Ubiquiti Networks UBI-UAP-AC-PRO 24/5Ghz 450/1300Mbps 122m
Ubiquiti Networks UBI-UAP-AC-PRO 24/5Ghz 450/1300Mbps 122m – (Enterprise Computing > Routers) PoE injector included
UAP-AC-PRO
Deploy the UniFi AC Pro AP indoors or outdoors, in wireless networks requiring maximum performance.
Sporting a weatherproof design, the UniFi AC Pro AP features simultaneous, dual-band, 3×3 MIMO technology and convenient 802.3af PoE/802.3at PoE+ compatibility. It is available in single- and five‑packs*.
* Four- and five-packs do not ship with PoE adapters; we recommend powering the UniFi APs with the UniFi Switch instead.
| Weight: | 350 g |
| Dimensions: | 19.67 x 19.67 x 3.5 cm; 350 Grams |
| Brand: | Ubiquiti |
| Model: | UAP-AC-PRO |
| Colour: | White |
| Batteries Included: | No |
| Manufacture: | Ubiquiti |
| Dimensions: | 19.67 x 19.67 x 3.5 cm; 350 Grams |
Easy to setup individually or working as a group, Ubiquiti equipment is the gold standard
I purchased the UAP-AC-PRO to replace the Wi-Fi on Sky router (not mesh) which had been giving me problems for ages. I live in a 30 year old 4 bedroom detached house and my office is one of the upstairs bedrooms where I keep the router. My workstations and servers are all hard wired but Wi-Fi for the TV and sky box downstairs was always problematical.
I installed the UAP-AC-PRO on one of my office walls. I now have strong and stable WI-FI across the house. I had recently provisioned a Plex media server on a Raspberry Pi 4. With my old WI-FI I was getting stuttering and buffering on the stream. The UAP-AC-PRO has completely fixed this issue.
The UAP-AC-PRO is NOT a consumer device though it priced as one. The best thing about it is that it comes with professional software tools to analyse your network and to tune it effectively. Although performance out of the box was OK it became hugely better when I tailored around the other RF emissions from neighbouring properties.
Don’t buy this unless you are prepared to do some work to tailor it to your environment. The factors that affect WI-FI performance are so variable (thickness and material of walls, other RF emissions, etc) that it is blind luck whether a WI-FI router will work well out of the box. With a consumer router you are stuck as its configuration options are limited or non-existent. The UAP-AC-PRO gives you the tools to tailor it to your environment. Depending on the property you may need multiple units deployed across the house. I needed only one.
You don’t need to be a network specialist to make this work well but be prepared to watch YouTube tutorials and be persistent if you are not.
I use UBNT AP’s (and cameras) at my house, I have wired ethernet to every room, but due to the age of our house the walls are just stupidly strong an they block WiFi signals to the point that unless you have an AP in the room you’re in, you are not going to get signal.
The great thing with these is that they use a central management system and the AP’s form a system where your device will automatically roam to another device if the signal is better, you configure the AP’s in a single location and the configuration is sent to them.
The system works well, but be aware that UBNT have a long history of breaking stuff from firmware to firmware releases, so make sure you have configuration backups as you will definitely need them at some point.
Once you’ve got a controller set up (either on a computer or one of the management keys), it’s as simple as plugging it in to a PoE source and clicking “adopt” in the management console and it does the rest. It does come with a PoE injector, but if you have a PoE switch that keeps things a lot more tidy and doesn’t consume power sockets.
Has no problem maxing out my broadband connection as if it were a wired connection. It has a second RJ45 connection which acts as an ethernet bridge, although there’s no PoE pass-through.
The product is very good from installation and setup perspective. I used it only in the interior of the house even though it is supposedly able to run outdoors. I like its range and easy setup. It runs very stable and with excellent performance. I have installed 2 of these units, one in the ground floor and one in the top floor as my home is quite large with solid brick walls in the ground floor. Because of that I also installed 2 additional AP-Lite version to cover the areas that the signal was very attenuated because of the walls. Finally, I also installed a Mesh unit for the big back garden that I have with to POE cameras in each side of the garden.
What I am not in love with is that in order to set it up you have to have a Unify controller in your network. I grant that you can download it for free and run it on any PC, Laptop, Raspberry or anything with even modest computing power but I would rather have the ability to access and manage it through a web accessible page, The other thing that is important is to have a flexible LAN cable connected as the “twist and lock” mounting base provided is quite small in the room that is left on the cable for twisting it specially if you have CAT 6 cabling and patches.
In summary good device and reasonably priced.
Like millions of others I’m working from home full time at the moment, and after a week or so got tired of the constant drop outs and instability of the broadband supplier wifi router the whole family was connecting to all day long. I invested in a couple of these APs and can confirm they are very good. They are not plug and play but are reasonably straightforward to set up. With two APs, one on the ground floor, one in the loft via a powerline adapter, I cover the whole house (3 floors) and garden. In 5 months I have not had a single drop out, and experience a very stable connection, even with the kids streaming, and me and the wife both on work video calls. The controller software is very good, allowing for very fine grained control of your Wi-Fi network and lots of statistics. At the same time, once you are up and running, there is little need to mess around with the setup. Highly recommended.
If you’ve struggled with dodgy WIFI from cheap consumer routers, do yourself a favour and invest the time and money in an enterprise-grade setup, something the Unifi AP AC PRO definitely is. With a bit of planning, you can solve most, if not all, WIFI coverage issues.
