Ubiquity USW-Aggregation 10GE to a TP-Link 1GE (NET-TL-SG1218MPE ) connection for adoption

Hardware Hub Networking
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Hi all,
This will be my first time jumping into learning and playing with fiber networking.

I’m looking to buy the following hardware:
Ubiquity USW-Aggregation 10GE Switch
TP-Link TL-SG1218MPE Switch

The Unifi controller will be a docker container on a 1Gbs RJ45 connection.

A crude diagram:

USW-Aggregation 10GE SPF+ ------> TL-SG1218MPE 1GE SPF -----> 1Gbs RJ45 unifi controller.

A crude diagram of my question:

USW-Aggregation 10GE SPF+ —(What do i need to use for this connection)—> TL-SG1218MPE 1GE SPF -----> 1Gbs RJ45 unifi controller.

My Question:
While doing research, I found that the USW-Aggregation Switch does not auto-negotiate 10GE to 1GE SPF correctly so adopting the switch to the Unifi console for the first time is a headache, as for the USW-Aggregation to work correctly at 1GE, you need to set that manually for each port via Unifi console.

So how would I go about adopting the USW-Aggregation switch on a 1Gbs network?

I found 1 post on the ubiquity forums:
How to add a 10G only switch (USW AGG) into an 1G only network
where the gentleman eventually got the switch to connect to his 1GE switch using the following SPFs:

UB-UF-MM-1G

But from the tone of his post It was more of a lucky situation that it worked for a while for him to adopt it and then manually set the port to 1Gbs.

I am struggling to understand how to connect and adopt the switch.

Is there perhaps a DAC cable from Ubiquity that does the auto-negotiation that I need to get (SFP+ to SFP)
or
would it be better to get a smaller 10GE with 1Gbs RJ45 ports switch for seamless connection eg a TL-SX3206HPP.

Just a quick notice, were I live, it is extremely difficult to get all Ubiquity and fiber base networking products in general. So getting a base understanding would be awesome, from there I can see what hardware I can purchase that will do the trick.
eg I can’t get the (UB-UF-MM-1G SFP) from the above mentioned post.

Thank you and sorry if my question is ignorant, I’m struggling to understand how it works with out being able physically play with fiber yet.

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That’s a lot of hw.

  • 8x 10gb SPF+
  • 16x PoE+ (802.3at/af) 10/100/1000 Mbps RJ45, 2x Gigabit Non-PoE Ports and 2 Combo SFP Slots.

Can you please share a little bit more about your network setup/networking needs?

If the only concern is connecting both switches, why not use a different POE+ switch?
Option A: connect at 10gb:

Option B: cheaper, connect at 1gb, but with an additional SPF tranceiver

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Thank you Jode,

So to give a little more context.
I’m a sole proprietor that has a customer whom has grown over the years.
They are moving from a small property to a massive property in a few months. The property has 2x huge warehouse / workshops on it (I’m still waiting for the floor plans to get the exact measurements of the buildings).

So I want to try future proof the network a little by creating a 10GE fiber back bone, and then have cheaper / smaller 1GE networks connected from that for WiFi APs, Voip, Servers etc.

Then in the feature look at slowly upgrading sections of the network from the 1GE to 10GE as it is needed. As the building and move itself is already a lot of cash, doing it this way seems to be the way to go and what they also would like to do.

At the moment, I’m looking at the following hardware through out the property:

  • 1x USW-Aggregation 10GE (This will be the main switch)
  • 6x TP-Link TL-SG1218MPE 1GE SPF Switches (the above switch connected to these)
  • 25x UB-UAP-U6-LR Ubiquiti UniFi Wi-Fi 6 Long Range (Powered by the Tp-Link)
  • 32X VOIP Phones (Powered by the Tp-Link)
  • quite a lot of other POE devices / PLC equipment (Powered by the Tp-Link)

As this will be my first opportunity to work with fiber based networks.
I don’t want to be “that guy” that uses the clients money to “learn on the job”. So I would like to purchase same of the equipment beforehand, to learn how it all works together. I just can’t afford to buy plenty different DACs and SFPs till I find the ones that work.

So I just want to do my research thoroughly before spending too much.

