Well it started out pretty cool starting to administrate a moderate Unifi network.
UDM GUI wasn’t the most intuitive, but its fancy. Lots of built in features, IDS/IPS, zone based firewall etc.
Context I’m coming from a pfSense box running snort (then suricata) and a Unify AP. So I’m missing the granularity of IPS/IDS control and some other things, but then enjoying things like Unifi’s DPI dashboard, but then again the netflow of ntopng in pfSense is on a whole nother level- I degress.
But then there was a power outage.
Holly
Crap
APs are zombies, just can’t be brought back/adopted. According to lots of googling and reddits Unify is known for this. The APs will boot up much faster than the UDM/Agg switch/PoE switch and when they can’t phone home they freak out, go into a default mode of 192.168.1.20 and God help you if you (or the persons before you in my case) put wifi/APs on a VLAN other than default/VLAN1/192.168.1.1 addressing.
I’m 4 days into trying all kinds of hacks and tricks short of blowing up the network segmentation, resetting ALL of the equipment and staring with a flat default network + having to physically console into the Cisco switches and change some VLAN settings.
Kind of shocked at how many loops, network crashes, errors changing VLANs etc I’ve run into. The only thing in UDM’s defense here is it was someone’s genius idea to have Cisco PoE switches between the UDM/Agg/PoE stack and the APs. These cisco switches are not getting IP addresses from the UDM so no cheat-code to change their VLAN config remotely. I want to believe this recovery could go better if 100% with the Unify ecosystem. Then again the posts I’m finding says this is a regular thing with Unify and power outages.
Yeah, unifi doesn’t like playing nicely with random switches. That’s probably why you are losing them. No direct path between the controller and the AP’s.
I only put non-Unifi switches in places where I want to segregate hardwired connections via a vlan. All my Unifi stuff is connected to other Unifi stuff.
I, too, ran into this non-default VLAN power outage thing. Twice, because the first time I just reset everything for the client as I didn’t want to debug it and restored from a backup.
But after the second time…
It’s all replaced with Ruckus R610 access points now, cross flasher to Unleashed. Zero issues ever since for a few years now, and multiple power outages and custom VLANs.
Nothing belongs in default VLAN.
So whoever had the APs boot blank-slate without any basic L2/L3 config, is an idiot.
Had they repurposed the Voice VLAN for their control, it would have caused a lot of pain, but I would have understood. Just being like “well bye” is trash-tier.
If equipment from any manufacturer requires to be 100% in their boat, then it is trash-tier.
Don’t they have a customer support line for this sort of thing if it happens? I’m assuming this is a work network and not a home one, so there should be some sort of support (just thinking outside the box)
In my experience, Unifi Gateway was even more obtuse than mikrotik. That plus bugs and missing IPv6 features.
That is strange. It you should not loose the APs to begin with.
But you have to give them a few minutes to change the status from offline to online again. Seems like they try to phone home in a random interval.
That also should not happen. If they can’t phone home, they will simply have their old settings and change nothing.
Why? I run them perfectly fine without issues.
Again, I am not a big fan of Unifi myself, but are you sure you are not making mistakes in VLAN?
Also I had problems with using a FQDN as set inform, when the FQDN is dual stack. The APs will do happy eyeballs, but the controller does not work over IPv6
If they meaning Unifi having that default setting and/or that they freak out and roll back prior config settings after X minutes of failed phone home, yeah not a fan.
What is your opinion on at least having vlan1 routable so in that situation they get adopted and then get the native vlan and various vlan ans ssid settings afterwards?
Unifi devices reverting to 192.168.1.20 means they failed to receive a DHCP lease and cannot hear a Unifi gateway broadcasting. Setting static IPs might help.
Ensure all of your switches (including the Cisco stuff) have a correctly assigned STP priority, descending from the network root. Also disable meshing for your APs.
Generally, you want all of the network devices on the Default VLAN, then assign client facing ports and SSIDs to the appropriate VLANs.
You keep saying that, but it is not true. At least not in general. I am not denying that you had that, but then it was a bug, not the expected behavior.
Are you joking? That is not how any of it works.
And native vlan does not mean vlan.
Let’s say your managment or unifi vlan is 12 and you want to configure an AP.
By default, devices like APs will use vlan1.
You have two options.
A: set the port where the AP is connected to be an access port 12 and don’t forget PVID. That way the AP is on the right VLAN already. You adopt the AP. Then you change the managment VLAN to 12, either in the controller or CLI. After that, you change the port to be a trunk port. Or you leave it on 1 on the AP and don’t change a setting on the switch.
B: leave the AP at VLAN1. Adopt it by making some firewall rules so VLAN1 can communicate to VLAN12. After that, change the AP port to access VLAN12. Now the AP is in the management network (without knowing that this is 12 and not 1)
Option B seams to be the way you are hinting at. IMHO way to complicated and insecure. Just go with A. I am even less convinced now that “loosing all settings” is a Unifi issue and not a layer 8 issue.
Shit the bed when? After the power outage?
So you are saying that for you, Unifi devices instead of booting with their last known settings, did a factory reset, because they lost power?
Is that what you are claiming to be true?
Again, Unifi software is pretty wonky, so I can’t rule it with 100% certainty.
But the fact that you don’t seam to quiet understand VLAN makes me think that with a 99% certainty, it was a layer 8 problem. Also the fact that I can’t find your claimed posts of Unifi losing settings (despite some 4y reddit posts, where apparently the AP did not even loose the SSID).
So I am not sure what your post is about? Ranting about Unifi? Asking for help? Trying to understand VLAN and how you should manage devices?
These are all fine by me. Just tell me which one and we can chime in
Not hours, days went by unplugging and plugging in APs, got one back resetting with paper clip but didn’t want to go all over doing that to all of them.
Who is we? Your the only one chiming in with the Asperger’s plugin enabled.