The unit is built to last (companies don’t want to be replacing failed APs in a deployment of hundreds or more), stable, consistently updated (firmware and controller software) and easily beats so-called ‘prosumer’ or ‘gaming’ router WIFI nonsense that typically only have a few years of software or security updates before being abandoned by the manufacturer.
I don’t normally bother writing reviews, but felt I had to based on how pleased I am with the unit.
I live in an a large old Victorian house so lots of thick brick walls that aren’t WiFi friendly. The BT home hub is situated at the back of the house on the ground floor, my room is at the front on the top floor, the WiFi signal was terrible. To improve the WiFi at the front of the house I ran an Ethernet cable from the BT hub and up 3 floors. I then used a TP-Link access point for the WiFi, this worked fine for a year, but I would only get 15mb download speed at best and after a year the unit would need resetting 3 – 4 times a day, it drove me insane (first world problems lol).
I then found out about the Ubiquiti Access point and despite some reviews saying you need some In depth knowledge to set it up, I thought I’d give it a try. I’m so glad I did. I found the unit easy to set up using the IOS app and watching a few videos on YouTube. Since then the WiFi is faultless and a constant 55mb which is exactly what I receive over Ethernet connection. I can’t praise it enough, it’s been bulletproof and in my opinion well worth every penny I paid. I just wish BT could provide faster broadband speeds in my area now..
I bought one of these after doing some online research as I had experienced years of flakey wifi from ISP provided routers, and a hotch-potch of powerline adapters and wireless extenders botched together to try to improve the signal and coverage. My first attempt at set up was a bit of a fail as I stupidly thought this was a consumer type device. Take 2; and start over and it was then set up and running and has been rock solid ever since. I have since added another two Unifi access points and have disconnected all of the powerline adapters, as my wifi coverage and speed is excellent throughout my house. Full disclosure, it has meant that I ran Cat 7 ethernet to each access point and then back to various Unifi switches together with a Cloud Key Controller, but there is no quick fix for wifi problems. If you want the best experience, then take the pain of cabling up the house, spend some money on Ubiquiti equipment and then sit back and enjoy it. Oh, and if you want detailed information about your connected devices, speed stats and the ability to check your RF environment to see how many of your neighbours are clogging up the 2.4Ghz wifi band, then look no further.
Went out on a bit of a limb getting this, but I’ve not looked back since.
You need a little bit of knowledge if you want to set it up properly, but I’m sure there are a tonne of youtube videos out there by now to take you through everything.
As I am unable to run ethernet to my gaming rig, I have to rely on wifi and an extender, then a lead between the extender and my PC (NOT IDEAL).
The AC-PRO gives fantastic speed and signal (see the attached photo). The 70mbps is limited by my extender but the Unifi will get in excess of 250mpbs to a nearby wireless device.
I placed the init pretty much in the centre of the house and we can use the wifi from the back of the garden, to across the road out front.
1xUSG (router in passthrough mode)
3x Switches (1 x PoE)
3 X AP LRs.
When set up correctly in a way that works this thing is awesome, however getting there is not easy, especially for people who may not be technically minded. This is definitely not a good product for home users who don’t understand a bit of networking and who aren’t able to put in some effort to correctly configure it.
The main problem I had was that the unit would work great most of the time, but if I went upstairs and did something that put sustained network traffic over the wifi on the local LAN it would cause the AP to suddenly lose connectivity to the rest of the network after 5-10mins. This is a very strange thing for an access point to do – the wireless connection between the devices and the access point wasn’t going away (I could ping the AP throughout), but it was losing connectivity to the LAN that was connected to it via ethernet. I had pings running in both directions and when the break happened the AP was unable to ping the router and vice versa.
This was very frustrating for a day or two until I realised that my devices were switching to 2.4GHz upstairs even though the 5GHz signal was just as strong and gave much higher bandwidth. I only have one device that needs 2.4GHz so I used the controller to create two separate networks and moved the old device onto the 2.4GHz network and left everything else on a 5GHz-only network. Now it all works perfectly and I get a solid 300Mbps downstairs and 200Mbps upstairs.
The issue I encountered doesn’t really make sense, I can only assume it’s some kind of firmware bug related to the 2.4GHz radio but since I don’t really need that much I’m not too bothered about it.
Another issue that caught me out was that I disabled the SSH service on the AP thinking I was being smart about security. But I was wasn’t running the controller continuously, and as soon as I stopped the controller it was then unable to manage the AP, because that initial process where it takes ownership of it happens via SSH. There was no way out of this situation so I had to factory reset it, and the documented factory reset process didn’t work. I held the reset button down for 10 seconds, 30 seconds, a minute, it did nothing. Eventually I managed to reset it by holding the reset button down and power cycling it, but that was a frustrating hour too. Lesson learned – don’t disable SSH on these as you’ll just get into problems.
Overall this is a great access point but be aware there are lots of settings to twiddle to get it set up properly and performing well. The community forums are a great resource though and very responsive and helpful.
I’ve now paired this with an EdgeRouter X and it’s all working very well.
I live in an old farm house with stud walls everywhere, my dilemma has always been at least 1 room in the house suffering from poor wi-fi to the extent where i had to have one wi-fi upstairs and a different named one downstairs, extenders never worked and if i am honest i was in the mind set of i’ll by this but cant see it working so i’ll send it back. NOT a chance it has saved my life, I have 1 wi-fi connection now that covers the whole house and if anything it has actually sped up my connection in the house, reviews saying it is hard to set up are false it’s simple enough and had it done in minutes….. as for coverage there is a few settings IE the 2.4GHz and the 5GHz so its possible that people may not have both turned on but with both on it works a treat…. this is a MUST buy in my opinion if you are having coverage issues.
