking vendor[1] refuse support, let alone "laugh and hang up," even metaphorically.
It's good SOP to keep at least a couple SFPs for each networking manufacturer on the shelf, but third-party SFPs are normally in the ballpark of 10% of the cost of OEM and tend to be manufactured better[2].
1. Mostly Cisco, Juniper, HPE, Fortinet
2. I've had a far greater failure rate on OEM SFPs than SFPs from third-parties like Fs.com and USCritical. That and they feel much less flimsy than OEM.
Before I comment, a disclaimer about my small scale. I am running probably three hundred SFP+s running and less than five years of experience with optics. I don't have stock tracking for the individual manufacturers, and the failure rate comments here are based on gut-feel only. (there will be other people here used to far larger scales)
I bucket it into there being three options: genuine, clone, and good-clone.
We had a bad run with fs.com QSFP+s. Their SFP+s have been better to me, but reckon I have had a couple fail.
Atgbics SFP+s have been a reliable clone supplier for us. I don't think I have had any of those fail, and they have been my main vendor for a while now. You can order them programmed with personalities for Cisco, etc.
Part of the edge of fs.com is that it is so easy to place an order and get fast delivery. My main site is in another country to where I live, and I do a few trips a year. Several times they have made low-notice projects possible.
We accidentally ordered a load of “Generic brand” 100G QSFP from FS. Everything worked and appeared fine from the perspective of the switch and cards, reported OK status for everything, _except_ the lasers never turned on. Switching to an Extreme switch made the switch end work fine, but not the server.
Turns out Mellanox/NVIDIA hardware are _really_ picky about their cards. We bought a box from FS that reprogrammed the compatibility firmware and they worked instantly (FS also offered to return and reprogram but we needed it fast).
This was a big shock after dealing with nothing but CAT5/6/RJ45 that has been stable and common for decades (?).
> Atgbics SFP+s have been a reliable clone supplier for us.
With the caveat that I'm a USian and my scale is even lower than yours (10 10gbit SFP+ modules in my apartment combination home, office, and lab, running trouble-free for the past three years) I've found 10Gtek to be a reliable supplier. You can order 10gbit SFP+ modules straight from them for 14USD per per module. Though, shipping costs straight from them is currently pretty terrible: $35 if you're spending less than $800.
Stores like Newegg will often meet or beat that per-module price and offer free shipping if you buy a bundle of four or more... but modules with the personality you want may not be in stock.
Don't think I ever had a case there TAC said anything about my sfps. Most of the time if it's the SFP you replace it, code it correctly with a device like the one linked, or it's the wrong kind of SFP anyway.
Longer than that - in 2005 I was at a network hardware startup and we had vendor-locked (ahem, _qualified_) SFPs back then. Probably started back in 2001 when they were introduced.
I have installed 100s of SFP connections and I've never had an issue with compatibility. I've never even heard of this. Is it just for some ultra high end products or something?
It's more for enterprise gear than anything. For example, enterprise Cisco gear will absolutely reject non-cisco optics, but datacenter gear won't. As an example, the Nexus 9000 line accepts non-cisco optics by default. Granted, those are 10k+ boxes so somewhat high-end but nowhere near the ASR line.
The nexus line being more modern in spirit also helps. Catalysts still reject non-cisco optics without a configuration line afaik.
A good rule of thumb is whether the equipment tries to vendor-lock you in.
Another example that comes to mind is at least one generation of Intel NICs (don't remember if it's the 5xx or the 7xx), where even the open-source mainline (!) driver will reject the optic without a driver argument passed to it when modprobe'ing it.
It's more common the more expensive the SFP host equipment, yes. This "compatibility" stuff is generally euphemism for "ridiculously primitive DRM" - lots of higher end network equipment checks the SFP Vendor ID and Serial Number and will reject it if it doesn't match an allow-list of "qualified" hardware. Programmers like these let you clone the VID/Serial from a "qualified" SFP onto a random SFP.
The two X520s that I have will refuse to work with non-Intel transceivers unless either you're running Linux and have set the 'allow_unsupported_sfp' option, or have edited the card's EEPROM to unset the "shut down unless the transceiver is a Genuine Intel part" bit. It's my understanding that very many Intel NICs are like this.
I remember [0] the Juniper switches that I used to have (before I switched to Mikrotik) refusing to work with anything other than Official Juniper transceivers.
That might be a misremember - I've been using Juniper for nearly 20 years now and only ever saw a "software bug" in 18.x that broke OEM optics, but that was quickly addressed with a patch shortly after release.
Is there anything here from Ubiquiti that can allow me to plug an AT&T Fiber directly into my Unifi switch and get rid of the BGW620 crap? One would think AT&T Fiber is so common in Ubiquiti's target market that they should make an official SFP module for this already.
I know there are these XPS-GROUPON with "8311 firmware" SFP modules or something to bypass it but they cost $130+ and just wondering if there's something for <$50 before I pull the trigger.
Also
> 1000% lower pricing
What the hell does that mean? If some other vendor sells it for $1000, you sell it for -$9000?
If it's a PON then it's not Ethernet media. You would then be looking for an ONT SFP but those are far from ordinary SFPs. They are not just dumb devices, there is a lot going on inside them since they crammed a whole ONT into the SFP, and it communicates SFI back to the host equipment as if it would have been Ethernet.
Consider that AT&T fiber device to be a literal component of their network in a way that is: adopted into the network management system, configured with appropriate settings for the particular network and network segment, maybe the device is named in a particular way for their billing/CRM solution, there may need to be e911 info configured in the device if they often do VoIP service, etc.
In short, a gpon network is not quite the same as rolling to Walmart or whatever and just grabbing a replacement cable/dsl modem.
Ehhhhh... I'm not sure the market opportunity there is large enough for them to pursue.
They're strapped with SKU as is. Ubiquiti seems very focused on two main segments right now, which is growing enterprise switching and wifi, and their outdoor wireless gear, where (if memory serves from quarterly earnings reports) is now mostly concentrated outside the US.
>I'm not sure if this product will _actually_ change any of that, but here's hoping.
SFP programmers have been around forever and work great. This will solve the issue. The only really unique thing here is the form factor and price. I think the last time I looked at a programmer 8 years ago I seem to recall it was about 10x this price. I’m guessing cheaper ones have popped up out of China since then.
I like the pricing of this and especially the health check part.
But the programming an SFP module part has been a thing forever. In Europe at least.
Flexoptics for example have their own boxes to program optics.
This is not for me as I'm not a professional network engineer, but I do want to say that Ubiquiti has made home networking SO fun for me. Everything truly "Just Works."
My setup is definitely more on the prosumer side, but it's been so build out and inspect my network with their tools.
This is exactly how it is for me too. Everything truly "just worked" - except Sonos, but that's not a Unifi problem - they even have a dedicated page in their docs on how to set up Sonos systems, which I followed exactly, and it now works a treat.
I wish I could say that Unifi has just worked for me, but any time I add a new Unifi device to the network (say a new switch, or just recently a U6 range extender), my network gets incredibly unstable until I manually restart every UniFi device on the network, sometimes multiple times. (i.e. Some devices won't connect to WiFi due to DHCP IP configuration errors.) And that's after getting the device adopted, which generally takes multiple retries.
I've also had three instances where upon rebooting due to a power outage or a system update, my inbound firewall / port forwarding was just broken. UniFi simply did not pass packets to my server. Once again, a full reboot of every UniFi device on the network resolved it.
I really want to like UniFi, and I appreciate how much access I have to SSH in and figure out what's going on (and I did take tcpdumps and have a support case open), but it has definitely not been plug-and-play for me.
I'm using a UDR7, U7 Lite, a number of managed UniFi switches, and just recently added the U6 extender.
I just wanted to chime in and say that this hasn't been my experience. It sounds like you have some other sort of problem if it takes multiple attempts to adopt.
Yeah, my experience with the UAP-AC-LITE and -LR was that it would get wonky if not rebooted every month or so. That (combined with the realization that its software load is pretty much just OpenWRT with the serial numbers filed off) caused me to dump the official firmware and switch to OpenWRT.
I was quite a lot happier after the switch, as I didn't have to hassle with UniFi and my APs stopped needing roughly-monthly reboots.
Tangentially related: is Mikrotik as bad for wireless as some say? I want to like them, even though their equipment seems complex, I root for a company from the Baltics that have carved out a respectable niche. But they appear to struggle with wireless?
My biggest issue is threat surface. You can design around it, but Mikrotik WAP's do everything a Mikrotik router can do. If they get compromised they can run scripts, create blind proxies etc, and mikrotik has a habit of resurfacing CVEs from memory.
My experience is very binary. I had some Mikrotik RF installs that Just Worked, and never needed attention. And some that were just problem children constantly demanding reboots.
Mikrotik code isnt the most stable beast in the world, but if you keep it at a certain point in time you are usually safe. But then that brings you back around to the security issues again.
> If they get compromised they can run scripts, create blind proxies etc...
How's that different from a Unifi AP? Unless they changed something in the past five, eight years, the software running on the AP is pretty much OpenWRT with the serial numbers hastily filed off. [0] Get a shell, and you get to download whatever to do whatever you need.
[0] Me coming to this realization is what lead me to switch over to OpenWRT. I didn't need any of the fleet management stuff provided by UniFi, and was constantly frustrated that the APs had to totally reboot whenever you changed nearly any setting on them. (I heard that they eventually fixed that particular shortcoming. Good for them, I guess.)
Mikrotik will let you do a lot of this without downloading new code, but you are correct. In my experience people find a simple vuln, log in, enable the blind proxy feature, and then use your network to evade netflix region blocking until you realise.
Cambiums shell from memory is much further locked down. IIRC you need a possibly predictable password form cambo to do get full root shell on a lot of devices.
I've been using Mikrotik in various capacities since 2008, I even made IoT devices using RB450 boards before the word "IoT" was coined. I also love supporting a small company that is successfully competing with the giants.
Their long-distance wireless and outdoor wireless are great, but their regular WiFI access points and software are at most adequate. They are not keeping up with the state of the art.
> They are not keeping up with the state of the art.
Does that mean that the performance is middling (making them -IME- equal to UBNT's APs), that they never have APs that use the very latest and greatest WiFi version, or both?
Both. They don't have access points supporting 6 GHz wireless or 2.5G Ethernet.
I think they've just given up on that sector, and they're focusing on more specialized outdoors/long-distance wireless.
I don't want to get into the Ubiquity ecosystem because it's typically all-or-nothing plunge. And I distrust complicated managed systems out of general principles.
You've not looked at Mikrotik's hardware recently.
They have several APs that have 2.5Gbit ethernet (one with a 2.5Gbit SFP+ cage), and one AP with a 10Gbit SFP+ cage. Additionally, all their APs run RouterOS, which means that you can bond links together to fairly-reliably get additional throughput. [0]
In regards to Wifi 6e and Wifi 7, it looks like Mikrotik takes quite a long while after a new Wifi version to release hardware that runs it. I expect your assertion that they've given up on 6GHz for home/small-office APs is incorrect.
[0] Yes, I've personal experience with using link bonding on Mikrotik hardware. As a knowledgeable someone would expect, it usually provides you with additional throughput proportional to the number of bonded links.
Yeah, I'm using bonded links between my Synology NAS with 4 gigabit ports and a CCR router. It works acceptably well.
But I've just checked the Mikrotik hardware list, and I don't see indoor APs that are PoE-powered and have more than one Ethernet port. Maybe I'm overlooking something?
> But I've just checked the Mikrotik hardware list, I don't see indoor APs that are PoE-powered and have more than one Ethernet port.
a) Who said anything about that? In the four comments prior to this one, that set of requirements wasn't brought up.
b) Yes, you are absolutely overlooking something. On the Products page, try expanding the "Features" widget of the "Product filters" section, checking the "PoE-in" option, and hitting the "Use filters" button. Even the AP I mentioned with the 10Gbit SFP+ cage has PoE in.
> I tried again, and I see only mANTBox and NetMetal ax access points.
I'm not sure what you've done to only see those two APs. Based on your confusing report, it seems like you're also looking in the "Wireless systems" category. Try the "Wireless for home and office" category.
If you try and fail again, please do post the URL of the page you're looking at.
Can someone explain what "just works" when compared to other networking gear? IE I use ASUS and their mesh, and it all "just works". Have a mix of routers over 10 years and they all mesh together.