As I’m reading and learning how fiber works, I’m under the understanding that a SFP can work in a SPF+ ports of the Ubiquiti USW-Aggregation switch (backwards Compatible). So I’m hoping that the following UB-UF-MM-1G-D-2 SFPs will be detected by the USW-Aggregation switch as 1GE connection right away which will allow me to connect to it to adopt it and configure it.

But I do agree with you that I should maybe rather get a single smaller 10GE SPF with RJ45 switch that I can use to communicate to the USW-Aggregation for adoption and configuration purposes.

Thanks again for your help.

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I never knew people had trouble with the Unifi Agg 10 auto-negotiating between 10/1, mine does it just fine. Most of my switches here have SFP+ 10gb connections between them, but I have a 24 port poe+ with 1gb SFP uplink and it connected just fine with no fiddling around at all, and it was all wired up before I had even adopted anything. I put in the entire Unifi setup all at once and did the setup. Never had any connection issues.

I just looked and the SFP module I am using is a UF-MM-1G like you mentioned above. It was just Ubiquiti’s standard 1gb multimode SFP transceiver they sell. Works well in their equipment, but Im pretty sure any SFP transceivers work fine. I have some 10Gtek and fs.com models as well that are working fine.

Lol. holy crap, that is a LOT of access points. Given that you plan 32 voip phones Im guessing this is a decent sized business property so maybe you do actually need them. But I would still do another double check and see if you do or not, overlapping coverage too much can lead to more problems than good. Devices will try to connect to wrong APs, they wont transition between APs well, channel interference. I am able to cover an 8000 sq ft warehouse with just 4 APs and have good signal everywhere and minimal AP overlap. So If you are planning 12-13 for a single warehouse then I would imagine that warehouse would most likely be around 30,000 sq ft.

Also, I would just say if you are already planning on going so hard into Unifi hardware you should just go with unifi poe switches too just to keep everything in the same product line, make it integrate better into the controller, be able to see all traffic nicely in the controller interface. Is the cost difference really significant enough to warrant using the TP Link?

edit: oh, I see that it is. Nearly double the cost for a 24 port Unifi poe switch.

One last thing I was just thinking, since this is a business environment and all, the cost of a unifi 10g aggregation switch is fairly low so you may want to get 2 of them and connect all 6 switches to each aggregation and set up RSTP so that if one aggregation switch ever goes down it doesn’t take the entire network down. Having everything on the network go back into that single aggregation switch makes it a dangerous point of failure.

What is your plan for communication between the buildings?

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Hi EniGmA1987,

Thank you so much.

This does help ease my mind a lot.

So I was just sent the final floor plan with the exact measurements and yip, it is massive.

So the workshop / warehouse is 7668 Sq Meters / 82537 Sq foot.
and there are two of these workshops on the property. So a lot of space to cover.

I used Ubiquiti’s online WiFi / network designer to help plan where the WiFi will go, and from that:
5x APs will be needed for the office (2x top floor, 3x bottom floor)
20x APs for the workshop.

All the walls in both the office and workshop are made with thick double brick wall and or thick Iron beams and concrete. So at some places were the walls are in the way extra points were needed. I also did do a physical test on site with 2 of the APs to do a rough map to make sure that there is no excessive overlap. And the outcome was very close to what the Ubiquiti design showed.
:rofl: Definitely a lot of APs.

I agree 100% with you, I did write a note to myself to add a second Unit but honestly forgot about it as I’m still just stressing about the 10GE to 1GE connection :rofl: . Thank you for the reminder, that would of been a big oof if I forgot that. I’m going to add it to the network design before I forget to do it again.

So this design / setup is just for the first office / workshop. The second office / workshop needs a lot of fixing up first structurally. So only around the beginning of next year will this exact same design be used on that building too.
But I will run a 10GE fiber line between the two USW-Aggregation switches to join them together. That will be ample for the two building to join each other.

Cost is a part of the reason for going for the TP-Link switches but the biggest issue is also availability, No one locally has the USW-24-PoE or USW-16-PoE in stock and can’t give me dates on when to expect any. So I prefer to use hardware that is easy to replace if anything is faulty or if I need one in a hurry.

I’m going to sleep on it tonight and will most probably jump in and buy a USW-Aggregation , TP-Link TL-SG1218MPE with a pair of UF-MM-1G-D-2 SFP and a short fibre duplex multi mode LC patch cable. Hopefully there is no communication issues and I will get to play and learn a bit more on how they work before I finalise my designs.