On the negative side…..List clearly states POE injector included. But no POE injector included in this package. I carefully reviewed this before buying and chose the one that included the POE. Misleading and suspect its to do with a newer version which does not include the POE.Had to buy the POE separate which was another 15.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/UBIQUITI-Networks-POE-24-12W-Ubiquiti/dp/B00HXT8LPW/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1529920323&sr=8-3&keywords=ubiquiti+poe+injector
The product however is really excellent. Huge coverage. Did my whole house (5 beds) with a single unit on the middle floor. Struggling a little when you move out to teh back garden, but always an option to put a second one close to back garden. Cant imagine any residential installation that could not be completely covered by 2 units.
Excellent software, but can be a bit of a pain to load as it needs Java and also a very specific version of Java. Good forum support however so even if you have problems there is loads of online help if needed.
Despite the POE missing, still a 5 stars. Just plan for the extra 15 needed if you don’t already have a POE injector.
The managment console is straight forward, however, setting it up like you would the “retail” products would leave you with a slow connection. I’ve noted the steps I used to get a fast AC throughout the house (after the initial wizard setup):
1. Ensure the management app has the Enable advanced features checked ( settings ) and just under the services section
2. Only setup one WiFi network, set wpapsk and choose a secutiry phrase
3. Select the device, enter the config (tab on the right)
4. Radio 2g set channel width HT20, channel 4 (or a free channel), transmit power low
5. Radio 5g set channel width VHT80 channel 48, transmit power high
6. Queue changes – and apply changes
7. Band Steering – prefer 5g
8. Queue changes – and apply changes
8. Airtime fairness off
9. Queue changes – and apply changes
Choose your channels carefully – look at the “bars” and you are looking for “good” and no interference.
The management console will show your clients connected and selecting a client and noting the statistics will show you the connection type. (11ac) is fast, 11(ng) not so fast
Hope this helps people with the setup.
I had a need to replace an old Netgear WIFI router with something more appropriate at work about 3 years ago. After some research and a discussion with my IT consultant we decided to give this Ubiquiti product a try. I was impressed with the quality and robustness of the product. We wanted to ceiling mount it in the office and it came with everything we needed to do a professional and tidy job. It looks great in place, like an illuminated flying saucer. Its been in place since then and provided seamless WIFI service. The management interface is easy to use and well thought out. The device connects without and fuss or swearing. I now need to provide WIFI coverage in our warehouse environment. I didn’t think twice about purchasing this Ubiquiti for the task. Great product, easy to set up, reliable. I’ll be buying more of these I’m sure.
One warning up front: I would not recommend this solution to anyone unless they have reasonable IT and networking knowhow.
In my setup, the single AP provides 4 separate Wi-Fi networks (SSIDs): a normal one, 2 networks for our kids each with appropriate filters and time limits for 2 different age groups, and one (lower priority) for guests. Ubiquiti allows running the traffic from the separate Wi-Fi networks in individual VLANs on the single up-link network cable, which enabled me to use different subnets for each group and setup fine-grained firewall and content filtering in my existing PfSense appliance.
To setup and control Ubiquiti APs, one needs to use the UniFi controller software. The controller can be purchased as an appliance (UniFi Cloud Key) but you can also freely download the software and install it on your own hardware (Windows Mac or Linux). I am using a Raspberry Pi Model 2 with Raspbian Stretch on a 16GB SD card on which the controller software .deb file installs and runs without problems.
Access to the controller is via web browser to the IP address of the machine on which it is installed (using https and port 8443). Technically, it is only necessary to have the controller running to do configuration changes and updates because once that is done, the APs can run autonomously. You will need to keep the controller running continuously if you want to use the portal capabilities for guest access or to use email alerts if anomalies are detected.
Note that besides Ubiquiti APs, the controller can also manage other Ubiquiti devices such as switches, and security gateways. Understandably, it ONLY manages Ubiquiti hardware products and looks for them on your network. If you, like I, have different products for these functions, learn to ignore corresponding messages, menus and statistics in the Unifi Controller that are not applicable to your setup.
As for the Ubiquiti AP (AC-Pro) itself, it is smaller than I expected and surprisingly light. It only needs a network connection (CAT 5e or better) and comes with a small power brick that feeds the required power into the network cable (PoE) at the other end. You can also use a PoE-capable switch instead. This makes for a very clean install. The AP comes with mounting hardware for walls or ceiling. You screw a ring to the wall/ceiling into which the AP is then clipped similar to a smoke detector.
After setup, I planned to move mine into a more central position in our 4-bedroom house but I found that it provides ample coverage just lying out of sight on top of a bookshelf in our study, so it will probably just stay there. The controller software offers all kinds of fine-grained radio control and statistics, interference graphs and coverage monitoring for 2GHz and 5GHz, which I have not really played with yet because the WiFi works well as it is.
One additional note: I upgraded the firmware in the AC-PRO to the latest version. To do that, you need to give the URL to the firmware on Ubiquiti’s website to the controller which then passes the URL (and not the firmware itself!) to the APs. The APs then use the URL to download and install the software all by themselves. It works, but it means the AP needs connectivity to the internet to be able to do this. I don’t really like that, so I use a firewall rule to block internet access for the AP and only open it when I want to do an upgrade. Theoretically, it should be possible to point the APs to fetch updates from an internal webserver (like the controller) instead but I have not tried it out yet.