I started with TPLink gear in a mesh mode, and it kinda sorta maybe worked? I had an access point on the ground floor, a range extender + option to connect RJ45 (for devices with out WiFi), on the middle floor, and an additional meshed AP / range extender on the top floor. The top floor meshed thing basically didn't work, the RJ45 thing got me like 50 Mbps while wireless was getting me 200 Mbps. It 'just worked', but it didn't work well.
In that same house switching over to Ubiquiti just worked, and worked well. I had the same setup (mesh nodes on every floor), but performance was substantially better (2-4x).
I've moved house, and now have wired APs on every floor, and get phenomenal performance. The management UI to see what is where / how its connected, and when something doesn't work is very good. It also enables things that were hard / difficult with other non-'prosumer' gear. Like I can have multiple WAN ports, and plug in a cellular modem, so that when my internet doesn't just work (which happens way too often) it auto-fails over to the cellular modem, and continues just working.
The reason I went with Ubiquiti in the first place was their Unifi Protect line of cameras, and again those 'just work' from the wireless small ones to domes / etc plugged into wired connections they all just seamlessly connect to my dream machine, and provides a great UI, and the data is on prem which I want.
The only thing Ubiquiti doesn't do the way I want is DHCP + DNS, so I have a seperate raspberry pi doing that.
After years of fussing around with either linux / pfsense / ... routing + firewall solutions, and different AP / meshing configurations the ubiquiti stuff is very hands off.
Ah, so based on your last paragraph I guess you're in "prosumer" territory? My router has dual WAN, SFP, can do cellular over USB, tells DHCP clients to use the pihole for DNS, and I don't have speed issues in or around the house with the mesh nodes, but maybe it falls short if I was looking to do more advanced routing/firewalls.
Definitely in prosumer territory, and it's totally achievable with equipment that isn't Ubiquiti (they're not magic, the mediums RF + ethernet + fiber are all the same), but the amount of fiddling I found to get things to 'work right' with ubiquiti was plug it all in, set up the WiFi password, and update the DNS / DHCP server to my pihole, and then I didn't have to do much else, and there was a really nice UI with nice metrics, and a nice UI for cameras all built in, and a few other niceties like some VPN options. There's also sufficient logging that when something doesn't work I can maybe figure out why.
I don't really do more 'advanced' routing (other than maybe the unifi protect aka camera stuff it sounds like we're describing similar configurations), it's just that when I tried to achieve the configuration you're describing with Asus it was impossible, with TPLink it took a lot of fiddling / configuration and never 'worked right' (right meaning as well as I thought it should, though I've not tried TPLink in a primarily wired configuration) where as the ubiquiti stuff was plug and play and just 'worked right' (close to the speeds and reliability I expected both in a mesh mode and in wired).
The whole camera thing -- which is what really got me to pay the ubiquiti tax -- is another story entirely, I'm sure there are lots of other good options for self hosted IP camera solutions, but I couldn't find any ones I wanted to use, and again with ubiquiti it was super plug and play, and once I'd bought the UDM to do camera stuff and saw how well that worked I wanted to try the ubiquiti networking stuff, and it worked better with less configuration that the other alternatives I'd tried.
With infinite time and finite budget ubiquiti is not the right choice for home networks, with a sizable budget for home networking equipment minimal time investment and a preference for performance ubiquiti has worked out better for me than alternatives out of the box, and better for me after spending time tweaking and trying to optimize TPlink (meaning ubiquiti out of the box was better after trying to optimize TPlink).
If "not ubiquiti" works for you out of the box, or in the configuration you're already in then you're all set, and you're definitely not missing out on anything. If things aren't working out of the box and you're tired of fiddling with it, or your other goals aren't possible, and they are with ubiquiti maybe it's worth the investigation.
I also _hate_ how much I sound like an ad for ubiquiti. I'm really not, but I think I've spent more time writing these two comments than I've spent having to fuss around with my network equipment in years.
Hey, really appreciate the response though. I would say I'm in the "more time than money" category.
It's hard to not notice the ... ubiquity of praise for their gear over the years, but I haven't seen much clarifying what sets them apart. Maybe I should look at them like peak Apple but for networking gear?
Yes. That is how I view them, and a fair description I think.
When I was willing to spend time on this (home networking + cameras) I would have never touched this equipment. It was all open source / cheap stuff with BSD or Linux routers, random switches, home assistant raspberry pi's connected to USB cameras. It would take some time maybe not a lot, but enough, and it would break frequently enough due to some update somewhere or something.
I think the idea is that the Ubiquiti equipment is far more capable than normal consumer-grade equipment like ASUS, and still manages to "just work". So your ASUS may also "just work" but is has a fraction of the capabilities as the unifi system in terms of feature load-out and scope of native device integrations.
Adding a new Unifi device to the network is just a matter of powering it up, responding to "adopt this new device?" prompt on your phone, and that's it. It's literally Plug'n'Play in 2025. Even if other brands let you do that with similar number of steps, the UX is so behind that it's impossible for you to discover the steps that easily. Ubiquiti uses UX quite intelligently to make complicated things feel simple. My experience hasn't been close to Ubiquiti's with any other brand I've tried.
Right. Just like 5Gbit PPPoE uplinks over VLAN. In fact there is no Ubiquiti router which can handle 1.5Gbit+ PPPoE for some reason. So, I have a mikrotik in front of UDMPM just to termiate PPPoE and I had to buy a IPv4 /29 subnet to avoid double not.
I got some decommissioned Ubiquiti gear (a switch, some ap's) from work, but it requires UniFi to do anything. I looked into that briefly and it appears to be some eldritch horror of an application. Anything I can't use from a terminal is worthless, so all of it is going in the trash where it belongs.
I made the switch to Ubiquiti from TP Link last year. 1000% worth it. The "Just Works (tm)" thing is true, but the ceiling of what you can do with it is so much higher. I'll also say that the Unifi nerds out there are legion and you can find support and comment threads all over the place for pretty much any project you want to do.
I ended up going with TP-Link Omada and have been happy so far (a managed switch and wifi 6 WAPs). I am a bit concerned about their security track record given how bad their soho products are, so I ended up sticking with my opnsense router at the perimeter as the first line of defense.
I’m curious to hear what you think you’re missing out on with Omada.
>I am a bit concerned about their security track record given how bad their soho products are, so I ended up sticking with my opnsense router at the perimeter as the first line of defense.
Ubiquiti has had plenty of bad security issues as well I'm afraid, but fundamentally one of the advantages of both is that with a self-hostable controller and VLAN isolation you should be able to minimize your attack area pretty well from both the LAN and WAN. No remote dependencies at all. But like you I run OPNsense at the edge, you do at least have to trust their firewall and such if you want to go full single-pane.
The two biggest complaints in that thread (Edgerouter support abandoned, and VLAN issue unacknowledged and unfixed) were both wrong. Overall, it is a great, easy, inexpensive set of products.
Well, [0] mentions that they left the ER firmware alone for two years. They also don't sell the ER hardware anymore.
Looking at the changelog in combination with the comments on the news item about the new release, it looks like there are many bugs left unfixed. If this analysis is correct [2], nearly nothing was changed.
That smells an awful lot like abandonment.
> ...VLAN issue unacknowledged and unfixed... were both wrong.
This subthread [3] disagrees with you. As someone who has suffered through multi-quarter "struggle sessions" [4] with UBNT engineering staff about broken basic functionality, I can totally believe a report that UBNT claims something has been fixed when it's very much not fixed.
[4] Complete with round after round of them saying "Hey, we fixed it! Try the latest beta!", and me replying "No, you didn't. Did you run my 100% reliable reproducer that I've given you? It sure looks like you haven't because that reproducer still reproduces the problem.".
I made the same conclusions but got burned with Omada. Cheaper, yes, but fewer features and buggier than Unifi (and that’s a pretty low bar). I migrated back to Unifi.
I don't think I've run into any bugs, but there are also entire sections of the controller I haven't explored yet. I have a pretty typical homelab style setup with multiple wifi SSIDs for trusted devices and untrusted devices, and several VLANs to isolate them. I guess it's good to know rumors of Ubiquiti's death have been greatly exaggerated in case my Omada hardware starts acting up.
Not omoda, but TP-Link - recently built a deco setup - 3x be65, 2x be25, one WiFi mesh node, the rest is wired 2.5gbe backhaul and performance is excellent, though I’m not a fan of only being able to configure stuff from the app, and there isn’t that much to configure anyway. It just works, but if it wouldn’t, I’d probably have to return the whole set.
I've used both and was super interested to use Omada because of its price and performance. Honestly, Ubiquiti is just so much easier. The whole controller model for Omada tries to be way more "enterprisey" at the cost of a SOHO ease of use.
Based on having migrated multiple clients from UniFi to Omada but still has UniFi deployed across a few sites too, I'll give you a different take from the replies you've gotten so far. TP-Link's Omada is a newer, direct competitor to UniFi, and when it came out Ubiquiti was an absolute fucking dumpster fire in terms of, well, everything. Their software, hardware, and even the forums (which they killed in favor of the current mess). Their gateway/routing/network service story sucked, they were missing key features, their firmware was rotting in basic ways (like ssh being so old it literally included only insecure ciphers and you couldn't even connect to it anymore without + options), and finally were also starting to make more and more concerning and ugly choices that pointed towards serious organization issues (constant UI bike shedding churn in favor of ancient features and bugs they'd agreed were important) and enshitification (tying software applications to required hardware). However, they were also the only player doing that sort of fully self-hostable unified configuration networking. I migrated all the gateway/routing/simple service stuff to OPNsense, but then was stuck.
TP-Link stepped in and have been working hard on Omada being a direct competitor. It's clearly inspired liberally from UniFi but that's A-OK by me, it's healthy for both to be going head to head. In my experience it had somewhat fewer features, particularly initially, and they definitely don't cover the full breadth of cool and useful niches that Ubiquiti does either. But what there is has worked well and been more reliable for me, particularly in a mixed environment. For example Omada worked perfected day 1 with automatic L3 controller discovery using a simple DHCP Option 138 set on my OPNsense unit pointing right at my controller FQDN. It was easy and built-in to supply a proper certificate for the Web GUI. I never got either of those to work with the UniFi controller. The switching has been rock solid reliable and the WiFi more performant, better coverage, and features like PPSK were added way before Ubiquiti did and have a much better interface.
However, Ubiquiti does seem to perhaps be turning things around a bit. Their router hardware is no longer garbage, even if it is of course far less then you can do yourself. From what I can see in simple ongoing tests they do a better job on the software side for router features now as well, so if you're all-in on both systems for the total single-pane experience UniFi might once again be better. Their announcement of the "UniFi OS Server" 3 months ago (in Early Access) and publicly last month was both a surprise and heartening. Rarely does one see companies that start down the path of lock-in reverse course at all. If they make it possible to run all their various controller applications on your own hardware I'd definitely start to add more back into my mix.
So if you've got decently modern Omada hardware (and you probably do because not like it's been around that long, in terms of networks anyway) I'd be in no massive rush to switch to UniFi unless you see some key specific things you'd like. If you think you ever might want to roll your own other infra same thing even harder. But if you're thinking about a bunch of upgrades anyway then worth keeping an eye on and looking carefully at the various feature mixes each have.
And that's a really statement that makes me super happy to say, because I think each is now driving the other, which is really healthy for this ecosystem!
Thanks for your perspective! I’m all-in on Omada now with WiFi 6 APs and a few managed switches. Been working pretty well overall, but my network config is pretty basic.
I was more just curious if I was missing out on something great (or if I ever decide to upgrade to WiFi 7+)
Early this year I started redoing the backbone of my home network with 10 gb. Some of it's fiber, some of it's 10 gb copper Ethernet. It's been genuinely frustrating the weird incompatibilities between switches and SFP+ modules.
All my switches are MikroTik. My SFP+ modules are MikroTik, Ubiquiti, and some 3rd party ones from before I knew better.
I've had modules that will only run at gigabit in one switch but will give me the full 10 gb in another. I've had modules that refuse to work in one MikroTik switch but will happily work in a different MikroTik switch. I've just had a world of pain.
I've got everything basically working after months of fiddling and I'm inclined to just not… touch… anything.
