From Consumer to Prosumer: My Journey to the UniFi Ecosystem

To get the Internet into your home and surf the web, you will need something that connects it to your computer. You will need a router or a gateway.

Gateway  vs Router

Here is a breakdown of routers and gateways.

• A router connects your devices to the Internet.
• A modem connects your home to your ISP’s network.
• A gateway combines both—it’s a modem and router in one box.
• Most ISPs give you a gateway. It handles everything. But “handles everything” often means “does everything adequately but nothing particularly well.”

 What I used

From the beginning, after dial-up, I used a lot of different routers to get the Internet to the computers so I could surf the web. Most recently, I have used Netgear. That is the brand I have just trusted.

Why Netgear? It is a gateway and a router in one. It consists of 4 ports for routing traffic to your computers and, to some extent, protecting your network.

This one has Wi-Fwifiices. It was nice to have no wires.

Why I decided to Upgrade

Moved to a new house, and well, I needed something more robust. Don’t get me wrong, it was really good for the small home I was in. It was working well. But I needed something a bit more robust.

I needed something more powerful and network rackable. I wanted to move to a rack-based system.

But the new device didn’t have Wifi and that was a problem.

What I Got

I moved from Netgear to something called UniFi. This is the brand I wanted to move to for a long time.

This was what I went to

This is the Ubiquiti Dream Machine  Pro (UDM Pro).

• 1.3 Touchscreen
• 3.5″ HDD Bay
• 8 GbE RJ45 ports
• 10G SFP+ Wan Port
• 10G SFP+ Port
• Reset button
• DC power backup
  • Requires UniFi Power Backup
• Power input

The Cost was $379 when I bought it back on March 29, 2023.

Thoughts

Now that I have a more robust gateway, with a more powerful firewall, and some other things.

With this gateway, I can create different networks.

• Main network
• Guest network
• Smarthome Gateway
• And other networks as you see fit.

I have several networks set up on mine. It makes it easier to ensure the smart home, cameras, and other devices are on a separate network, so if they are compromised, they will not have access to the rest of the network. That is, if you create the firewall rules correctly.

Yes, you can customize firewall rules to protect your network. More robust than the ones on the Netgear one I have used for years.

This one even has a VPN option, which is really super nice. While traveling, you can set up a VPN to connect your laptop to your mobile device. This VPN will allow you to protect your data while traveling and use your home location to surf the web. I will talk about this in a different post.

But the only problem is that it has only 8 ports for Internet access and no built-in Wi-Fi. Some people will think that 8 ports are just fine. However, it isn’t.

Next Week

Talking about the network switch and the patch panel

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