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SSID = Wireless network name (when connecting to a wireless network, the name that identifies that network is the SSID [such as ‘bobs-wifi’])
XMS = Xirrus Management System (software used to manage multiple Xirrus arrays)
802.11ac = Relatively new wireless data transmission standard
RP-TNC = Type of antenna connector
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I chose this access point model to replace some failed-due-to-age Xirrus XN-type arrays. I’ve used this device since the end of July (and we got another a week ago)
The Xirrus arrays being used (XN4/XN8) were quite overkill for their purpose with seldom more than 60 people connected to a single one. They also cost a heck of a lot of money compared to this. Even now, the cheapest (modern) Xirrus AP I could find was still over 300. Then you also have to worry about the management server (Xirrus would likely charge money for upgrading the server management software to newer versions)
With that said, here are some pros and cons about this device:
=PROS=
– Server management software is free (and so is support as far as I can tell)
– Server software can be run on any Windows computer (doesn’t need an entire dedicated machine such as current versions of Xirrus Enterprise XMS)
– Devices do not need licenses to operate/upgrade- therefore upgrading firmware is much simpler
– Comes with an ‘RF Scan’ feature which is EXTREMELY useful when deciding what wireless bands to use for each AP
– Can make wireless network ‘groups’ (each group containing up to 4 SSIDs) which can be applied to multiple/different AP’s depending on needs
– Can make bandwidth throttling rules that can be applied to multiple/individual SSIDs (in the server management interface it is called ‘user groups’)
– Ability to search for specific connected devices (laptops/phones) using a search box- compared to the version of Xirrus XMS we use where you simply have to scroll until you find the desired device.
– Small in size so does not feel intrusive. Also no moving parts (it doesn’t have a fan) so makes no noise.
– Very good value for money (as you get the device, power injector with power cable AND mounting brackets/screws although no Ethernet cables sadly)
-Future proofing as supports the 802.11ac standard
=CONS=
– If the management server and AP’s are on different VLANs (such as management server on VLAN 1 and Wireless APs on VLAN 20) the remote shell feature (there’s a feature to launch an in-browser command line that allows you to do input basic commands) won’t work.
– Not sure if this is still an issue, but when upgrading firmware there have been issues for some people where it refuses to run the upgrade if the AP has a static IP address set- this can only be resolved up setting the IP to DHCP, running the upgrade and then setting back to static afterwards.
– AP can support up to ~250 users theoretically (according to the AP AC datasheet) but in reality it will most likely be topping out at a usable level before that. According to one of the Ubiquiti documentations they recommend a maximum of 70 users (according to the AP AC HD datasheet, which oddly states the theoretical maximum users is 125 for the AC PRO, meaning there is inconsistency with their ‘facts’ between AC and HD datasheets. As far as I can tell from usage though, AC PROs can take more than 125 simultaneous users).
-No external antenna ports (the Xirrus XN arrays had RP-TNC connectors if you wanted to boost signal strength)
-Can only configure the device through the server management interface (devices don’t have their own direct web interfaces)
I have had no problems with these since using them.
Hope this helps those of you considering getting this device!
I’ve put one of these (UBIQUITI NETWORKS UBI-UAP-AC-PRO) between the ceiling and floorboards in the middle of my house, which is a decent sized good solid 4 bedroom house with downstairs extension. It covers the whole house with no problem. The only minor niggle is that you need to install the Unifi software to configure it, and this installs a Java-based performance-hogging service on your machine (I’m running it on a Linux Mint box). To combat this, I’ve disabled the service when I’m not actually managing the Access Point, only enabling it if I need to make a config change. The AP itself runs independently of the Unifi software, so disabling the service doesn’t cause any problems. Great AP, and I’d definitely buy more if I needed them (you can manage them all from the same Unifi instance).
After searching the web I came across this Wi-fi access point, i watched all the videos on YouTube and decided to order one.
Once fitted to my landing ceiling, it took 5 mins to download the software to my laptop and get it up and running. The software can do loads of things and a lot of it is over my head, but I have to say this is one of the best purchases I have made.
The Wi-fi signal in my house now is brilliant, I’ve turned the Wi-fi off on my router and I’m just using this as that causes my devices to hang on web pages.
I haven’t had time to see if the signal is any good in the garden or garage, but if it isn’t I’ll buy one for outside.
I read about and purchased 3 UAP-AC-PRO and the first results are excellent. They are very easy to setup with a no nonsense and detailed controller software application. The signal never drops around the house and it handles multiple clients effortlessly. Really love them and I’m tempted to now buy the Security Gateway and Switch so that I can maintain the entire home network via UniFi products!
After fruitless attempts to improve the wifi signal in our loft conversion bedroom we finally found the solution. Works fantastic. Setup is not as straightforward as you’d expect from a kit of this quality but finally got around to setting it up. Wifi has improved tremendously across the back of the house where the BT wifi doesn’t reach. The only reason why I didn’t give it 5 star is because you have to manually connect your device to the Access Point every time. It doesn’t automatically connect your device once you are in range. I was told by customer support that this can only happen where you have 2 or more of them connected.
Having used a number of different Wireless Routers over the years, this has by far been the best one.
It was bought to replace an Apple Airport Extreme (6th Edition), which although was very good, I still had a couple of black spots where wifi strength was very poor. This, however, is so much better.
I was able to mount it pretty much in the center of my fairly large home and it hasn’t failed to impress me yet. I now have excellent wifi coverage throughout my entire home, even in areas where wifi was very poor.
As the access point (AP) uses Power-Over-Ethernet (POE) you can mount it anywhere you like, as there is only 1 cable that runs to it. With a little careful planning, I was able to mount on the ceiling running the cable through a hole I drilled in the ceiling, leaving a very professional looking mounted device.