I've had great luck with 10gtek modules both with Mikrotik gear, with DACs, and one that is connected to an upstream juniper switch. I'm curious what modules were the most troublesom.
* I will note that the 10gb sfp+ modules from 10gtek on a Mikrotik just don't work.
Funnily enough, this 10gtek worked on one of my 3 switches, but I could only establish a gigabit connection. I returned it [1]
These 10gtek fiber modules on the other hand have worked flawlessly so far. [2]
This Mikrotik module would not establish a 10 gb link with my Thunderbolt dock no matter what I tried. Works fine with my servers though so I swapped it out.
I've pretty much resigned myself to just buying the full brand Ubiqitui SFP+ adapters [4] for converting to copper.
I recently purchased [5] to run to my living room, but I have not found the time/energy to do the run.
I tried converting everything to copper as well but the copper DACs use a lot of power and ended up not working out due to the greatly increased power usage (mostly because the networking "closet" wasn't really designed for it). So beware if you're moving it to copper
Make sure you also pay attention to the distance rating of the SFP. I had a very similar experience with modules not working at the right speed sometimes. Turned out I was running 50 meters of cable over a 30 meter SFP. Got the correct one, and as low wattage rating as possible and it's been rock solid ever since.
btw, if you are using 10gbe copper modules, take a look at their temperature. some of mine were getting to 92C i think. had to put a bunch of heatsinks on them
I put a couple of Noctua NF-14 over the top ventilation holes in my rack, with the silicone mounting thingies and the NA-FC1 PWM controller. They are almost silent in winter. The switch with 10Gb copper is under the fans.
i opened switch and put noctua inside to cool sfp cage that i added heatsink to, in addition to heatsinks on sfp+ module itself. it dropped temperature from 92c to 75c. year later i replaced it with fiber run.
I have found that a fiber patch cable paired with two SFPs is cheaper and more power efficient than an equivalent UTP setup. This lead me to move to all fiber/DAC for 10Gb save for the 10Gb UTP link to my router that lacks SFP.
I have the 8 port 10Gb + 1 Gb from mikrotik and the UTP SFP's run stupid hot because they have to drive a cable at GHz speeds. The fiber and DAC (direct attach cable) SFPs are cool to the touch by comparison.
Similar... I only bought a single 8-port 10gb ethernet switch though... I have a couple devices with 10g nics including my NAS, the rest are 2.5g. I'm hoping that sooner than later, 10g ethernet gear pricing comes down closer to where 2.5g is today.
Have you had any issues with cooling? I have a 10GbE SFP+ module (made by Ubiquiti) that seems to have issues with overheating, I had to remove it to keep my network up consistently.
It depends, but for typical networking I'd say Ubiquti is actually offering better pricing here (outside of 10G LR) - and I'm saying that as someone who has sold 10s of thousands of FS modules to customers.
Note: Prices in () are the costs outside of the limited time mark-down period.
Side note for the HN crowd: For ridiculous homelab 100G shenanigans look for Intel 100G-CWDM4 on sites like Ebay. They go for $4 and work with SM LC fiber from 0-2000 meter runs, making great DAC replacements (cheaper+thinner replaceable cabling). They run great, I've had 8 going for a year. Even if all 8 failed tomorrow and I bought 8 more that's still cheaper than a single 100G SR4 from FS. You can pair these with used 100G NICs for ~$100, making a 100G direct connection between 2 machines ~$250 after shipping+tax.
For high speed home stuff, I usually pick up some old Mellanox infiniband cards and cables. They're usually dirt cheap and insanely quick. Difficult to work with if you do not know what your are doing.
> Ubiquti is actually offering better pricing here (outside of 10G LR)
Ubiquiti's 10GB LR of $59 is for a 2-pack, not per-module. So that still comes out cheaper than FS for the sale duration at least. Not by a lot, granted, but still cheaper.
Whats the best solution for short runs (rack) between Mikrotik switches and Dell servers. Will a DAC still work between different vendors or is it always best to buy individual transceivers?
Agreed. I have a 10 Gb DAC connecting my workstation and a small server to a Mikrotik. They are way cheaper, use less electric, and run cooler compared to a UTP SFP. I don't like UTP for 10Gb as its both costly and less efficient though that is going to get better with time.
Nice prices from Ubiquiti. I think fs mostly competes against Cisco which have much higher prices. IIRC we hade like a 95% discount off Ciscos list price for optics.
They're dramatically less expensive than original OEM, but UB clearly is targeting them with this release/aggressive pricing.
It remains to be seen if UB's pricing (particularly $50 on the "Wizard") is just temp to get their foot in the door. I suspect it is; and we'll see the price increase later.
> I suspect it is; and we'll see the price increase later.
I used to use Ubiquiti gear a number of years ago, but left when they started moving into an Apple-esque "prosumer" direction with corresponding price increases. That, and the constant bugs.
Ubiquiti's G3 Instant entry level camera was launched at $30 in 2021; which is $55 adjusted for inflation, but they're actually selling it for $80. The G4 Instant is $99 and G6 Instant is $180(!). Keep in mind this is their cheapest, entry level, offering in the camera space.
Whereas if you contrast these prices with a Reolink E1 Pro which is $55 (with free shipping) and superior to the G4 Instant in every metric (lens quality, pixel count, PTZ, ONVIF support, et al). This essentially makes this a space that Ubiquiti is no longer interested in competing in.
I've recently had a laugh on a UDM trying to setup IPv6 routing. Somehow, it did not install the default route in the FIB, but the OS was aware of it, so the router was reachable from the outside but did not route packets. I tried adding a route to `::0/0` and it spat at me that a multicast destination was not valid as a route destination. I gave it a route to `::0/1` and it's happily chugging along now. /shrug
I've only been using it for a couple months, but OPNsense (FreeBSD based) is such a solid piece of software. I installed it on a cheap Beelink mini PC with dual 2.5 gb NICs and an N150 processor (model EQ14), and it's been reliable and a pleasure to use as my router. I have a TP-Link Omada setup which I've been pleased with, but I feel no need to purchase one of their gateways.
What do you use for OpenBSD hardware? Is it power hungry? Is it performant?
I had a great stint with OpenBSD on an older Pentium 4 Dell tower a few years back. For basic firewall rules, I had line-rate performance on my NICs. But for a home network I'd love to have something more energy efficient.
I posted this in a sibling comment, but I can confirm Beelink's EQ14 [1] works well with OPNsense (FreeBSD based instead of OpenBSD). The dual NIC model uses the Intel KTI226-V chipset which has rock solid FreeBSD drivers.
Search Amazon for "pfsense mini pc". (smile as you think about how this triggers that one pfsense guy!) Intel N100 or N150 processor, passive cooling, typically 5 1000GBASE-T or better ports, RAM and SSD included. Should be able to get one for ~$200.
My current router at home is a dell vostro 3020 with a quad port intel nic. I usually get dell for the firmware updates they provide well after warranty.
I'd expect it to go nowhere fast. UBNT being weird and inconsistent about IPv6 has been a thing since before I was using their official software... which was from like 2015 through 2018 or so.
Cisco etc have truly insane pricing on optics, like $1000 for something generic that cost $20-50 from fs.com etc. The only difference is how it presents itself to the switch (ie, says its a Cisco optic), not actual difference in performance.
Often Cisco/etc will refuse support cases if you aren't using their optics, if the switches/routers even work with them in the first case, which isn't a given as often they'll refuse to work with non branded optics.
Really just a money grab by the big network vendors.
This box allows you to flash the firmware on the optic to say its from whatever brand you want (Cisco, Dell, Aruba, Juniper etc) so that you can get it to work in that companies switch/router.
For most SMEs, the brand of optics makes no difference. Maybe keep a few legit branded ones around for debugging and when you need to raise a support case. But otherwise, the generic ones flashed to look like branded ones work just fine.
> Often Cisco/etc will refuse support cases if you aren't using their optics, if the switches/routers even work with them in the first case, which isn't a given as often they'll refuse to work with non branded optics.
As others here have pointed out, Cisco reserves the right to do this but doesn't do it in practice. They don't even have a realistic chance to _detect_ a Cisco-programmed FS SFP, since it simply identifies the same as a genuine Cisco module.
If your case was directly related to the SFP (“I can't get a link on this fiber port”), then yes, they could probably refuse it. But if your case is about basically anything else on the switch, they won't care.
> If your case was directly related to the SFP (“I can't get a link on this fiber port”), then yes, they could probably refuse it.
I have zero doubt they will. But also you prove nothing and are doing yourself and the vendor a disservice if you fake it. There’s no telling what your 3rd party transceiver is doing incorrectly. Better to get one single supported sfp and get that fixed which will probably fix your other issue too.
FS is so big they’re probably fine. Another option is to get one supported sfp, find if it’s encoded to an oem part, then buy and install the oem part directly. Easy to twist the arm of your var to do this.
> But also you prove nothing and are doing yourself and the vendor a disservice if you fake it. There’s no telling what your 3rd party transceiver is doing incorrectly.
If I report an IS-IS problem and the root cause is an OEM SFP on a completely unrelated port, then the design of the switch is pretty awful. :-)
I’ve never heard of a vendor being so difficult. My comment applies only to interface errors. (Up/down status, rx/tx errors, fec issue, etc) Any vendor without an override for 3rd party sfp should be rejected after RFP.
"The only difference is how it presents itself to the switch (ie, says its a Cisco optic), not actual difference in performance."
That's not the only difference. I have had situations where I ran equivalent optics side-by-side, and then touched one and it was hot, and touched the other and it was not hot. They do contain different components. In the case of that test - the atgbics SFP was cool, and the other clone unit was hot. My dealer was able to get me in contact with someone technical at atgbics (the cool-running unit) who explained the difference, "The DSP might be say 13nm where more modern more expensive ones are 5nm."
But you definitely do not need to pay for "genuine" optics to get high-reliability optics. You just need to shop around the clones - atgbics is a clone.
The technical information for this thing seems to be light on the ground. What kind of diagnostic stats are provided? How is it figuring out true Rx/Tx power without a light meter?
Also, reading "Just insert any brand’s SFP or QSFP module, select Copy, and insert any UI module to write the profile." suggests that this only works to reprogram UI optics
> The technical information for this thing seems to be light on the ground. What kind of diagnostic stats are provided? How is it figuring out true Rx/Tx power without a light meter?
The programming boxes (Ubiquiti's and others) get the Rx/Tx power from the DDM (Digital Diagnostics Module) built into most SFPs - it exposes the power levels from the receiver and transmitter inside the SFP and dumps it onto an SPI bus in a standardised way which is read by the box.
> Just insert any brand’s SFP or QSFP module, select Copy, and insert any UI module to write the profile.
It's pretty common for SFP rewrite boxes to only allow writing to that particular brand's SFP modules. It's partly a sales tactic, but also often vendor "genuine" optics will ship with a write-protected EEPROM (requiring a passcode) that stops them from being written to.
If you're after something a little more "open", Reveltronics[1] make a barebones version along with software for brute-forcing EEPROM keys.
Better UI is stretching it a bit... Maybe for the amateur/enthusiast (homelab) market...
I certainly don't need or want their rack augmented reality... 'feature'? fad? And their clunky web UI is both limiting and slowing me down. Thanks, I'm perfectly fine with a console and simple LEDs.
That and SMB’s. I’ve seen a lot of Ubiquity gear in small hotels, random small businesses, etc. Especially hotels, they seem to be super common (not big chains like Hilton or whatever but smaller boutique hotels).
> I certainly don't need or want their rack augmented reality... 'feature'? fad?
I find it mind-boggling that you can hardly buy _RAM_ anymore without programmable RGB LEDs, but that managed switches do not come with a per-port RGB LED to let me mark VLANs or cables that need replacements or whatever. Come on! A nice little square all around the port, please. Instead, we get the QR code plus an app that needs to talk with the cloud.
Yes, if you have special Ubnt-brand cables. And still, I want this to be standard everywhere, not a niche thing from one manufacturer :-) (I know Facebook has some on their 100G switches, too.)
UniFi SFP modules work fine in Dell and Synology servers, so contrary to most of the anecdotes in this thread I’ve always just bought the 20 packs and had no issues.
Didn’t need reprogramming.
The quality is fine, oldest modules more than 5 years old and only 1 failure in 100.
