System Design Help for New Home (Yamaha, Ubiquiti, nVidia)

[videostorm]

Good choices on the AV gear!  Shield Pro @ each TV with local AVR & speakers is the best experience for really minimal spend.

If you do end up adding the DTV STBs in the future you can consider adding NetPlay to distribute those.  It fits nicely with your hardware & network.  Also fully standards based as you prefer.

[ekohn00]

17 hours ago, skippman said:

 Even Cisco lets other companies use their protocols. 

Not really...no, not with out $$$ and definitely nothing that they get love. Cisco Proprietary is a common phrase.

[skippman]

1 hour ago, msgreenf said:

wow, you would consider Wink after their days long outages?

Not really. I was just throwing out a name that pretty much everyone knows. If I were truly going to DIY it would probably be OpenHAB hosted on a local server with a DynDNS interface for remote access. One of the reasons I'm looking at COTS products (the thermostats, garage door opener, etc) is that gives me a backup interface I can temporarily use in case something goes wrong on the Control4 system. I'm also debating on adding Ubiquti's backup cell service appliance as I work from home and need maximum uptime on my internet.

 

39 minutes ago, videostorm said:

Good choices on the AV gear!  Shield Pro @ each TV with local AVR & speakers is the best experience for really minimal spend.

If you do end up adding the DTV STBs in the future you can consider adding NetPlay to distribute those.  It fits nicely with your hardware & network.  Also fully standards based as you prefer.

I figured using the Genie2 from DirecTV with three STB's would be the best bet. That gives me a central DVR and each TV can watch whatever it wants. What functionality would NetPlay add to the mix for me? I don't watch sports so having multiple TV's all showing the same program isn't really something I think I'd ever use.

 

28 minutes ago, ekohn00 said:

Not really...no, not with out $$$ and definitely nothing that they get love. Cisco Proprietary is a common phrase.

IOS is pretty much a universal standard now even though it originated with Cisco. Even EIGRP (which was Cisco Proprietary) has become an industry standard now. I want to avoid going off on a tangent here but Cisco has definitely allowed their more popular and less esoteric protocols to be rolled into IEEE standards.

[videostorm]

1 hour ago, skippman said:

 

I figured using the Genie2 from DirecTV with three STB's would be the best bet. That gives me a central DVR and each TV can watch whatever it wants. What functionality would NetPlay add to the mix for me? I don't watch sports so having multiple TV's all showing the same program isn't really something I think I'd ever use.

 

NetPlay top features

• PIP and / or tiled display of multiple sources at once
• Graphics or data overlay on your screen  (stocks, tasks, calender, etc..     maybe network status in your case?)
• IP camera PIP / popup on triggers (motion, programming, etc)
• Simultaneous synched display across your TVs  (which you might not use)
• Easily share any potential future HDMI source across all your TVs

So basically adding "bells and whistles"      Nothing critical but does certainly add some cool factor to your home and isn't too expensive.   

[ekohn00]

4 hours ago, skippman said:

IOS is pretty much a universal standard now even though it originated with Cisco. Even EIGRP (which was Cisco Proprietary) has become an industry standard now. I want to avoid going off on a tangent here but Cisco has definitely allowed their more popular and less esoteric protocols to be rolled into IEEE standards.

Not exactly......

First off it's not IEEE, it would be IETF for consideration of routing standards.

The entirety of EIGRP remains a Cisco Proprietary protocol, Cisco never submitted the entirety of EIGRP to become a standard.

 

 

 

[TundraSonic]

We recently built a somewhat similar system to what you're planning. A few quick thoughts...

- Be very careful what UI firmware you run. The last couple of years have been rough with buggy releases. 

- Get two UDMP's. This makes it much easier to back out a bad UDMP firmware upgrade. 

- Keep all C4 stuff on the same VLAN. 

- Pre-wire for more AP locations. You may need them.

- We looked at a lot of options for media distribution and ended up with an Apple TV at each TV location. After 16 months this has worked well for us. Some locations have multiple displays such as our master bath that has 3 displays (shower, wc, bathroom), in-ceiling audio, but one ATV. Everyone's needs/wants/viewing are different though.

- Given their recent QA problems along with limited options it was easy to eliminate UI for security and Synology didn't have a lot of the capabilities we wanted. We spent a lot of time evaluating Blue Iris and Security Spy for DVR. Security Spy ended up the easy winner so we have that w/ 31 cameras (mostly Dahua/Loryta and Amcrest). Do not give cameras any kind of internet access as they will call home to mama for upgrades that you do not want. Put all cameras on their own switch that has only cameras and your DVR machine.