The access point copes very well, even when streaming 1080p video to 3 different devices in 3 different corners of my house at the same time, while other devices are being used to surf the internet.
Being an enterprise edition device, this is not one for the feint hearted or those with little knowledge of networking.
At present, I have only completed a basic setup without tinkering with any of the settings at all. This was just so I could get everyone in the house connected back up to the internet and not have to deal with everyone moaning about not being able to access the internet (Oh how they would have survived when I was growing up).
The instructions that come with the AP are basic and pretty much explain how to install/mount it to a wall or ceiling. A little research is required once connected to get it fully configured.
Be prepared to spend a lot of time configuring the AP to be able to get the most out of it. Thankfully Google and Youtube are around which will make the whole process a little easier.
Would I recommend this to other… definitely YES! Would I buy another… definitely YES!
Very Reliable Piece of Kit – not a minute down in the last 3 months. Speeds are also impressive and multi-device handling. The loss of a star is down to set-up, I am tech savy, I have set up about 10 routers over the years, upgraded components in my PCs etc, however, I found this set-up to really stretch me, more reading than I hoped for and my windows 10 machine took a couple of instals to get to grips with the software. So to enjoy the benefits of this piece of kit either you or a friend is going to have to be patient and determined. Now that I understand it I would buy another!
I am sure these are brilliant but they do take a bit of setting up to ensure when you have two like i had they don’t overlap too much and they have the right TX power etc. to ensure your devices switch from one to the other AP. My House is a bit of weird shape been a farm house that has been extended three times and has some very thick walls, it worked well enough and two units gave good coverage but i spent ages trying to get my devices to move smoothly from one AP to the other and then back again but in the end gave up and brought the Orbi which is a little more user friendly as i didn’t want to spend another 8 hours messing around with location placement and power settings etc.
That’s not to say these aren’t good, they are, it’s just they weren’t for me.
One minor downside is that as it is a POE-powered device, you either need to use a POE switch, or use a POE injector (supplied), which makes the installation a little “untidy”.
Configuration of the device is straightforward, being managed by the controller, which also handles configuration of all the other Ubiquiti devices on the network.
Would I recommend this device – ABSOLUTELY!
If, on the other hand, you want something that is supremely configurable (to the point that you can set up a guest VLAN that takes credit card payments by ticking a box in the controller) from anywhere in the world then this is very much for you.
But, if you’re expecting better range than your existing home router/AP then you may be disappointed. Unifi sell the LR unit for better range. This one is for more users, faster speed and offers a certain degree of weatherproofing (although it’s definitely not waterproof!).
If you don’t want to have to spend a minimum of an hour setting up the first unit, buy Amplifi. It’s the right one for you. If, on the other hand, you want to configure one access point then add 6 more without any further configuration. This is very much for you.
Bought this as my asus router wasn’t covering the whole house, as we have lourven ceilings, was worried this wouldn’t improve my wifi signal, but it did!
I have it mounted on the landing ceiling and powered from a poe switch- works a treat whole house is flooded with strong wifi!
After installing I switched off the wifi on my router to ensure I wasn’t creating unessesary “noise” on wifi channels
It’s a shame the controller software isn’t built into the access point like most hardware these days! Deducting a star for this maybe a bit harsh as once it’s setup you don’t actually need to use the controller software (management app)
Absolutely awesome. I was trying to fix a wifi problem in an old house with very thick walls. Previously we had solved this with multiple (5)long range access points but this was a poor solution as ipads and laptops dont roam very well from point to point. I had also tried repeaters but these were unreliable and required regular reboots. I add one to my house and was initially disappointed with the range of the single item but once I installed the second one I realised the benefit of these as they roam between each other beautifully. I have manged to cover my house with two but I am going to add a third (or possibly a fourth) to get the strongest signals.
They do exactly what I need them to do. Setup was pretty easy. Not sure why anyone says its hard. Install a bit of software on a pc (or mac) and it discovers the points as you plug them in. Press the adopt option and thats it.
Important: This product doesn’t have a web GUI, so you need to have some knowledge of networking to set it up fully. This ensure a secure system, and running software on your PC or MAC gives you full access with a point and click interfaces, you can manage an entire network of these from the comfort of your computer.
While not the cheapest WAP on the market, this is certainly to most reliable and smallest footprint. I would highly recommend, speeds are good and stables, no drop outs, and even better you can celing mount the device, and its support POE which means no power supply needed if you have a switch that support POE if, not they supply a POE injector to help out.
I’m living in an 1860s build over two floors with a Virgin router in my living room. I linked this unit to my Virgin router (because of the fiber optic cable) and disabled all my other network equipment and then went to every room in the house. Then I followed the simple instructions to connect to the system using software downloaded from ubiquiti and Bob’s your uncle.The wifi signal was five bars in every room except the utility room at the end of the kitchen where I was still able to get signal with all the doors shut. Very impressive. I’ve even managed to get signal in my car at the end of the driveway. Unbelievable. Where I’ve got reasonable strength the wifi is blisteringly fast (see screenshots).
I’m using this for personal wifi but there’s a bevy of enterprise level tools governing access and usage that can be used and if you need to have a permanent hardware controller you can buy one or, apparently (according to my friend) use a Pi!. I’ve had no troubles so far and I’m glad to stop using all that equipment.
Something I would have found useful to know: It doesn’t come with network cables. I recommend you supply two of your own Cat 6 (or Cat 5) cables, making sure one of them is PoE (capable of supplying power – it will need to connect the unit to its AC adapter). I didn’t think about it before I bought it but I luckily have several cables spare.