What nics are you using on the server end? Im looking at moving from 10Gbe copper to 25Gbe/100Gbe between Mikrotik switches and 14/15th gen Dell servers
Thanks a lot, this is exactly what I have been looking for and it seems not even excessively priced.
Only issue is that I did not find a distributor that ships it to Europe yet.
The same excitement I used to feel in the late '00s/early '10s for Apple is what I now feel for Unifi. I must have it all. They are capitalizing on autism better than anyone else in the history of the world, except for maybe Lego.
I just wish they had Apple level inventory on hand. Sometimes I’ve waited months for product or component to be back in stock. Then gone in matter of hours. Currently waiting on the G4 pro doorbell. (WiFi version).
some context that's perhaps not obvious to non-networking people: essentially all networking hardware above 1G doesn't have rj45 or fibre ports in it, it has holes that you put modules in, "SFP+" modules for 10G, "SFP28" for 28gig networking, etc.
most manufacturers of devices - the things with the holes, NICs, switches, routers - make their devices only officially work with modules that claim to be manufactured by that same manufacturer. so, you can either buy modules from that manufacturer, or buy modules from some other company (e.g. fs.com, 10gtek) who programs the modules to claim that they are from that manufacturer. "officially" can mean anything from "we won't help you if you open a support case" to "the device will make a whiney log message on boot if it's not one of our modules" to "it simply doesn't work unless you hack an EEPROM on the device".
this is somewhat annoying, since it means you need to buy specific modules for specific devices, you can't just keep a pile of SFP+ 10G-LR modules around, you need some "Intel SFP+ 10G-LR" and some "Cisco SFP+ 10G-LR", etc.
so, these third party manufacturers of the modules, like fs.com and 10gtek, will also sell you programmers for the modules, which lets you change what manufacturer the module claims made it. these programmers have been, historically and hilariously, tied to the actual manufacturer of the modules! so you can buy some 10G-LR SFP+ modules from fs.com and a fs.com programmer to set make some "Intel" and some "Cisco", but if you buy some 10gtek 10G-LR modules, you would need to buy a 10gtek programmer.
~so, this device that Ubiquiti has made is the meta-programmer - it can apparently program any module, from any actual manufacturer, to claim to be made by any manufacturer.~
edit: the post seems deliberately confusing - what they are actually selling is a device that can re-program Ubiquiti SFP+ modules by copying the manufacturer code from another SFP+ module that you insert into the programmer. so it's the same as what fs.com and all the other sell, but Ubiquiti's is ~1/10th the price (e.g. https://www.fs.com/uk/c/fs-box-3389).
Minor pedantic correction: 2.5gbit, 5gbit and 10gbit RJ45 is getting more affordable and more common, and for short runs should run over CAT 6 and CAT 6a fine, and plenty of reports it does ok on short runs even on CAT 5e. With devices like the USW Flex Mini 2.5 at ~50-60 EUR / USD, you can affordably outfit your home for higher than gigabit speeds without rewiring everything with new CAT cable or fiber.
Over here in NL we now get more and more access to >1gbps speeds, the office of my small business for instance has a 4gbps connection, and the ISP offers up to 8gbps on a standard consumer / small business package. We're in the process of upgrading our gear to take advantage of that. With WiFi 7 we've seen some real world throughput speeds of 1800-2000mbps going through a Ubiquiti U7 Pro straight to the ISP supplied router.
I wasn't really keeping up with networking gear, so I was pleasantly surprised when I looked into this stuff recently and figured out the gear has just magically gotten better and running 2.5gbit everywhere is surprisingly easy.
Something nonobvious to consider, 10G copper/RJ45 SFP modules run hot, to the point where our Mikrotik switch's manual mentioned that we could use them, but they strongly recommended only populating every other port, if we did. Heat wasn't a problem at all with the fiber ones.
> 2.5gbit, 5gbit and 10gbit RJ45 is getting more affordable and more common
Still, compared to the SFP+ gear it's ridiculously overpriced. NICs are <$20 on ebay and an 8x10G port managed switch is $120 on aliexpress.
> Over here in NL we now get more and more access to >1gbps speeds
Same in France, yet the main "geek" ISP (free) has an 8Gbps symmetric ISP router with a 10G SFP+ cage for full bandwidth to the LAN. RJ45 ports are 2.5G.
And it's hard to fault them, as customers that are likely to even hardwire stuff to the router and moreso at 10Gbps are usually enthusiasts that do prefer SFP+ due to the abundance of hardware on the used market. Oh, and their team designing the router are a bunch of nerds that most likely all have a 10Gbps network.
Anybody go through the trouble of outfitting their entire home/condo with fiber? Probably overkill for residential but I am also thinking it might need to be shrouded in EMT conduit
I did a 10 gig backbone between my three switches, and it's awesome. I didn't bother placing conduit - just tacked up preterminated lengths using coax clips and ordered a spare in case one of them ever goes down. I also have Wi-Fi mesh routers on each switch, which provides low speed redundancy until I have time to replace a fiber. I considered doing conduit - mostly I didn't because I don't expect to be in this house for too many more years. I don't know that I would run fiber to many more places - I did place a jumper through the wall for my wife's desktop if we wanted that in the future. But most consumer devices still seem to have rj45s, so I wouldn't want to put down a media converter for each. If this were a new build I might consider placing fiber and only lighting it as needed.
This is the SFP DAS and fiber links in the current place:
workstation - switchUpStairs - switchMainFloor - switchBasement - nas
Edge devices are a mix between 100meg, 1gig, 2.5gig, so anything wired is limited mostly by its own nic or the ISP.
Sounds like a lot of work (unless you've got easy access... my last house had a basement with access to wall cavities, you could just shove cables up and reach in from a wall plate to grab it or shove down from the room).
I've got some 10g at my current house, but it's over cat5e cause that was already in the walls. Also adding a few 2.5g with a 4x2.5g + 2xsfp+ 10g switch that goes into a 10g capable switch.
Because pre-terminated cable assemblies [0] can be 10% of the cost of a more modular link, I used conduit large enough to pass QSFP28 with ease. May not be possible in every home but I'm happy with the result.
I've run fiber in my apartment, but it's running along baseboards in no-traffic areas and draped high up along wall and window moldings in nonzero-traffic ones.
> I am also thinking it might need to be shrouded in EMT conduit
Why would you need to run your fiber in metal pipe? EMI isn't a problem with fiber.
Yeah, but it’s a km from one end to the other, and a WiFi relay wasn’t cutting it, and Ethernet couldn’t stretch the distance - so fibre it was.
Utter pain in the ass, broke one fibre pulling it through conduit with way too much force (like, 2000+N), another got eaten by a fox before I’d put it in a conduit, and terminating fibre is a royal pain if you have to do it.
Which, while it works, is the poster child for how NOT to develop desktop software as it's a really shitty .NET GUI app they shoehorned onto non-Windows platforms.
Seems to have only basic usefulness as a diagnostic tool.
> Instantly tests SFP and QSFP module health, including Rx/Tx power.
Most SFP modules will fail due to heat, like LED bulbs. So an instant test is of course instantly useful, but not indicative of production-use SFP health.
As a programming tool, of course it's awesome.
Of course, in typical ubiquiti fashion, it's out of stock with no way to backorder.
Just bought an SFP+ module that works with Cisco, Dell, Juniper but won't work with Unifi. Is this supposed to test all generic modules even the cheap Chinese brands ?
For those outside the IT/networking realms, SFP use uniform connectors for both the networking device and the fiber cable, but the major vendors (Cisco and friends) have used firmware flags and settings to provide vendor lock-in for at least the last 15 years.
It used to be that in the event of a major outage or hardware failure you would need to issue additional debug commands to the effect of "I know this isn't your approved SFP but please just try it," if you were trying to replace a first party SFP with a third party one. TAC would more or less laugh at you and hang up if you sought support.
I'm not sure if this product will _actually_ change any of that, but here's hoping.
> TAC would more or less laugh at you and hang up if you sought support.
This is common belief and even a dire warning when filing TAC tickets. However, unless the third-party SFP is the prime suspect, I have never experienced a TAC from any major networking vendor[1] refuse support, let alone "laugh and hang up," even metaphorically.
It's good SOP to keep at least a couple SFPs for each networking manufacturer on the shelf, but third-party SFPs are normally in the ballpark of 10% of the cost of OEM and tend to be manufactured better[2].
1. Mostly Cisco, Juniper, HPE, Fortinet
2. I've had a far greater failure rate on OEM SFPs than SFPs from third-parties like Fs.com and USCritical. That and they feel much less flimsy than OEM.
Before I comment, a disclaimer about my small scale. I am running probably three hundred SFP+s running and less than five years of experience with optics. I don't have stock tracking for the individual manufacturers, and the failure rate comments here are based on gut-feel only. (there will be other people here used to far larger scales)
I bucket it into there being three options: genuine, clone, and good-clone.
We had a bad run with fs.com QSFP+s. Their SFP+s have been better to me, but reckon I have had a couple fail.
Atgbics SFP+s have been a reliable clone supplier for us. I don't think I have had any of those fail, and they have been my main vendor for a while now. You can order them programmed with personalities for Cisco, etc.
Part of the edge of fs.com is that it is so easy to place an order and get fast delivery. My main site is in another country to where I live, and I do a few trips a year. Several times they have made low-notice projects possible.
We accidentally ordered a load of “Generic brand” 100G QSFP from FS. Everything worked and appeared fine from the perspective of the switch and cards, reported OK status for everything, _except_ the lasers never turned on. Switching to an Extreme switch made the switch end work fine, but not the server.
Turns out Mellanox/NVIDIA hardware are _really_ picky about their cards. We bought a box from FS that reprogrammed the compatibility firmware and they worked instantly (FS also offered to return and reprogram but we needed it fast).
This was a big shock after dealing with nothing but CAT5/6/RJ45 that has been stable and common for decades (?).
> Atgbics SFP+s have been a reliable clone supplier for us.
With the caveat that I'm a USian and my scale is even lower than yours (10 10gbit SFP+ modules in my apartment combination home, office, and lab, running trouble-free for the past three years) I've found 10Gtek to be a reliable supplier. You can order 10gbit SFP+ modules straight from them for 14USD per per module. Though, shipping costs straight from them is currently pretty terrible: $35 if you're spending less than $800.
Stores like Newegg will often meet or beat that per-module price and offer free shipping if you buy a bundle of four or more... but modules with the personality you want may not be in stock.
[dead]
Don't think I ever had a case there TAC said anything about my sfps. Most of the time if it's the SFP you replace it, code it correctly with a device like the one linked, or it's the wrong kind of SFP anyway.
Longer than that - in 2005 I was at a network hardware startup and we had vendor-locked (ahem, _qualified_) SFPs back then. Probably started back in 2001 when they were introduced.
I have installed 100s of SFP connections and I've never had an issue with compatibility. I've never even heard of this. Is it just for some ultra high end products or something?
It's more for enterprise gear than anything. For example, enterprise Cisco gear will absolutely reject non-cisco optics, but datacenter gear won't. As an example, the Nexus 9000 line accepts non-cisco optics by default. Granted, those are 10k+ boxes so somewhat high-end but nowhere near the ASR line.
The nexus line being more modern in spirit also helps. Catalysts still reject non-cisco optics without a configuration line afaik.
A good rule of thumb is whether the equipment tries to vendor-lock you in.
Another example that comes to mind is at least one generation of Intel NICs (don't remember if it's the 5xx or the 7xx), where even the open-source mainline (!) driver will reject the optic without a driver argument passed to it when modprobe'ing it.
This is probably the relevant unlocking thread on Serve The Home:
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/patching-i...
That is crazy. Thanks for the info, this is why I love this site.
It's more common the more expensive the SFP host equipment, yes. This "compatibility" stuff is generally euphemism for "ridiculously primitive DRM" - lots of higher end network equipment checks the SFP Vendor ID and Serial Number and will reject it if it doesn't match an allow-list of "qualified" hardware. Programmers like these let you clone the VID/Serial from a "qualified" SFP onto a random SFP.
I'm surprised you've never run into this. Even the "cheap" cisco/juniper switches will warn you when you plug in a generic or different branded one.
Have you never worked with Intel NICs?