- Plan for a lot of patience w/ C4 programming if you're use to anything modern. It's a structured programming interface from the 1980's and worse it lacks a lot of the features that almost all structured systems had. It's slow and frustrating but it is what it is.

- Get your buddy to give you integrator access rather than homeowner access and your life will be much easier. For example, C4 only lets integrators see/change 'connections'. Not being able to see these if they exist is a major PITA (like being given code to work on but only every other line). Being able to use them would be better. I was told that this is so that integrators will continue to have something to do.

Good luck!

 

 

[wnpublic]

21 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

us. Some locations have multiple displays such as our master bath that has 3 displays (shower, wc, bathroom),

22 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

so we have that w/ 31 cameras (mostly Dahua/Loryta and Amcrest).

[skippman]

1 hour ago, wnpublic said:

Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. Also, I can't afford two $400+ routers just to have one for a potential firmware issue. I don't know many people who could and many small companies wouldn't even do that.

[TundraSonic]

Yeah, everybody's needs are different. My wife and I both work from home and our son and DIL spend summers with us and work from here so downtime becomes a major issue that we try very hard to avoid. The UDMP is about 1/4 the cost of other options like Cisco so for us having 2 of them is cheap vs alternatives and I know that if a problem in a new release shows up (which is frequent with UI lately) I can quickly cut back to the other UDMP. Having a spare in case of a hardware problem is a secondary but important benefit.

Small display panels are quite inexpensive (< $100) so adding a couple so that they're easy to see wasn't a difficult decision.

 

[ejn1]

I've had a Ubiquiti router for over 5 years and never had the need for a redundant backup.    Just stay away from beta firmware if you want the best stability.

[wnpublic]

9 minutes ago, ejn1 said:

I've had a Ubiquiti router for over 5 years and never had the need for a redundant backup.    Just stay away from beta firmware if you want the best stability.

Same

[TundraSonic]

1 hour ago, ejn1 said:

I've had a Ubiquiti router for over 5 years and never had the need for a redundant backup.    Just stay away from beta firmware if you want the best stability.

I assume that's an Edge Router? Those were rock solid. The only problem we had with them was the warts they shipped with them would give out after a while and need replacing. Similar with the pre AC AP's and even the early AC stuff. The UDMP and similar switch firmware has been a totally different story. Bad enough that several long time fanboys of UI have been moving to other platforms. For very simple networks that can tolerate unexpected outages they're a great deal and for extremely simple networks likely have few or zero outages, but for folks who need advanced features, complicated routing needs, or high availability they've been problematic.

[ejn1]

15 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

I assume that's an Edge Router? Those were rock solid. The only problem we had with them was the warts they shipped with them would give out after a while and need replacing. Similar with the pre AC AP's and even the early AC stuff. The UDMP and similar switch firmware has been a totally different story. Bad enough that several long time fanboys of UI have been moving to other platforms. For very simple networks that can tolerate unexpected outages they're a great deal and for extremely simple networks likely have few or zero outages, but for folks who need advanced features, complicated routing needs, or high availability they've been problematic.

I started with a USG gateway,  then a USG Pro,  then a UDM Pro and a UDM in another home.   The issues you reference were mostly around the problems when UDM pro was released and people could not transfer their settings with a backup and restore.   Folks that did a clean install didn’t have these issues .   Bonafide gripe but I just finally did a clean install for reliability.

[skippman]

5 hours ago, ejn1 said:

I've had a Ubiquiti router for over 5 years and never had the need for a redundant backup.    Just stay away from beta firmware if you want the best stability.

This. Exactly this. There is absolutely zero reason or incentive to rub beta firmware on a production appliance. Beta firmware is specifically for testing purposes not for release into production environments. Honestly, unless it's to fix an exploit or security issue there's almost zero reason to ever update router firmware.

As for me personally, my wife and I both work from home. She's a software engineer, I'm a network engineer for a teleco. Right now I'm running a standard Netgear Nighthawk to a Dell layer 3 switch. My gateway, switch, and router all sit on a UPS. If that fails, I have wireless tethering to fall back on. When we move I'm debating on getting a secondary circuit from the local cable company, whatever their lowest tier is, or just setting up a cellular backup.