Can’t really recommend this enough.
Once up and functioning it is working like a charm and WiFi is available throughout the house without any need for repeaters.
Getting it working however was a bit of a journey. The instructions that came with the unit were less than clear on what was required. Thankfully some googling showed that you had to run a local controller. The controller is then used to provision the AP and setup all the WLANs. Even with the controller up and functioning the AP still failed to provision and to be honest I am not sure that anything I did resolved the provisioning problem. Though for some reason where it had steadfastly refused to provision it then magically started working.
Once under control the AP works great and has been stable ever since.
Installed (UAP-AC-PRO) in an old Victorian house and providing really good wifi to all corners and the garden. The controller (v5.2.9) is installed on Raspberrypi 2. Installed before the AP and instantly updated the firmware on the AP. You need to be a little familiar with configuring users, profiles, groups and wifi but once your through the basics it works really well. One gotcha was with throughput, the default user group is set to unlimited upload/download, if left at default your upload will be restricted to about 3mbps. Change the default group from unlimited and set values on upload/download beyond the theoretical max (could be a bug with the current firmware v3.7.22.5389). Used the online support chat within Unifi which was excellent as well……All good so far….I would recommend testing fixing locations/wall vs ceiling mounting and test each location for throughput…..
Initially I tried multiple consumer access points, but I found that there always seemed to be significant dead spots, poor reliability and slow handover between access points.
I finally ditched all of the consumer kit and bought the enterprise class AC Pro. It’s not the easiest AP to set-up and it’s worth having a look around the excellent Ubiquiti customer forum for hints and tips. After about 20-25 minutes the AP was up and running.
The throughput and coverage is excellent, plus the management console gives you every piece of information you could desire.
Things to remember:
1. you need to run the controller software on something e.g. PC, Max, Linux or buy a CloudKey,
2. on Windows 10 64 bit, you may need to download the offline version of Java,
3. the AC Pro comes with a PoE injector, or you can use a 802.3af PoE/802.3at compliant switch/router (it will not work with a 24v passive PoE device)
Absolutely brilliant!! Worth the extra cost for true POE and a fully MESH wireless network. Have 3 now and the Wifi is 5ghz for our apple devices and we can see that all our neighbors are on specific channels and all still on 2.4 so no interference. If you dont want to go with true cloud management, which we didnt, opt for the local cloud controller which connects into your POE switch and once configured just does its stuff brilliantly.
Yes its a bit more complex to setup, especially if you’re not a techie, but their online support was brilliant via online chat. I had to migrate existing settings from my laptop onto the cloud controller so it wasnt a straight green field installation. All up and running within an hour, and that included locating them in the loft and connecting cables to POE switches. When we have finished our extension next year we will add a couple more to get 100% coverage in the house and garden.
Great feature is you can add a diagram of your house, measure a distance on the jpg you upload an then you can see the 2/.4 & 5Ghz coverage. Having the architects plans for our extension made this really easy and very accurate. Love it loads more than the old BT Home Hub 5, which now has Wifi turned off.
I was a bit skeptical about this. It’s a brand I’ve never used before, but on the basis of the vast number of other people in the various IT communities I’m in who have used it, I thought I’d give it a shot. This device is unreal.
Initial setup can be a little bit fiddly, but you have a few options to get it going. You can either get a Cloud Key, which is a small device that plugs into your network for the sole purpose of configuring Ubiquiti kit, you can install the cross-platform controller software onto any Windows, Mac or Linux machine, or they have an app for Android and iOS that can do the basics to get it going. I opted for installing the controller software onto my Centos6 server. Once that was going, I’d configured the WiFi before I’d even received the device. It turned up the following day, I installed the ceiling bracket, plugged it in and waited. It found my controller, downloaded its configuration, rebooted, and hey presto…WiFi!
I told it to use 80MHz on the 5GHz channel (no one around my uses 5GHz so I’m using all I can get..no interference anywhere!). As a result, my devices all connect to 5GHz at over 200Mbps. My laptop usually sits at 433Mbps, and transfers data that way as well. No worries!
Maintenance is but a breeze. The controller software doesn’t *have* to remain running 24×7. They are capable of operating stand-alone (though if you ever want to change a configuration option, you’ll need to fire up the software – these things don’t have a web UI of their own). You can do firmware updates straight from the controller, manage multiple access points, and additional Ubiquiti equipment if you have it (switches, routers, firewalls, etc). In fact, the more Ubiquiti kit you have on your network holding it together, the more rich the software becomes.
All in all, this is a fantastic access point, and I would totally buy more if I had the need for them.
The new Ubiquiti AP is delivering the full speed to all wireless devices (photo of speed test included).
I was a little disappointed that the “easy setup” app was only available for Android currently but the Windows control panel was really user friendly (I’m not expert) and trouble free to download and navigate through the setup. It took about ten minutes tops once it was downloaded.
We’ve had this for almost a week and love it. We can now get superfast speeds at the far end of the back garden (the AP is at the front of the house, around 20 metres away, through a brick wall).
It’s greatly increased wireless speeds, range and our ability to enjoy wireless content.
One thing I would note is that you will need a UniFi controller; you can do this on your PC through the software provided by Ubiquiti or on a mobile device for basic configuration. This is a requirement for setup, the controller does not have to be ran constantly unless you want to setup a Guest Wireless page!
The main improvements I found over a competitors router were the customisation ability and how precise you can be. You can also locate the device in a multi-device setup using the controller, the device has a light around the centre that flashes if network connectivity is lost and each type of flash means a different thing. Meaning it is far easier to diagnose any issues compared to most devices!