The two X520s that I have will refuse to work with non-Intel transceivers unless either you're running Linux and have set the 'allow_unsupported_sfp' option, or have edited the card's EEPROM to unset the "shut down unless the transceiver is a Genuine Intel part" bit. It's my understanding that very many Intel NICs are like this.
I remember [0] the Juniper switches that I used to have (before I switched to Mikrotik) refusing to work with anything other than Official Juniper transceivers.
[0] ...and may MISremember...
That might be a misremember - I've been using Juniper for nearly 20 years now and only ever saw a "software bug" in 18.x that broke OEM optics, but that was quickly addressed with a patch shortly after release.
Is there anything here from Ubiquiti that can allow me to plug an AT&T Fiber directly into my Unifi switch and get rid of the BGW620 crap? One would think AT&T Fiber is so common in Ubiquiti's target market that they should make an official SFP module for this already.
I know there are these XPS-GROUPON with "8311 firmware" SFP modules or something to bypass it but they cost $130+ and just wondering if there's something for <$50 before I pull the trigger.
Also
> 1000% lower pricing
What the hell does that mean? If some other vendor sells it for $1000, you sell it for -$9000?
If it's a PON then it's not Ethernet media. You would then be looking for an ONT SFP but those are far from ordinary SFPs. They are not just dumb devices, there is a lot going on inside them since they crammed a whole ONT into the SFP, and it communicates SFI back to the host equipment as if it would have been Ethernet.
https://hack-gpon.org/ont-wo-mac/
You would need the ISP to "adopt" your ONT into their network similar to what is observed with cable modems.
Consider that AT&T fiber device to be a literal component of their network in a way that is: adopted into the network management system, configured with appropriate settings for the particular network and network segment, maybe the device is named in a particular way for their billing/CRM solution, there may need to be e911 info configured in the device if they often do VoIP service, etc.
In short, a gpon network is not quite the same as rolling to Walmart or whatever and just grabbing a replacement cable/dsl modem.
But 3rd party devices that work with AT&T Fiber do exist. Ubiquiti just needs to get with the beat.
Ehhhhh... I'm not sure the market opportunity there is large enough for them to pursue.
They're strapped with SKU as is. Ubiquiti seems very focused on two main segments right now, which is growing enterprise switching and wifi, and their outdoor wireless gear, where (if memory serves from quarterly earnings reports) is now mostly concentrated outside the US.
>I'm not sure if this product will _actually_ change any of that, but here's hoping.
SFP programmers have been around forever and work great. This will solve the issue. The only really unique thing here is the form factor and price. I think the last time I looked at a programmer 8 years ago I seem to recall it was about 10x this price. I’m guessing cheaper ones have popped up out of China since then.
I like the pricing of this and especially the health check part. But the programming an SFP module part has been a thing forever. In Europe at least. Flexoptics for example have their own boxes to program optics.
This is not for me as I'm not a professional network engineer, but I do want to say that Ubiquiti has made home networking SO fun for me. Everything truly "Just Works."
My setup is definitely more on the prosumer side, but it's been so build out and inspect my network with their tools.
This is exactly how it is for me too. Everything truly "just worked" - except Sonos, but that's not a Unifi problem - they even have a dedicated page in their docs on how to set up Sonos systems, which I followed exactly, and it now works a treat.
I wish I could say that Unifi has just worked for me, but any time I add a new Unifi device to the network (say a new switch, or just recently a U6 range extender), my network gets incredibly unstable until I manually restart every UniFi device on the network, sometimes multiple times. (i.e. Some devices won't connect to WiFi due to DHCP IP configuration errors.) And that's after getting the device adopted, which generally takes multiple retries.
I've also had three instances where upon rebooting due to a power outage or a system update, my inbound firewall / port forwarding was just broken. UniFi simply did not pass packets to my server. Once again, a full reboot of every UniFi device on the network resolved it.
I really want to like UniFi, and I appreciate how much access I have to SSH in and figure out what's going on (and I did take tcpdumps and have a support case open), but it has definitely not been plug-and-play for me.
I'm using a UDR7, U7 Lite, a number of managed UniFi switches, and just recently added the U6 extender.
I just wanted to chime in and say that this hasn't been my experience. It sounds like you have some other sort of problem if it takes multiple attempts to adopt.
I appreciate the data point. It has truly been every single switch and now the extender as well. I'll open up a separate case for this.
The primary case I have open currently is in regards to the port forwarding / routing breaking on some restarts.
The 7 series has many problems. They'll eventually work it out, but it seems to be a bit more problematic than usual.
I do not have any of the 7 series yet, and perhaps that is the difference.
Sounds strange to me as well, ubnt has been the apple networking experience
I don’t know about it "just works." Still have to perform a monthly reboot of equipment otherwise performance kind of drops off.
Still 100X better than the competition though. My UDM has worked wonderfully with support for dual IPs and seamless failover
Yeah, my experience with the UAP-AC-LITE and -LR was that it would get wonky if not rebooted every month or so. That (combined with the realization that its software load is pretty much just OpenWRT with the serial numbers filed off) caused me to dump the official firmware and switch to OpenWRT.
I was quite a lot happier after the switch, as I didn't have to hassle with UniFi and my APs stopped needing roughly-monthly reboots.
Tangentially related: is Mikrotik as bad for wireless as some say? I want to like them, even though their equipment seems complex, I root for a company from the Baltics that have carved out a respectable niche. But they appear to struggle with wireless?
My biggest issue is threat surface. You can design around it, but Mikrotik WAP's do everything a Mikrotik router can do. If they get compromised they can run scripts, create blind proxies etc, and mikrotik has a habit of resurfacing CVEs from memory.
My experience is very binary. I had some Mikrotik RF installs that Just Worked, and never needed attention. And some that were just problem children constantly demanding reboots.
Mikrotik code isnt the most stable beast in the world, but if you keep it at a certain point in time you are usually safe. But then that brings you back around to the security issues again.
> If they get compromised they can run scripts, create blind proxies etc...
How's that different from a Unifi AP? Unless they changed something in the past five, eight years, the software running on the AP is pretty much OpenWRT with the serial numbers hastily filed off. [0] Get a shell, and you get to download whatever to do whatever you need.
[0] Me coming to this realization is what lead me to switch over to OpenWRT. I didn't need any of the fleet management stuff provided by UniFi, and was constantly frustrated that the APs had to totally reboot whenever you changed nearly any setting on them. (I heard that they eventually fixed that particular shortcoming. Good for them, I guess.)
Mikrotik will let you do a lot of this without downloading new code, but you are correct. In my experience people find a simple vuln, log in, enable the blind proxy feature, and then use your network to evade netflix region blocking until you realise.
Cambiums shell from memory is much further locked down. IIRC you need a possibly predictable password form cambo to do get full root shell on a lot of devices.
I've been using Mikrotik in various capacities since 2008, I even made IoT devices using RB450 boards before the word "IoT" was coined. I also love supporting a small company that is successfully competing with the giants.
Their long-distance wireless and outdoor wireless are great, but their regular WiFI access points and software are at most adequate. They are not keeping up with the state of the art.
> They are not keeping up with the state of the art.
Does that mean that the performance is middling (making them -IME- equal to UBNT's APs), that they never have APs that use the very latest and greatest WiFi version, or both?
Both. They don't have access points supporting 6 GHz wireless or 2.5G Ethernet.
I think they've just given up on that sector, and they're focusing on more specialized outdoors/long-distance wireless.
I don't want to get into the Ubiquity ecosystem because it's typically all-or-nothing plunge. And I distrust complicated managed systems out of general principles.
You've not looked at Mikrotik's hardware recently.
They have several APs that have 2.5Gbit ethernet (one with a 2.5Gbit SFP+ cage), and one AP with a 10Gbit SFP+ cage. Additionally, all their APs run RouterOS, which means that you can bond links together to fairly-reliably get additional throughput. [0]
In regards to Wifi 6e and Wifi 7, it looks like Mikrotik takes quite a long while after a new Wifi version to release hardware that runs it. I expect your assertion that they've given up on 6GHz for home/small-office APs is incorrect.
[0] Yes, I've personal experience with using link bonding on Mikrotik hardware. As a knowledgeable someone would expect, it usually provides you with additional throughput proportional to the number of bonded links.
Yeah, I'm using bonded links between my Synology NAS with 4 gigabit ports and a CCR router. It works acceptably well.
But I've just checked the Mikrotik hardware list, and I don't see indoor APs that are PoE-powered and have more than one Ethernet port. Maybe I'm overlooking something?
> But I've just checked the Mikrotik hardware list, I don't see indoor APs that are PoE-powered and have more than one Ethernet port.
a) Who said anything about that? In the four comments prior to this one, that set of requirements wasn't brought up.
b) Yes, you are absolutely overlooking something. On the Products page, try expanding the "Features" widget of the "Product filters" section, checking the "PoE-in" option, and hitting the "Use filters" button. Even the AP I mentioned with the 10Gbit SFP+ cage has PoE in.
Well, an indoor access point at this point needs to support PoE.
I tried again, and I see only mANTBox and NetMetal ax access points. Both are designed for outdoor deployment and would be very awkward indoors.
> I tried again, and I see only mANTBox and NetMetal ax access points.
I'm not sure what you've done to only see those two APs. Based on your confusing report, it seems like you're also looking in the "Wireless systems" category. Try the "Wireless for home and office" category.
If you try and fail again, please do post the URL of the page you're looking at.
D'oh. Thanks! That was it.
I definitely see more options now. Still not super great (no 6E), but definitely viable.
I haven't tried their CAP or HAP lines, but I'm happy with my RB4011. /shrug
It's particularly a problem with multiple access points, if it's just one and you need 'ok' coverage you're good.
Can someone explain what "just works" when compared to other networking gear? IE I use ASUS and their mesh, and it all "just works". Have a mix of routers over 10 years and they all mesh together.
I started with TPLink gear in a mesh mode, and it kinda sorta maybe worked? I had an access point on the ground floor, a range extender + option to connect RJ45 (for devices with out WiFi), on the middle floor, and an additional meshed AP / range extender on the top floor. The top floor meshed thing basically didn't work, the RJ45 thing got me like 50 Mbps while wireless was getting me 200 Mbps. It 'just worked', but it didn't work well.
In that same house switching over to Ubiquiti just worked, and worked well. I had the same setup (mesh nodes on every floor), but performance was substantially better (2-4x).
I've moved house, and now have wired APs on every floor, and get phenomenal performance. The management UI to see what is where / how its connected, and when something doesn't work is very good. It also enables things that were hard / difficult with other non-'prosumer' gear. Like I can have multiple WAN ports, and plug in a cellular modem, so that when my internet doesn't just work (which happens way too often) it auto-fails over to the cellular modem, and continues just working.
The reason I went with Ubiquiti in the first place was their Unifi Protect line of cameras, and again those 'just work' from the wireless small ones to domes / etc plugged into wired connections they all just seamlessly connect to my dream machine, and provides a great UI, and the data is on prem which I want.
The only thing Ubiquiti doesn't do the way I want is DHCP + DNS, so I have a seperate raspberry pi doing that.
After years of fussing around with either linux / pfsense / ... routing + firewall solutions, and different AP / meshing configurations the ubiquiti stuff is very hands off.
Ah, so based on your last paragraph I guess you're in "prosumer" territory? My router has dual WAN, SFP, can do cellular over USB, tells DHCP clients to use the pihole for DNS, and I don't have speed issues in or around the house with the mesh nodes, but maybe it falls short if I was looking to do more advanced routing/firewalls.
Definitely in prosumer territory, and it's totally achievable with equipment that isn't Ubiquiti (they're not magic, the mediums RF + ethernet + fiber are all the same), but the amount of fiddling I found to get things to 'work right' with ubiquiti was plug it all in, set up the WiFi password, and update the DNS / DHCP server to my pihole, and then I didn't have to do much else, and there was a really nice UI with nice metrics, and a nice UI for cameras all built in, and a few other niceties like some VPN options. There's also sufficient logging that when something doesn't work I can maybe figure out why.
I don't really do more 'advanced' routing (other than maybe the unifi protect aka camera stuff it sounds like we're describing similar configurations), it's just that when I tried to achieve the configuration you're describing with Asus it was impossible, with TPLink it took a lot of fiddling / configuration and never 'worked right' (right meaning as well as I thought it should, though I've not tried TPLink in a primarily wired configuration) where as the ubiquiti stuff was plug and play and just 'worked right' (close to the speeds and reliability I expected both in a mesh mode and in wired).
