I bought into the ecosystem while taking my networking cert classes back in 2017. They were much cheaper than Cisco gear for business-grade networking, and overall I’ve been happy with them.

Their security offerings are locally managed, and you can make local accounts, but I just bought a NAS from them and I had to sign in with my ubiquiti account first before I could make a local account, and it seems the cloud account has some privileges that you can’t give to local super admins.

So now I’m having second thoughts. I figure since it’s enterprise-grade stuff they can’t really make it cloud-dependent like you see on the consumer side since a lot of companies need air-gapped networks. On the other hand, on those occasions that I didn’t have internet access and hadn’t yet made a local-only account, I was locked out, so…

Regarding the NAS specifically, I use a TruNAS system at work and it works well enough on a rack server, but since it uses ZFS I don’t know it would be good for home use. What alternatives are there?

Are there any truly FOSS networking options? I figure especially on the switching side you need purpose-built hardware, right? There aren’t generic motherboards with 48 network ports you can buy.

I like my Unifi setup, I’m just scared of a rug pull.

  • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1·
    22 hours ago

    Wifi: Neat
    Anything else: Havent tried.

    Abstracting so much away from the admin by automagically comnfguring everything is neat but also dangerous as you’ll never know what it has configured for you.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    OpenWRT?

    It isn’t really a vendor but it is Foss. It isn’t as robust as vendor solutions but the advantage is that it will run anywhere.

  • zo0@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    For large networks with over 20 devices, I find them acceptable not because they are good but because other options are more expensive.

    For small networks? I despise them

    1. The UI keeps changing and moving around settings for no good reason after each update
    2. You can’t setup devices directly if you have a device or two, you are required to setup a control center
    3. The control center is already slow and sluggish, but the real nightmare starts when you start having 100 or more devices
    4. Last couple of years they have been releasing batches with serious issues, software and hardware. The way they accepted recall for unfixable devices was so limited that many people are left with broken APs that will kill their network occasionally and the poor consumer has no idea why.
    5. Honestly fuck 'em. there’s more but I don’t wanna give them any more rent space in my head on a Sunday lol
    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zipEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      What annoys me most is people mindlessly promoting Unifi. Sure it has its advantages but no one wants to talk about disadvantages

  • philpo@feddit.orgEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Not a fan. Absolutely not.

    They had multiple security incidents which they kept under the rugs for a long time, they have the tendency to EOL devices without warning (which then means you need to replace your sometimes 9month old device or your whole enviroment can’t be updated), their lock-in into their ecosystem is much more complete as they can’t be used properly without their enviroment.(e.g. Omada devices can work without the Omada stuff, with Unifi you will always need a controller for some functions).

    So if you realy need SDN features like Unifi look at Omada,otherwise Mikrotik is a solid alternative. (And OPNsense for firewall)

  • Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyzBEnglish
    1·
    1 hour ago

    Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

    Fewer Letters More Letters
    AP WiFi Access Point
    DNS Domain Name Service/System
    LXC Linux Containers
    NAS Network-Attached Storage
    NFS Network File System, a Unix-based file-sharing protocol known for performance and efficiency
    NUC Next Unit of Computing brand of Intel small computers
    NVR Network Video Recorder (generally for CCTV)
    PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
    Plex Brand of media server package
    PoE Power over Ethernet
    RAID Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage
    SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
    Unifi Ubiquiti WiFi hardware brand
    VPN Virtual Private Network
    ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

    15 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 13 acronyms.

    [Thread #73 for this comm, first seen 8th Feb 2026, 03:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

  • RamRabbit@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    Are there any truly FOSS networking options?

    PFSense falls into this category for routers. Netgate makes hardware specifically for it, but you don’t have to buy anything from them to use PFSense. I only mention them because their hardware is good and you can buy anything from a normal home router to enterprise level gear.

    I had to sign in with my ubiquiti account first before I could make a local account

    I used to be pretty into ubiquiti, but this requirement really put me off. I have no desire to do anything ‘cloud’ with my router. This requirement sent me elsewhere and I sold off all my ubiquiti equipment.

    TruNAS … What alternatives are there?

    TruNAS has a community edition, so you could start there. Other alternatives are a standard Debian install, use mdadm to setup RAID, then setup a network share in the OS, etc.