Thank you so much for all your help. All this extra information helps me a ton in taking the plunge into fiber networking. Your help is really appreciated.

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Got it.

The only thing I would say to watch out for in your setup is the line going between buildings. Multimode fiber is fine for within a building, but it’s maximum range is usually 300m/990ft. I like to give myself breathing room and not run the ragged edge of a spec so I would say 275m/900ft. If the distance from switch to switch between buildings is longer than that you should use a single-mode fiber and transceivers for that building-to-building link. Normally I dont like to mix MM and SM fiber types within a deployment, but I think in this case it would be acceptable when the SM type is only used for a single connection and you know that is your long range building to building link.

Ubiquiti doesn’t sell all fiber lengths you might need, they only have a few different lengths to choose from. So you can order an LC to LC cable from FS and get any specific length you want. When you look you will notice they sell different grades. OM3, OM4, OM5. Think of these sort of like cat5e, cat6, cat8. The higher grade you go the higher bandwidth connection and longer distance at those speeds the fiber is rated for (even though they have the same LC connection just like the copper cable you are used to all has RJ45’s on them despite different speed specs). When dealing just with 10g speed though, they should all perform the same and have a max distance of 300m.

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Thank you.

I noticed that while researching the different fiber types.
I saw that OM3 goes up to 10 Gb/s, so I will be using that.

luckily the building are right next to each other, so it will be roughly maximum 100 meters / 328 foot run. I will be going back to the workshop later this week to do proper measurements of everything.

I’m also looking to manually create the longer cables.
There is a company not too far from me that sells 1km / ± 0,6 mile rolls for a very good price and also duplex LC multi mode (OM3) flyleads.

So I’m going to ask the company this is for, if they don’t mind investing in a Fiber Fusion Splicer - Fiotic 168A kit that they can keep on site to use for the installation and future needs.
If not, the same company that sells the fiber cable also can make the cables but of course it will be more expensive. But I’ll wait to hear what they say.

I also forgot that one of my brothers used to do a lot of fiber work in his previous job (PLC / Machinery design and installations) . So I was chatting to him about this now and he was explaining how it all works. I’ll most probably hire him to train me on how to do it and to also help with the installation. I’ll rather leave that to someone who knows how to do it correctly.

Thank you again for all your help.
This is going to be an interesting learning experience.

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Hi, why don’t you buy a cheap / refurbished 10G SFP+ card and a DAC cable to do the initial switch config to force a port to 1G in your lab, and then put the switch to the customer site. Have I misunderstood the problem ?

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Hi Vincele,

I did have a look for at that, but unfortunately I did not find any second hand NICs I was willing to get (The second hand market in my country for fiber based items isn’t really good yet).
But I’m also purchasing a UACC-CM-RJ45-10G/1G SFP+ module. So according to the data sheet and Ubiquiti forum posts, that will auto negotiate to the RJ45 side. So that should also hopefully work for me.

But If I do have issues after that, getting a new single 10GE NIC will be the next option. :wink:

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Usually it is not that much more expensive to have the company do all the cable pulling and splicing and terminating to a proper panel in a rack, at least here in Italy …

Also, have them quote them for a 4-12 strand cable instead of a single one, OM4, usually the price difference of the cable itself is negligible compared to a single fiber, and it will future proof your install for the next 20 years …
You then put a small fiber panel in a rack with LC or SC connectors and patch as needed.
Had it done last summer locally, and two 200m runs, 4 fiber each plus the optical panels, plus all the connectors/optical patches was about 1500EUR … 700 of which where for 400m of fiber … the single fiber cable cost was 550eur …
Cost breakdown here was (roughly):

  • 400m OM4 fiber 4 strands cable: 700 EUR
  • 3x fiber connector rack panels: 120 eur
  • all patches/connectors to go to 4x 10Gbit lc terminations: 150 eur
  • Fiber technician labor cost, 4 hours: ~500EUR

The labor cost included a ‘install certification’ document to be used as warranty on labor for the next 10 years (mice and floods are not covered by the warranty though :slight_smile: )

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Hi MadMatt,

Sorry for the very late reply, it’s been a crazy past few days for me.
Thank you for the info, I do agree that going with OM4 will be better, I’m going to get an 8 core fiber, that will give me ample spares to use.

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