The whole camera thing -- which is what really got me to pay the ubiquiti tax -- is another story entirely, I'm sure there are lots of other good options for self hosted IP camera solutions, but I couldn't find any ones I wanted to use, and again with ubiquiti it was super plug and play, and once I'd bought the UDM to do camera stuff and saw how well that worked I wanted to try the ubiquiti networking stuff, and it worked better with less configuration that the other alternatives I'd tried.
With infinite time and finite budget ubiquiti is not the right choice for home networks, with a sizable budget for home networking equipment minimal time investment and a preference for performance ubiquiti has worked out better for me than alternatives out of the box, and better for me after spending time tweaking and trying to optimize TPlink (meaning ubiquiti out of the box was better after trying to optimize TPlink).
If "not ubiquiti" works for you out of the box, or in the configuration you're already in then you're all set, and you're definitely not missing out on anything. If things aren't working out of the box and you're tired of fiddling with it, or your other goals aren't possible, and they are with ubiquiti maybe it's worth the investigation.
I also _hate_ how much I sound like an ad for ubiquiti. I'm really not, but I think I've spent more time writing these two comments than I've spent having to fuss around with my network equipment in years.
Hey, really appreciate the response though. I would say I'm in the "more time than money" category.
It's hard to not notice the ... ubiquity of praise for their gear over the years, but I haven't seen much clarifying what sets them apart. Maybe I should look at them like peak Apple but for networking gear?
Yes. That is how I view them, and a fair description I think.
When I was willing to spend time on this (home networking + cameras) I would have never touched this equipment. It was all open source / cheap stuff with BSD or Linux routers, random switches, home assistant raspberry pi's connected to USB cameras. It would take some time maybe not a lot, but enough, and it would break frequently enough due to some update somewhere or something.
I think the idea is that the Ubiquiti equipment is far more capable than normal consumer-grade equipment like ASUS, and still manages to "just work". So your ASUS may also "just work" but is has a fraction of the capabilities as the unifi system in terms of feature load-out and scope of native device integrations.
Adding a new Unifi device to the network is just a matter of powering it up, responding to "adopt this new device?" prompt on your phone, and that's it. It's literally Plug'n'Play in 2025. Even if other brands let you do that with similar number of steps, the UX is so behind that it's impossible for you to discover the steps that easily. Ubiquiti uses UX quite intelligently to make complicated things feel simple. My experience hasn't been close to Ubiquiti's with any other brand I've tried.
For a start I wouldn’t trust brands that by default market mesh over wired backhaul.
Because ... ? Reminder my comment was looking for explanations. Is your issue that mesh + Ethernet backhaul is actually WAP + roaming and not mesh?
> Everything truly "Just Works."
Right. Just like 5Gbit PPPoE uplinks over VLAN. In fact there is no Ubiquiti router which can handle 1.5Gbit+ PPPoE for some reason. So, I have a mikrotik in front of UDMPM just to termiate PPPoE and I had to buy a IPv4 /29 subnet to avoid double not.
Everything just works, sure.
* double NAT.
I got some decommissioned Ubiquiti gear (a switch, some ap's) from work, but it requires UniFi to do anything. I looked into that briefly and it appears to be some eldritch horror of an application. Anything I can't use from a terminal is worthless, so all of it is going in the trash where it belongs.
Depending on the model of AP, you might be able to run OpenWRT on it without too much hassle.
Same experience for me.
I am eyeballing the new NAS to play with soon.
Do you think it'd be worth upgrading over TP Link Omada hardware?
I made the switch to Ubiquiti from TP Link last year. 1000% worth it. The "Just Works (tm)" thing is true, but the ceiling of what you can do with it is so much higher. I'll also say that the Unifi nerds out there are legion and you can find support and comment threads all over the place for pretty much any project you want to do.
All the complaints about Ubiquiti in this thread from a few months ago dissuaded me from investing in their gear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44746603
I ended up going with TP-Link Omada and have been happy so far (a managed switch and wifi 6 WAPs). I am a bit concerned about their security track record given how bad their soho products are, so I ended up sticking with my opnsense router at the perimeter as the first line of defense.
I’m curious to hear what you think you’re missing out on with Omada.
>I am a bit concerned about their security track record given how bad their soho products are, so I ended up sticking with my opnsense router at the perimeter as the first line of defense.
Ubiquiti has had plenty of bad security issues as well I'm afraid, but fundamentally one of the advantages of both is that with a self-hostable controller and VLAN isolation you should be able to minimize your attack area pretty well from both the LAN and WAN. No remote dependencies at all. But like you I run OPNsense at the edge, you do at least have to trust their firewall and such if you want to go full single-pane.
The two biggest complaints in that thread (Edgerouter support abandoned, and VLAN issue unacknowledged and unfixed) were both wrong. Overall, it is a great, easy, inexpensive set of products.
> Edgerouter support abandoned...
Well, [0] mentions that they left the ER firmware alone for two years. They also don't sell the ER hardware anymore.
Looking at the changelog in combination with the comments on the news item about the new release, it looks like there are many bugs left unfixed. If this analysis is correct [2], nearly nothing was changed.
That smells an awful lot like abandonment.
> ...VLAN issue unacknowledged and unfixed... were both wrong.
This subthread [3] disagrees with you. As someone who has suffered through multi-quarter "struggle sessions" [4] with UBNT engineering staff about broken basic functionality, I can totally believe a report that UBNT claims something has been fixed when it's very much not fixed.
[0] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44794857>
[1] <https://community.ui.com/releases/EdgeRouter-3-0-0/33ee3852-...>
[2] <https://community.ui.com/releases/EdgeRouter-3-0-0/33ee3852-...>
[3] <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44756915>
[4] Complete with round after round of them saying "Hey, we fixed it! Try the latest beta!", and me replying "No, you didn't. Did you run my 100% reliable reproducer that I've given you? It sure looks like you haven't because that reproducer still reproduces the problem.".
I made the same conclusions but got burned with Omada. Cheaper, yes, but fewer features and buggier than Unifi (and that’s a pretty low bar). I migrated back to Unifi.
I don't think I've run into any bugs, but there are also entire sections of the controller I haven't explored yet. I have a pretty typical homelab style setup with multiple wifi SSIDs for trusted devices and untrusted devices, and several VLANs to isolate them. I guess it's good to know rumors of Ubiquiti's death have been greatly exaggerated in case my Omada hardware starts acting up.
Not omoda, but TP-Link - recently built a deco setup - 3x be65, 2x be25, one WiFi mesh node, the rest is wired 2.5gbe backhaul and performance is excellent, though I’m not a fan of only being able to configure stuff from the app, and there isn’t that much to configure anyway. It just works, but if it wouldn’t, I’d probably have to return the whole set.
I've used both and was super interested to use Omada because of its price and performance. Honestly, Ubiquiti is just so much easier. The whole controller model for Omada tries to be way more "enterprisey" at the cost of a SOHO ease of use.
Based on having migrated multiple clients from UniFi to Omada but still has UniFi deployed across a few sites too, I'll give you a different take from the replies you've gotten so far. TP-Link's Omada is a newer, direct competitor to UniFi, and when it came out Ubiquiti was an absolute fucking dumpster fire in terms of, well, everything. Their software, hardware, and even the forums (which they killed in favor of the current mess). Their gateway/routing/network service story sucked, they were missing key features, their firmware was rotting in basic ways (like ssh being so old it literally included only insecure ciphers and you couldn't even connect to it anymore without + options), and finally were also starting to make more and more concerning and ugly choices that pointed towards serious organization issues (constant UI bike shedding churn in favor of ancient features and bugs they'd agreed were important) and enshitification (tying software applications to required hardware). However, they were also the only player doing that sort of fully self-hostable unified configuration networking. I migrated all the gateway/routing/simple service stuff to OPNsense, but then was stuck.
TP-Link stepped in and have been working hard on Omada being a direct competitor. It's clearly inspired liberally from UniFi but that's A-OK by me, it's healthy for both to be going head to head. In my experience it had somewhat fewer features, particularly initially, and they definitely don't cover the full breadth of cool and useful niches that Ubiquiti does either. But what there is has worked well and been more reliable for me, particularly in a mixed environment. For example Omada worked perfected day 1 with automatic L3 controller discovery using a simple DHCP Option 138 set on my OPNsense unit pointing right at my controller FQDN. It was easy and built-in to supply a proper certificate for the Web GUI. I never got either of those to work with the UniFi controller. The switching has been rock solid reliable and the WiFi more performant, better coverage, and features like PPSK were added way before Ubiquiti did and have a much better interface.
However, Ubiquiti does seem to perhaps be turning things around a bit. Their router hardware is no longer garbage, even if it is of course far less then you can do yourself. From what I can see in simple ongoing tests they do a better job on the software side for router features now as well, so if you're all-in on both systems for the total single-pane experience UniFi might once again be better. Their announcement of the "UniFi OS Server" 3 months ago (in Early Access) and publicly last month was both a surprise and heartening. Rarely does one see companies that start down the path of lock-in reverse course at all. If they make it possible to run all their various controller applications on your own hardware I'd definitely start to add more back into my mix.
So if you've got decently modern Omada hardware (and you probably do because not like it's been around that long, in terms of networks anyway) I'd be in no massive rush to switch to UniFi unless you see some key specific things you'd like. If you think you ever might want to roll your own other infra same thing even harder. But if you're thinking about a bunch of upgrades anyway then worth keeping an eye on and looking carefully at the various feature mixes each have.
And that's a really statement that makes me super happy to say, because I think each is now driving the other, which is really healthy for this ecosystem!
Thanks for your perspective! I’m all-in on Omada now with WiFi 6 APs and a few managed switches. Been working pretty well overall, but my network config is pretty basic.
I was more just curious if I was missing out on something great (or if I ever decide to upgrade to WiFi 7+)
Early this year I started redoing the backbone of my home network with 10 gb. Some of it's fiber, some of it's 10 gb copper Ethernet. It's been genuinely frustrating the weird incompatibilities between switches and SFP+ modules.
All my switches are MikroTik. My SFP+ modules are MikroTik, Ubiquiti, and some 3rd party ones from before I knew better.
I've had modules that will only run at gigabit in one switch but will give me the full 10 gb in another. I've had modules that refuse to work in one MikroTik switch but will happily work in a different MikroTik switch. I've just had a world of pain.
I've got everything basically working after months of fiddling and I'm inclined to just not… touch… anything.
I've had great luck with 10gtek modules both with Mikrotik gear, with DACs, and one that is connected to an upstream juniper switch. I'm curious what modules were the most troublesom.
* I will note that the 10gb sfp+ modules from 10gtek on a Mikrotik just don't work.
Funnily enough, this 10gtek worked on one of my 3 switches, but I could only establish a gigabit connection. I returned it [1]
These 10gtek fiber modules on the other hand have worked flawlessly so far. [2]
This Mikrotik module would not establish a 10 gb link with my Thunderbolt dock no matter what I tried. Works fine with my servers though so I swapped it out.
I've pretty much resigned myself to just buying the full brand Ubiqitui SFP+ adapters [4] for converting to copper.
I recently purchased [5] to run to my living room, but I have not found the time/energy to do the run.
1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KFBFL16
2. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BP4M8LV
3. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078SNK1MY
4. https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/accessories-modules-fibe...
5. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYC6P6KF
I tried converting everything to copper as well but the copper DACs use a lot of power and ended up not working out due to the greatly increased power usage (mostly because the networking "closet" wasn't really designed for it). So beware if you're moving it to copper
did you try to disable autonegotiation and force speed ? i think i had to do it a couple of times with copper
Yep. I actually had to do that to get the Ubiqiti one to work. It just did not work when I tried that with the Mikrotik adapter.
Make sure you also pay attention to the distance rating of the SFP. I had a very similar experience with modules not working at the right speed sometimes. Turned out I was running 50 meters of cable over a 30 meter SFP. Got the correct one, and as low wattage rating as possible and it's been rock solid ever since.
btw, if you are using 10gbe copper modules, take a look at their temperature. some of mine were getting to 92C i think. had to put a bunch of heatsinks on them
I put a couple of Noctua NF-14 over the top ventilation holes in my rack, with the silicone mounting thingies and the NA-FC1 PWM controller. They are almost silent in winter. The switch with 10Gb copper is under the fans.
i opened switch and put noctua inside to cool sfp cage that i added heatsink to, in addition to heatsinks on sfp+ module itself. it dropped temperature from 92c to 75c. year later i replaced it with fiber run.