Honestly, if their production firmware is bad enough that it's routinely bricking or crashing routers I might consider another vendor. This would be the first I'd read about that though. I knew about the restore from backup thing and I know a lot of people are rightfully pissed that you have to sign up for their cloud services account. I don't know of to many other vendors that make a pro-sumer line of products with the single point interface that Ubiquiti does. I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't a Meraki appliance like that but Cisco is to proud of their products for my budget or needs.

[ejn1]

2 hours ago, skippman said:

When we move I'm debating on getting a secondary circuit from the local cable company, whatever their lowest tier is, or just setting up a cellular backup.

I run a primary AT&T ISP and a cheap Xfinity as a failover.   Works well but if done over I would reverse it to avoid the double NAT with the ATT gateway router.

[TundraSonic]

Deleted.

[TundraSonic]

On 9/18/2021 at 2:58 PM, ejn1 said:

I started with a USG gateway,  then a USG Pro,  then a UDM Pro and a UDM in another home.   The issues you reference were mostly around the problems when UDM pro was released and people could not transfer their settings with a backup and restore.   Folks that did a clean install didn’t have these issues .   Bonafide gripe but I just finally did a clean install for reliability.

There are numerous critical bugs that have existed for some time and that are not helped by any kind of clean install. Perhaps the most prominent is a memory leak (or now it appears multiple memory leaks) that lock up part or all of UDMP's. Many of us have to reboot UDMP's daily or weekly to avoid problems with this. This has existed for nearly a year. There are numerous other bugs, some non-critical and some critical, that are well detailed on the UI forums. For many of us the biggest issue is a lack of confidence in firmware releases. While every release might fix some issues, they also nearly always break others. Trying to figure out what release will work reliably in what environment is difficult and stressful.

I think UDMP's work well for very small and simple networks, not so well for larger or those needing more complicated or advanced features. People who have been strong supporters of UI for years have begun to bail this past year because of the poor quality of firmware releases.

 

[msgreenf]

So why do you use the product? A backup doesn't solve any of the problems you stated. 

[ejn1]

6 hours ago, TundraSonic said:

There are numerous critical bugs that have existed for some time and that are not helped by any kind of clean install. Perhaps the most prominent is a memory leak (or now it appears multiple memory leaks) that lock up part or all of UDMP's. Many of us have to reboot UDMP's daily or weekly to avoid problems with this. This has existed for nearly a year. There are numerous other bugs, some non-critical and some critical, that are well detailed on the UI forums. For many of us the biggest issue is a lack of confidence in firmware releases. While every release might fix some issues, they also nearly always break others. Trying to figure out what release will work reliably in what environment is difficult and stressful.

I think UDMP's work well for very small and simple networks, not so well for larger or those needing more complicated or advanced features. People who have been strong supporters of UI for years have begun to bail this past year because of the poor quality of firmware releases.

 

Just to give folks balance to what looks like a horror story of issues,  I have not had anything like the experience above with my UDM-P in my home network aside from the initial restore from backup which was a convenience issue more than a stability issue.   I'm not sure what defines small network or not but my home system has a UDMP, 11 Switches, a mix of 10G/2.5G/1G/100/10 devices,  Unifi VOIP, WAN failover, VLAN/firewall configuration for video and IoT with past Unifi APs and now Ruckus.     Sure there have been a few minor quirks but glad to say its been solid so far.   The UDMP is actually one my favorite pieces of gear from them...  a crazy value for what it offers.

[wnpublic]

1 hour ago, ejn1 said:

Just to give folks balance to what looks like a horror story of issues,  I have not had anything like the experience above with my UDM-P in my home network aside from the initial restore from backup which was a convenience issue more than a stability issue.   I'm not sure what defines small network or not but my home system has a UDMP, 11 Switches, a mix of 10G/2.5G/1G/100/10 devices,  Unifi VOIP, WAN failover, VLAN/firewall configuration for video and IoT with past Unifi APs and now Ruckus.     Sure there have been a few minor quirks but glad to say its been solid so far.   The UDMP is actually one my favorite pieces of gear from them...  a crazy value for what it offers.

Yes, mine has been rock solid. 

[TundraSonic]

21 hours ago, msgreenf said:

So why do you use the product? A backup doesn't solve any of the problems you stated. 

A backup unit minimizes pain from those problems though and for $350 seems cheap for the insurance it provides. I can do a firmware upgrade on the offline UDMP, import the backup file from the current online UDMP and then make the offline the online.  If a problem in the new firmware shows up I can quickly and easily switch back to the exact prior setup that was working before. 

