I’ve been using PFSense for years, and it’s been pretty great, but I also have some friends who are homelabbers that like their Unifi setups.
What do you guys prefer, and why?
Unifi is great
Got 3 sites now all managed in one place
Would you use it at home over PF/OPNsense?
I do. It’s nice. Just earlier I used teleport to remote in and setup a docker container, while out. It’s certainly the biggest advantage to me, having a one click/tap VPN connection to a network. It’s helped me out several times at home and work.
Has teleport started working on Linux yet? Or is there a way to use teleport from Android to the Linux compy?
Oh snap! There’s an AppImage now https://community.ui.com/releases/WiFiman-Desktop-0-2-2/74d8bc1d-6735-444b-a7fc-0ea2584ccb89
I use it at home
I use UniFi for switches and AP, it doesn’t make sense to use something else for gateway, not even the AmpliFi or EdgeRouter product lines. Single pane of smooth glass to manage everything in one place.
I’ve heard of this setup before. I had thought of using PFSense + UniFi Apps/ Switch, but haven’t pulled the trigger on it yet
Ruckus APs and Opnsense have been solidly reliable for me for 5y now. No random fucking with unifi bugs (like having my WPA enterprise SSID punting users out onto the management vlan at random instead of the Kerberos assigned VLAN for that user, thanks unifi) and fantastic wireless coverage has me completely satisfied with my infra choices. Also, Ruckus unleashed handles controller duty on the primary AP rather than requiring a management container, that’s also a plus.
Pfsense got some bad blood for doing shady things to make opnsense look bad. Beyond that, Unifi management is easy to set up and less to mess around with and has auto updates if you keep the contoller up and enable it.when I used opnsense and pfsense even, I left it out of date since I wasn’t following for updates, and it was a lot more micro managing than I wanted to on a router even though I knew how.
Got time? Want to learn networking? Want more advanced configs? Go wih opnsense/pfsense
Want to have time to do other things? Unifi
Edit: also not sure if pfsense or opnsense does, but unifi has the best rated local integration with controller and home assistant. Easy reboot of PoE devices, monitoring PoE power usage, transmission rates on ports, automation, enabling scheduling WiFi networks or security settings, presence detection by tracking peoples phones connected to the WiFi, etc.
Ubiquiti has had outages in the past that meant you couldn’t manage the equipment right in front of you.
Even discounting the potential security implications of that kind of management, the rage I would feel in that situation is enough that I while my AP is nice, works great, I will never use any of their gateways.
I’m using a 2.5g protectli with OPNSense now, and it’s easy to manage, and all local.
Oh interesting. So you can’t manage Ubiquiti devices without an Internet connection? TIL
You can manage them as long as you have access to your controller. If you’re using the controller hosted in their cloud, then you’re beholden to their outages. Some gateways cannot use your own controller, so be mindful when selecting your gears.
Ah got it. I was looking at the UDM Pro. Is that a router and a controller? If so, I should be able to access locally I’d hope
I got a UDM SE. The controller runs on the device itself and can be used locally, without a Internet connection or Ubiquity account (i’ve only ever set up a local admin account on the controller).
It works great for me. UDM + 4 switches and 2 AP. All unify, I like the interface. But I’m also only doing basic stuff.
I’ve had a pfsense based setup in the past and liked it. Now that I got 10gb ftth, the UDM SE ticked all the boxes and I went with a full unify setup with the switch to 10gbit. Happy with it so far.
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That is the case yes
If you are concerned it’s pretty easy to setup your own controller.
Only needs to be running for management. Make a local vm
You can manage them as long as you have access to your controller. Unifi outages are only an issue if you’re paying for their cloud based controller instead of running it locally.
That’s only if you’re using their cloud management BS.
If you’re running it locally it doesn’t rely on any external systems.
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Pfsense all the way. I have a couple of unifi 10GB switches downstream acting as dumb switches. I’m happy.
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I use pfSense on a Protectli vault with a Unifi Pro switch and Unifi AP. it all works great. I prefer pfSense over the full unified UDM gateway, pfSense appears to offer more features and plugins. but I haven’t played with the unifi gateway myself. also a lot cheaper
I have a UDMPro I got 2 years ago i believe. Had a netgate SG3100 with PFsense for 6 years before that until the sg3100 hardware and support went EOL. Was happy with both but went with the UDMPro to be able to support the camera systems and was comparable to another netgate device but was about $100 cheaper with a $50 promo. I mostly use it locally and via app at some points.
Just within the last 2 years the UDMs finally got equivalent features to my setup with PFsense. Wireguard and per port GeoIP restrictions and logging were the most used features on my PFsense that from videos and forums didn’t seem like it was added to unifi stuff until just the last couple years.
I used pFSense for years until Netgate took over. That is when I switched to OPNSense (maybe 2019/2020, don’t remember excatly). Since then, I’ve had OPNSense (runnign on a Lenovo m720q tiny) and Unifi (APs and UNVR) for wireless and cameras. I like this setup, it gives me all the advanced routing features I want and have become accustomed. I’m sure Unifi routers are good for most use cases and would have the added convenience of one interface for everything. However, I’ve not been impressed with price to performance ratios for their past offerings (ie. the routing capabilities of OPNsense with an i5 CPU and option for swapping a quad port 1gbe nic to a dual port 10gbe nic) is hard to compete against. That said, the UDM-SE looks interesting.