> * I will note that the 10gb sfp+ modules from 10gtek on a Mikrotik just don't work.
Weird. For the past three years, I've had 10Gtek 10gbit SFP+ optical modules in all of my Mikrotik switches [0] and they Just Work.
My switches are the CRS326-24G-2S+, and the SFPs were the "generic" versions. I wonder why yours were so troublesome.
[0] ...and (after fixing their eeproms) my Intel x520 NICs...
I have a few SFP+ doing 10GbE over UTP from 10Gtek in a Mikrotik. They work perfectly, although hot (to be expected).
I have found that a fiber patch cable paired with two SFPs is cheaper and more power efficient than an equivalent UTP setup. This lead me to move to all fiber/DAC for 10Gb save for the 10Gb UTP link to my router that lacks SFP.
I have the 8 port 10Gb + 1 Gb from mikrotik and the UTP SFP's run stupid hot because they have to drive a cable at GHz speeds. The fiber and DAC (direct attach cable) SFPs are cool to the touch by comparison.
Similar... I only bought a single 8-port 10gb ethernet switch though... I have a couple devices with 10g nics including my NAS, the rest are 2.5g. I'm hoping that sooner than later, 10g ethernet gear pricing comes down closer to where 2.5g is today.
Have you had any issues with cooling? I have a 10GbE SFP+ module (made by Ubiquiti) that seems to have issues with overheating, I had to remove it to keep my network up consistently.
Copper 10gbe or fibre? All copper 10gbit devices produce a lot more heat than their 1gbit brethren.
It's one of the reasons I switched to running fiber even to desktops at home; it's like 1/10th the heat output.
Yep, copper! I’ve shied away from fiber at home just…because? But maybe for a trunk line it’s worth it. Thanks!
You want one of the latest ones rated for 100m (1.8W peak); the older 80m (2.5W) ones run hotter and the 30m ones are really hot.
FiberStore (fs.com) have offered vendor neutral and reprogrammable SFPs and other modules for years (they're also dramatically less expensive).
> (they're also dramatically less expensive)
It depends, but for typical networking I'd say Ubiquti is actually offering better pricing here (outside of 10G LR) - and I'm saying that as someone who has sold 10s of thousands of FS modules to customers.
Note: Prices in () are the costs outside of the limited time mark-down period.Side note for the HN crowd: For ridiculous homelab 100G shenanigans look for Intel 100G-CWDM4 on sites like Ebay. They go for $4 and work with SM LC fiber from 0-2000 meter runs, making great DAC replacements (cheaper+thinner replaceable cabling). They run great, I've had 8 going for a year. Even if all 8 failed tomorrow and I bought 8 more that's still cheaper than a single 100G SR4 from FS. You can pair these with used 100G NICs for ~$100, making a 100G direct connection between 2 machines ~$250 after shipping+tax.
For high speed home stuff, I usually pick up some old Mellanox infiniband cards and cables. They're usually dirt cheap and insanely quick. Difficult to work with if you do not know what your are doing.
OMG, mlx fw upgrades.
I'm so happy my current employer chose sfc :)
Lol.. yeah. Was fun having a 32Gb (QDR) storage network at home for next to nothing for a while (except the huge electric bill).
> Ubiquti is actually offering better pricing here (outside of 10G LR)
Ubiquiti's 10GB LR of $59 is for a 2-pack, not per-module. So that still comes out cheaper than FS for the sale duration at least. Not by a lot, granted, but still cheaper.
Whats the best solution for short runs (rack) between Mikrotik switches and Dell servers. Will a DAC still work between different vendors or is it always best to buy individual transceivers?
DAC is always the best option for short runs in terms of cost and compatibility.
Agreed. I have a 10 Gb DAC connecting my workstation and a small server to a Mikrotik. They are way cheaper, use less electric, and run cooler compared to a UTP SFP. I don't like UTP for 10Gb as its both costly and less efficient though that is going to get better with time.
Nice prices from Ubiquiti. I think fs mostly competes against Cisco which have much higher prices. IIRC we hade like a 95% discount off Ciscos list price for optics.
Fun fact: each one also consumes approximately $4 in electricity per year.
Assuming 2.5W typical consumption, $0.18/kWh rate. More like $8/year if you are in a high rate area!
They're dramatically less expensive than original OEM, but UB clearly is targeting them with this release/aggressive pricing.
It remains to be seen if UB's pricing (particularly $50 on the "Wizard") is just temp to get their foot in the door. I suspect it is; and we'll see the price increase later.
> I suspect it is; and we'll see the price increase later.
I used to use Ubiquiti gear a number of years ago, but left when they started moving into an Apple-esque "prosumer" direction with corresponding price increases. That, and the constant bugs.
Just to add context:
Ubiquiti's G3 Instant entry level camera was launched at $30 in 2021; which is $55 adjusted for inflation, but they're actually selling it for $80. The G4 Instant is $99 and G6 Instant is $180(!). Keep in mind this is their cheapest, entry level, offering in the camera space.
Whereas if you contrast these prices with a Reolink E1 Pro which is $55 (with free shipping) and superior to the G4 Instant in every metric (lens quality, pixel count, PTZ, ONVIF support, et al). This essentially makes this a space that Ubiquiti is no longer interested in competing in.
One of the more egregious examples in my opinion is their rack mounted cable modem. I would love to get it but -- $279? No thanks.
on thingverse and some other sites there are adapters for different cable modems to make them rack mounted
And if you shove the wrong (i.e. non-FS) optic in an FS Box you accidentally softlock your account for a week at a time as a punishment :)
That app also sends ser# and other info to FS forcing you to help them build out the DB.
As does Flexoptixs (much better quality than fs.com in my experience)
https://www.flexoptix.net/en/fo-fb-5.html?option875=1
If you're buying at scale you can get a Flexoptixs box for free, long as you promise to write a review. At least, you used to be able to.
Now if only the fiberstore SFP programmer didn't require an app that is basically malware as far as I'm concerned.
It is pretty bad...I use a crap laptop to run it (same thing I do for all my PLC software that is just horrible)
Ubiquiti is awesome, but their IPv6 support leaves something to be desired.
I have two ISPs, one with IPv6 (Starlink) and one without (Frontier).
I want to use Frontier for all IPv4, with IPv4 failover to Starlink, and I want to use Starlink only for IPv6.
UniFi networking won’t let you configure this, and I’m not going to SSH in to my UDM to manually set routes, that will be lost at next boot.
I've recently had a laugh on a UDM trying to setup IPv6 routing. Somehow, it did not install the default route in the FIB, but the OS was aware of it, so the router was reachable from the outside but did not route packets. I tried adding a route to `::0/0` and it spat at me that a multicast destination was not valid as a route destination. I gave it a route to `::0/1` and it's happily chugging along now. /shrug
I use Unifi for everything except my router, for which I use a Supermicro server running OPNsense. The Unifi gateways are just too limited.
Same setup for me. Unifi just has to many limits to advanced networking. Trying to force tunnels to just do basic routing.
This is why my router isn’t ubiquiti. I like the switches and access points but my router will stay an OpenBSD box.
I've only been using it for a couple months, but OPNsense (FreeBSD based) is such a solid piece of software. I installed it on a cheap Beelink mini PC with dual 2.5 gb NICs and an N150 processor (model EQ14), and it's been reliable and a pleasure to use as my router. I have a TP-Link Omada setup which I've been pleased with, but I feel no need to purchase one of their gateways.
What do you use for OpenBSD hardware? Is it power hungry? Is it performant?
I had a great stint with OpenBSD on an older Pentium 4 Dell tower a few years back. For basic firewall rules, I had line-rate performance on my NICs. But for a home network I'd love to have something more energy efficient.
I posted this in a sibling comment, but I can confirm Beelink's EQ14 [1] works well with OPNsense (FreeBSD based instead of OpenBSD). The dual NIC model uses the Intel KTI226-V chipset which has rock solid FreeBSD drivers.
[1] https://www.bee-link.com/products/beelink-eq14-n150?variant=...
Search Amazon for "pfsense mini pc". (smile as you think about how this triggers that one pfsense guy!) Intel N100 or N150 processor, passive cooling, typically 5 1000GBASE-T or better ports, RAM and SSD included. Should be able to get one for ~$200.
There are good options there, but those white label mini PCs can be hardware quality roulette.
As much as I like opnsense, I choose Ubiquiti still when I need something cheap that I need to rely on.
My current router at home is a dell vostro 3020 with a quad port intel nic. I usually get dell for the firmware updates they provide well after warranty.
Should put in feature request, I would happily upvote/support something like this on their community forum.
I'd expect it to go nowhere fast. UBNT being weird and inconsistent about IPv6 has been a thing since before I was using their official software... which was from like 2015 through 2018 or so.
What’s the reasoning behind this? IP type seems like a weird segment since it’s essentially random what supports it right now.
Not ideal, but can you add an init.d to do that?
I love this. However, I'm very interested to see the maths on "offering up to 1000% savings compared to industry standards"
Cisco etc have truly insane pricing on optics, like $1000 for something generic that cost $20-50 from fs.com etc. The only difference is how it presents itself to the switch (ie, says its a Cisco optic), not actual difference in performance.
Often Cisco/etc will refuse support cases if you aren't using their optics, if the switches/routers even work with them in the first case, which isn't a given as often they'll refuse to work with non branded optics.
Really just a money grab by the big network vendors.
This box allows you to flash the firmware on the optic to say its from whatever brand you want (Cisco, Dell, Aruba, Juniper etc) so that you can get it to work in that companies switch/router.
For most SMEs, the brand of optics makes no difference. Maybe keep a few legit branded ones around for debugging and when you need to raise a support case. But otherwise, the generic ones flashed to look like branded ones work just fine.
> Often Cisco/etc will refuse support cases if you aren't using their optics, if the switches/routers even work with them in the first case, which isn't a given as often they'll refuse to work with non branded optics.
As others here have pointed out, Cisco reserves the right to do this but doesn't do it in practice. They don't even have a realistic chance to _detect_ a Cisco-programmed FS SFP, since it simply identifies the same as a genuine Cisco module.
If your case was directly related to the SFP (“I can't get a link on this fiber port”), then yes, they could probably refuse it. But if your case is about basically anything else on the switch, they won't care.
> If your case was directly related to the SFP (“I can't get a link on this fiber port”), then yes, they could probably refuse it.
I have zero doubt they will. But also you prove nothing and are doing yourself and the vendor a disservice if you fake it. There’s no telling what your 3rd party transceiver is doing incorrectly. Better to get one single supported sfp and get that fixed which will probably fix your other issue too.
FS is so big they’re probably fine. Another option is to get one supported sfp, find if it’s encoded to an oem part, then buy and install the oem part directly. Easy to twist the arm of your var to do this.
> But also you prove nothing and are doing yourself and the vendor a disservice if you fake it. There’s no telling what your 3rd party transceiver is doing incorrectly.
If I report an IS-IS problem and the root cause is an OEM SFP on a completely unrelated port, then the design of the switch is pretty awful. :-)
Oh! I’m in complete agreement.
I’ve never heard of a vendor being so difficult. My comment applies only to interface errors. (Up/down status, rx/tx errors, fec issue, etc) Any vendor without an override for 3rd party sfp should be rejected after RFP.
"The only difference is how it presents itself to the switch (ie, says its a Cisco optic), not actual difference in performance."
That's not the only difference. I have had situations where I ran equivalent optics side-by-side, and then touched one and it was hot, and touched the other and it was not hot. They do contain different components. In the case of that test - the atgbics SFP was cool, and the other clone unit was hot. My dealer was able to get me in contact with someone technical at atgbics (the cool-running unit) who explained the difference, "The DSP might be say 13nm where more modern more expensive ones are 5nm."
But you definitely do not need to pay for "genuine" optics to get high-reliability optics. You just need to shop around the clones - atgbics is a clone.
It’s simple, they pay you 9X the standard industry price for each one you take…?
The more you buy the more you save
infinite money glitch
The technical information for this thing seems to be light on the ground. What kind of diagnostic stats are provided? How is it figuring out true Rx/Tx power without a light meter?