You are provided with wall-ceiling/roof mounting screws and this is explained fully in the manual. It is relatively easy to understand and the materials used are of a very high quality.
My product came with a UK-3-Pin plug without any issues of connecting the POE adapter to the mains, this would not be required if you had a network switch that supports POE. The setup of the external power supply for those who don’t have POE already is easy, it tells you to wire one to your LAN (To modem) and the other to the device, simple! I found that the device is relatively light and quite small from what I was expecting.
Overall; Simply putting it, I would never look back again. This is a true enterprise level product, the type of product you would see in a Hotel or business, it behaves as you would expect it to at the same performance level as a business would want. I also get much much faster speeds than I was getting before, fantastic.
I have attached pictures of the product and it’s packaging for your viewing!
Brought after using DD-WRT on consumer gear, Non DD-WRT Cisco AP’s, etc…. This unit just works! I don’t write reviews – but this deserves it! (No I certaintly do not work for them, own shares in them, or anything else! – just for once they deserve the kudos for something decent!).
I have worked with IT for years, and usually accept everything has bugs that need to be worked around.
I had some teething crashing – however, while I cant pin it down this is now running a guest network on a separate VLAN, and 3 core networks all with VLAN separation. (FW Upadates, Cabling adjustments, POE injector movement, and MTU adjustment from 9000 to 1500 (which most consumer stuff will work at) has fixed whatever the issue was – its now more solid than any of the previous items I had previously).
For typical standard networks, it simply destroys the competition, until you get to units 4X the cost.
The system needs a R.PI or PC running the controller to be really useful, the UI is comparable to what Apple produce, and its rock solid once any in-house issues are ironed out! (My Jumbo frames which most home users I guess wouldn’t use).
If you want something that works to replace a HomeWiFi AP, this costs the same as high end consumer gear, but its rock stable, and has good performance, I can’t really fault.
Overall I would strongly recommend for:
Home users rather than buying high end other consumer based brands,
Small Businesses – POE support, VLAN support, Stable, with the right infrastructure it would just fit, or even as an AP to a simple network
Ultimately its a rock solid access point to allow WiFi connectivity to your network, its not a ADSL Wifi Model, or filtering appliance, but what it does, it does extremely well!
P.S This is running solidly with Ubuntu hosting the 5.X controller, in a VM, with aprrox 100GB a day loading due to my family streaming constant video, and my business VPN / calls running.
Don’t usually write Amazon reviews but this one deserves my time.
My flat isn’t that big but is rectangle in shape with every room sitting off a corridor – bathroom and kitchen between the bedroom and living room. So a lot of noise and interference for a Wifi network to contend with. Until now, I’ve had to use two access points (both Airport extremes) but the handoff when moving between them is terrible / doesn’t happen, you’ll pop-off the wifi and back on again.
Have been on the hunt for an access point for a while now that’ll fit the needs of heavy usage but a one-blanket Vs multiple devices options. This is it, can’t believe how quick it was to set up. Not only that, the access point is sitting on my desk while I set it up (won’t stay there, got a 15m rj45 to place it more centred in the flat) and I got connection at the other side of the flat, something that the current setup wouldn’t do with just one device. It’s incredible. Simply is, my Best Buy of 2016!
1. Apple Airport Extremes upstairs and downstairs WiFi linked. This kinda worked but the handoff was pretty terrible. Also the upstairs Extreme would often suddenly stop transmitting.
2. Apple Airport Extremes upstairs and downstairs powerline LAN linked. I used a TP-Link AV1200 kit for this. The transfer rates were great and this seemed to work well. But some of the machines upstairs were gaming machines and there were the occasional dropped packets. I’m guessing something with the wiring in this house.
3. Linksys WRT1900ACS. This was much more powerful than the Apple devices and covered almost the whole house from one box in my office. Unfortunately the WiFi would completely crash about once every 24 hours and the unit would need rebooting.
So, upon several recommendations I finally went and tried an Ubiquiti unit. Due to the Power-Over-Ethernet I could actually wire this from the office to the centre of the house using one cable. Which kept my wife happy, she wasn’t a fan of cables all over the hallway. This one unit covers my whole house and a large proportion of outside the house too. I wired it up and then fled for a work trip for a week. I come back to find the family are happy, it has transferred nearly 200GB to all their devices in my absence and is still completely rock solid. Most of this would have been Netflix, YouTube and gaming.
There are two ways of setting this unit up. You can either use an app on your phone which is very easy to do but only gives you access to basic functionality, or you can install a controller. On my first setup I used the app but very soon reset it and installed the controller software on one of my servers. I don’t recommend going the controller route unless you know something about configuring networks.
I now have 2.4GHz, a 5GHz and a guest WiFi network configured in the unit. You can have the unit block traffic to the rest of your network automatically for the guest network or for additional security you can use a VLAN to separate out the guest network. There are many more features for the guest WiFi which I don’t need and haven’t played with, they are probably more suited to hotels.
You can see from the photo I’ve wall mounted it in the downstairs hallway (we moved in a few months ago and haven’t painted the hallway yet, so I apologise for it not being neat). It comes with mounting kits for either ceiling tiles or drilling holes in ceilings/walls. For now I have opted for 2 medium sized 3M Command picture hanging strips because I wasn’t 100% sure at the time of fitting whether this would be the right unit for us. I may at a later date drill holes and permanently mount it.
I thoroughly recommend this unit, but with the caveat that it is definitely not the easiest to set up if you want all the features.
In contrast this AP is a breath of fresh air. You have to download a Java-based app (the “controller”) to configure the AP but then it’s very straightforward. When you start the app it immediately asks you for location/timezone, login/password, and finally the name (SSID) and password that you want to associate with the AP (or group of APs). For a first installation it then sets up the AP and then you’re up and running!
There are lots of twiddly bits you can set up in a corporate context within the controller and you can monitor throughput on a per-device and per-AP basis, but for the latter you need to have the controller running continuously. The user interface is really well organised such that you can easily do things like give devices connected to the AP aliases that are more meaningful if you want to track who/what is connecting to the AP.
Finally performance of the AP is excellent – very fast with good range all around the house. I love it to pieces!
OK, so here is a summary of the good and bad points:
Good points:
You get a genuinely professional grade access point for the price of a consumer product. However, if you do want a cheaper but equally functional though slightly slower AP then there is also a “Lite” version which is, frankly, unbeatable at the price.
Fantastically easy to do the initial set-up, but you must have the AP and the PC/Mac you use to initialise the AP connected to the same network subnet. Most home users don’t need to worry about this detail because they’ll only have one subnet.
The controller offers great ongoing management ability if you are prepared to keep it running. But it isn’t necessary to keep it running once the AP is set-up: the AP will happily keep on running without the controller. You can get more capabilities if you add products such a Security Gateway which acts as an internet firewall or a Cloud Key which runs a copy of the controller software and allows you to manage APs across multiple sites via the (free) Ubiquiti cloud. Some users use Amazon AWS services as an alternative.
The AP uses Power over Ethernet (PoE) which means you only need to connect to it using a single network cable. The power supply (injector) or PoE-enabled switch in a corporate context, can be located out of the way. Great for wall-mounting the AP and minimising the amount of visible cabling.
The not-so-good points:
The key issue/problem is that each AP associates itself with the controller you first use to set it up. You can’t thereafter just run a controller up from any old machine. The AP expects to talk to a controller on the same IP address as was used to set-up the AP.
Yes, you can move an AP from one controller to another but you have to go through a process of “unadopting” the AP from the old controller and then “readopting” it on the new controller and it does take some technical understanding to do it. In fact I have done it at home because I wanted to gather the statistics on an ongoing basis so I have used a Raspberry Pi to implement a very low power dedicated controller which works extremely well.
A second issue is that a DHCP server is set up by default which, on many networks (including the home), will already be managed elsewhere. So make a beeline for Settings/Network from the user interface, edit the LAN details and disable the DHCP server.
Finally Ubiquiti made a curious choice of putting network connections on the bottom of the AP. So if you position it the right way up on a wall, in most instances where the cabling comes down from the ceiling, you will have to run a cable past the AP and then up into the base of the AP. Very strange.
I was planning on buying the units direct from Ubiquiti, but opted for an Amazon Prime vendor who was amazingly helpful, and had a better returns policy in case I didn’t need one of the units – and you can never accurately predict it.
The installation is simple though with PPoE it, we got an electrician to run the ethernet cable in runs of up to 300′ without any disruption in the power. The App required to link the things together is a little sticky, but as long as your running the latest OS then anyone can configure it.
1. The Problem.
I live in a house with a wife and two teenage daughters, we have Virgin Cable (200MbPS down and 12 up), all of us have iPhones, tablets, laptops, chrome casts, appleTVs, Smart Tvs, there is also Phillips Hue, Canary security cameras, Nest Thermostat and Co2/Smoke alarms, external CCTV cameras connected to NAS drives, etc etc.
2. The reaction.
I slowly replaced the Asus AC3200, ACRT87 and TP Link AC2600 with these and the Lite versions. I don’t think anyone noticed as I kept the SSID the same. I said nothing but, each member of the family said (over the last week), “Have you done something to the WiFi, its much faster”.
3. Testing
I ran the mac App “SpeedyNet” on my MacPro (which is wired into Cat 6 Cable via Netgear Smart switches). I then used on my Macbook 12 inch, the same app and Mac App WiFi signal (as it gives link speed). I then walked around the house testing speed. Ignore the stupid speeds that AC says it can provide (AC3200 for example) as they are wildly optimistic, this test gave me true transfer speeds.
To the AC Pro’s I was getting a link speed of either 887MbPS or 1300 and to the AC Lite, 887MbPS or dropping to around 550 But actual transfer speeds? They were in the Region of 445 MbPS and occasionally hit circa 530.
4. Settings.
I am still feeling my way through the Controller app and I am sure with fine tuning, I can extract more. I have managed to sort out band steering and also Zero Hand Off (As you walk round the house, your device will disconnect from old WAP and connect to the nearest one).
5. Are these worth the money? Hell yes, they are fairly easy to install and setup, there is a great community for advice at UBNT.com and while the top line speeds may suggest they are slightly slower, the truth is they are quicker and more stable.
I am using this with An Apple Aiport Extreme router (latest Model) I turned of the Airport’s wifi as no need with this. Great thing about this device which I can’t do with Airport is position it as the top of the house facing down. I bought a 25 m Cat 6 flat ethernet cable as this runs via included POE adapter, no need to have a separate power, the ethernet does both signal and power (POE)
I’m getting all bars on my iPad even at furthest point away in our house. The iMac I’m writing this on is connected to it at 878 Mbps (5GHz) in next room. Stood next to it with my iPhone 6S on 5GHz network I’m getting over 400 Mbps and 2 floors below apron 11 metres (40ft) I’m still getting 380Mbps.
The device can also be used to monitor via Unify application on my iPhone as well as web interface. We have 18 devices connected to this at home and all rock solid. All in all a great addition to making sure everyone is happy in house!