Also, reading "Just insert any brand’s SFP or QSFP module, select Copy, and insert any UI module to write the profile." suggests that this only works to reprogram UI optics
> The technical information for this thing seems to be light on the ground. What kind of diagnostic stats are provided? How is it figuring out true Rx/Tx power without a light meter?
The programming boxes (Ubiquiti's and others) get the Rx/Tx power from the DDM (Digital Diagnostics Module) built into most SFPs - it exposes the power levels from the receiver and transmitter inside the SFP and dumps it onto an SPI bus in a standardised way which is read by the box.
> Just insert any brand’s SFP or QSFP module, select Copy, and insert any UI module to write the profile.
It's pretty common for SFP rewrite boxes to only allow writing to that particular brand's SFP modules. It's partly a sales tactic, but also often vendor "genuine" optics will ship with a write-protected EEPROM (requiring a passcode) that stops them from being written to.
If you're after something a little more "open", Reveltronics[1] make a barebones version along with software for brute-forcing EEPROM keys.
[1] https://www.reveltronics.com/en/products/sfp-qsfp-xfp
Isn't this exactly the same as flexoptix and FS have been doing for years?
Ubiquiti doesn't invent anything; they make it cheap with a better UI.
Better UI is stretching it a bit... Maybe for the amateur/enthusiast (homelab) market...
I certainly don't need or want their rack augmented reality... 'feature'? fad? And their clunky web UI is both limiting and slowing me down. Thanks, I'm perfectly fine with a console and simple LEDs.
That’s their exact niche.
That and SMB’s. I’ve seen a lot of Ubiquity gear in small hotels, random small businesses, etc. Especially hotels, they seem to be super common (not big chains like Hilton or whatever but smaller boutique hotels).
The UI for the fs.com programmer is merely "not bad". This could easily be great in comparison.
> I certainly don't need or want their rack augmented reality... 'feature'? fad?
I find it mind-boggling that you can hardly buy _RAM_ anymore without programmable RGB LEDs, but that managed switches do not come with a per-port RGB LED to let me mark VLANs or cables that need replacements or whatever. Come on! A nice little square all around the port, please. Instead, we get the QR code plus an app that needs to talk with the cloud.
Some of their switches have Etherlighting™.
Yes, if you have special Ubnt-brand cables. And still, I want this to be standard everywhere, not a niche thing from one manufacturer :-) (I know Facebook has some on their 100G switches, too.)
I'm pretty sure that the only thing special about the cables is the boot that transmits the light from the port's LED array fairly well.
Interesting, that's pretty much the same thing I developed 6 years ago, though with a nicer display and QSFP slot: https://github.com/carrotIndustries/hubble/
Does it only clone the EEPROM from one SFP module to another (so you need to physically posess both), or can you write arbitrary data?
And does it only write to SFP modules from Ubiquiti (looking at you FS BOX)?
Another tool you can use for this (without a nice UI) is the SFP Buddy: https://oopselectronics.com/product/SFPB
UniFi SFP modules work fine in Dell and Synology servers, so contrary to most of the anecdotes in this thread I’ve always just bought the 20 packs and had no issues.
Didn’t need reprogramming.
The quality is fine, oldest modules more than 5 years old and only 1 failure in 100.
What nics are you using on the server end? Im looking at moving from 10Gbe copper to 25Gbe/100Gbe between Mikrotik switches and 14/15th gen Dell servers
Broadcom in nearly all cases (default Dell option, I think). Elsewhere, Intel.
You're not using DAC's ?
No we buy our OM4 fiber cables for pennies on FS, so we stock a box of virtually every length in 1ft increments.
DACs would be way more expensive to stock in every length.
"The SFP Wizard is a pocket-sized powerhouse that checks the health of any SFP or QSFP module and programs them in just seconds."
I never knew you could program them. How smart are they? Are there ones capable of running Linux?
Yes, eg. This one runs a ssh server https://www.glbb.jp/en/hardware/gs3/
Thanks a lot, this is exactly what I have been looking for and it seems not even excessively priced. Only issue is that I did not find a distributor that ships it to Europe yet.
Can you play Doom on an SFP?
The same excitement I used to feel in the late '00s/early '10s for Apple is what I now feel for Unifi. I must have it all. They are capitalizing on autism better than anyone else in the history of the world, except for maybe Lego.
I just wish they had Apple level inventory on hand. Sometimes I’ve waited months for product or component to be back in stock. Then gone in matter of hours. Currently waiting on the G4 pro doorbell. (WiFi version).
some context that's perhaps not obvious to non-networking people: essentially all networking hardware above 1G doesn't have rj45 or fibre ports in it, it has holes that you put modules in, "SFP+" modules for 10G, "SFP28" for 28gig networking, etc.
most manufacturers of devices - the things with the holes, NICs, switches, routers - make their devices only officially work with modules that claim to be manufactured by that same manufacturer. so, you can either buy modules from that manufacturer, or buy modules from some other company (e.g. fs.com, 10gtek) who programs the modules to claim that they are from that manufacturer. "officially" can mean anything from "we won't help you if you open a support case" to "the device will make a whiney log message on boot if it's not one of our modules" to "it simply doesn't work unless you hack an EEPROM on the device".
this is somewhat annoying, since it means you need to buy specific modules for specific devices, you can't just keep a pile of SFP+ 10G-LR modules around, you need some "Intel SFP+ 10G-LR" and some "Cisco SFP+ 10G-LR", etc.
so, these third party manufacturers of the modules, like fs.com and 10gtek, will also sell you programmers for the modules, which lets you change what manufacturer the module claims made it. these programmers have been, historically and hilariously, tied to the actual manufacturer of the modules! so you can buy some 10G-LR SFP+ modules from fs.com and a fs.com programmer to set make some "Intel" and some "Cisco", but if you buy some 10gtek 10G-LR modules, you would need to buy a 10gtek programmer.
~so, this device that Ubiquiti has made is the meta-programmer - it can apparently program any module, from any actual manufacturer, to claim to be made by any manufacturer.~
edit: the post seems deliberately confusing - what they are actually selling is a device that can re-program Ubiquiti SFP+ modules by copying the manufacturer code from another SFP+ module that you insert into the programmer. so it's the same as what fs.com and all the other sell, but Ubiquiti's is ~1/10th the price (e.g. https://www.fs.com/uk/c/fs-box-3389).
Minor pedantic correction: 2.5gbit, 5gbit and 10gbit RJ45 is getting more affordable and more common, and for short runs should run over CAT 6 and CAT 6a fine, and plenty of reports it does ok on short runs even on CAT 5e. With devices like the USW Flex Mini 2.5 at ~50-60 EUR / USD, you can affordably outfit your home for higher than gigabit speeds without rewiring everything with new CAT cable or fiber.
Over here in NL we now get more and more access to >1gbps speeds, the office of my small business for instance has a 4gbps connection, and the ISP offers up to 8gbps on a standard consumer / small business package. We're in the process of upgrading our gear to take advantage of that. With WiFi 7 we've seen some real world throughput speeds of 1800-2000mbps going through a Ubiquiti U7 Pro straight to the ISP supplied router.
I wasn't really keeping up with networking gear, so I was pleasantly surprised when I looked into this stuff recently and figured out the gear has just magically gotten better and running 2.5gbit everywhere is surprisingly easy.
Something nonobvious to consider, 10G copper/RJ45 SFP modules run hot, to the point where our Mikrotik switch's manual mentioned that we could use them, but they strongly recommended only populating every other port, if we did. Heat wasn't a problem at all with the fiber ones.
> 2.5gbit, 5gbit and 10gbit RJ45 is getting more affordable and more common
Still, compared to the SFP+ gear it's ridiculously overpriced. NICs are <$20 on ebay and an 8x10G port managed switch is $120 on aliexpress.
> Over here in NL we now get more and more access to >1gbps speeds
Same in France, yet the main "geek" ISP (free) has an 8Gbps symmetric ISP router with a 10G SFP+ cage for full bandwidth to the LAN. RJ45 ports are 2.5G.
And it's hard to fault them, as customers that are likely to even hardwire stuff to the router and moreso at 10Gbps are usually enthusiasts that do prefer SFP+ due to the abundance of hardware on the used market. Oh, and their team designing the router are a bunch of nerds that most likely all have a 10Gbps network.
There’s an ISP in Switzerland offering 25Gbps, they provide a Mikrotik. They’re called init7.
Yup, that's pretty nice. I sold a couple of XXV710s to a friend that moved over there.
The FS-Box lets you pick from a list of manufacturers and serial numbers. Does this only do cloning from another physically inserted SFP?
Anybody go through the trouble of outfitting their entire home/condo with fiber? Probably overkill for residential but I am also thinking it might need to be shrouded in EMT conduit
I did a 10 gig backbone between my three switches, and it's awesome. I didn't bother placing conduit - just tacked up preterminated lengths using coax clips and ordered a spare in case one of them ever goes down. I also have Wi-Fi mesh routers on each switch, which provides low speed redundancy until I have time to replace a fiber. I considered doing conduit - mostly I didn't because I don't expect to be in this house for too many more years. I don't know that I would run fiber to many more places - I did place a jumper through the wall for my wife's desktop if we wanted that in the future. But most consumer devices still seem to have rj45s, so I wouldn't want to put down a media converter for each. If this were a new build I might consider placing fiber and only lighting it as needed.
This is the SFP DAS and fiber links in the current place:
workstation - switchUpStairs - switchMainFloor - switchBasement - nas
Edge devices are a mix between 100meg, 1gig, 2.5gig, so anything wired is limited mostly by its own nic or the ISP.
Sounds like a lot of work (unless you've got easy access... my last house had a basement with access to wall cavities, you could just shove cables up and reach in from a wall plate to grab it or shove down from the room).
I've got some 10g at my current house, but it's over cat5e cause that was already in the walls. Also adding a few 2.5g with a 4x2.5g + 2xsfp+ 10g switch that goes into a 10g capable switch.
I ran conduit for fiber to a couple rooms.
Because pre-terminated cable assemblies [0] can be 10% of the cost of a more modular link, I used conduit large enough to pass QSFP28 with ease. May not be possible in every home but I'm happy with the result.
[0]: https://www.ebay.com/itm/116804914246
I've run fiber in my apartment, but it's running along baseboards in no-traffic areas and draped high up along wall and window moldings in nonzero-traffic ones.
> I am also thinking it might need to be shrouded in EMT conduit
Why would you need to run your fiber in metal pipe? EMI isn't a problem with fiber.
I did a few rooms with fiber and copper for 10G, you don't need EMT, I found the blue flexible smurf tube perfect for this.
Yeah, but it’s a km from one end to the other, and a WiFi relay wasn’t cutting it, and Ethernet couldn’t stretch the distance - so fibre it was.
Utter pain in the ass, broke one fibre pulling it through conduit with way too much force (like, 2000+N), another got eaten by a fox before I’d put it in a conduit, and terminating fibre is a royal pain if you have to do it.
But yeah, totally worth it.
Way more affordable than other solutions, like the $370 FS BOX from fs.com:
https://www.fs.com/products/96657.html
Which, while it works, is the poster child for how NOT to develop desktop software as it's a really shitty .NET GUI app they shoehorned onto non-Windows platforms.
Seems to have only basic usefulness as a diagnostic tool.
> Instantly tests SFP and QSFP module health, including Rx/Tx power.
Most SFP modules will fail due to heat, like LED bulbs. So an instant test is of course instantly useful, but not indicative of production-use SFP health.
As a programming tool, of course it's awesome.
Of course, in typical ubiquiti fashion, it's out of stock with no way to backorder.
Most innovative and disruptive (and generally just profoundly interesting) company that hardly anyone knows about in the grand scheme of things.
Just bought an SFP+ module that works with Cisco, Dell, Juniper but won't work with Unifi. Is this supposed to test all generic modules even the cheap Chinese brands ?
Why is this spam on the front page?
Sold out already.
This will make the life soo easy for many
Looks cool but their text on that page is very clearly written by LLM and pretty exhausting to read.
>updates via the UniFi mobile app
Oh come on!
WTF is 'SFP'?
Small Form-factor Pluggable, a common optics format for 1 to 25Gbps networks. See the wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Form-factor_Pluggable