Without a secondary UDMP it'd be impossible to go back to the prior setup. The best you could do would be to manually re-install the former firmware which itself isn't difficult but as we've seen over and over this doesn't result in the same setup due to changes that the upgrade made and sometimes changes that the downgrade makes. So you're on the same firmware as before with supposedly the same settings but you often find new unexplained problems that hadn't been there before.

Once we're confident that a new firmware is good enough to stick with then we update the now offline UDMP to look identical. So it's ready in case the online unit fails or to be used for the next trial firmware upgrade.

The one issue with this strategy is that for us, except for one case, the UDMP's are different hardware versions and there have been issues that show up on one hardware version and not another. Fortunately this has proven fairly minor so far. 

-----

As to using the product. Ubiquiti were a very easy value choice for many networks up until about 18 months ago. The Edge stuff and AP's were solid and firmware was reliable. The past 18 months have been a totally different story with significant bugs taking long periods of time to get fixed (and some still not fixed) and firmware releases very often introducing new bugs. There is a bit of 'you get what you pay for' and so some anomalies and missing promised capabilities are the price of getting equipment at the UI price point.

Overwhelmingly the biggest pain for us has been the poor QA and so new bugs introduced with new firmware. Existing bugs not getting fixed is irritating and promised features not being delivered is irritating but new bugs are painful.

The problems that we and others have been through the past year have begun to argue that UI are not worth it for some and they've begun to get an increasingly bad reputation. 

 

[TundraSonic]

15 hours ago, ejn1 said:

Just to give folks balance to what looks like a horror story of issues,  I have not had anything like the experience above with my UDM-P in my home network aside from the initial restore from backup which was a convenience issue more than a stability issue.   I'm not sure what defines small network or not but my home system has a UDMP, 11 Switches, a mix of 10G/2.5G/1G/100/10 devices,  Unifi VOIP, WAN failover, VLAN/firewall configuration for video and IoT with past Unifi APs and now Ruckus.     Sure there have been a few minor quirks but glad to say its been solid so far.   The UDMP is actually one my favorite pieces of gear from them...  a crazy value for what it offers.

I would classify your network as on the larger side for UDMP networks and is similar to what we have in our home. If you've avoided the problems that we and others have experienced then you've perhaps lucked out.  I agree regarding the UDMP value - at least if we'd not experienced so many issues.

I agree also that for many people the UDMP and other UI stuff works out well. There are always going to be problems - the issue is how widespread. UI appear to be crossing over the acceptable to unacceptable line for how many problems there are, how many people are affected by them and how long they take to get rectified. 

How frequently do you upgrade firmware?  

What is your plan for a UDMP hardware failure? 

[skippman]

8 minutes ago, TundraSonic said:

-----

As to using the product. Ubiquiti were a very easy value choice for many networks up until about 18 months ago. The Edge stuff and AP's were solid and firmware was reliable. The past 18 months have been a totally different story with significant bugs taking long periods of time to get fixed (and some still not fixed) and firmware releases very often introducing new bugs. There is a bit of 'you get what you pay for' and so some anomalies and missing promised capabilities are the price of getting equipment at the UI price point.

The problems that we and others have been through the past year have begun to argue that UI are not worth it for some and they've begun to get an increasingly bad reputation. 

 

So what is the recommended alternative? I'm not personally familiar with anything in the pro-sumer arena that offers the same feature set at the same price point as the Ubiquti. I'm not saying such a thing doesn't exist, only that I'm not personally aware of it. I'm open to alternatives. My system designer is really pushing for me to use Araknis Networks equipment. I suspect his motivation for that is two fold in that it's owned by Snap AV (who he's a partner with) and their OvrC management software is obviously geared more towards being controlled by an external integrater than by a local network administrator. I've been opposed to them because speed wise they seem to be lagging behind in that they offer no WiFi 6 based AP's and I'm not looking to mix and match equipment this time around. I want everything controllable by one stack/interface.

[TundraSonic]

1 minute ago, skippman said:

So what is the recommended alternative? 

I don't know the answer to that. For simpler networks I think UI are still the way to go. For a network like mine or @ejn1 I'm not sure anymore and I think a lot depends on the person and situation - how critical is up-time and performance and how tolerant someone is of having to deal with issues. 

Cisco is the obvious other alternative. Their stuff is rock solid, you don't have to worry about firmware upgrades breaking anything, and promised capabilities are always delivered and work well. I used it for years. But you pay a lot of $$$'s for that and it's not worth it for many situations.

Some people have begun looking at Extreme. I've no idea how they compare.

From what I've seen Araknis is similar to Meraki (Cisco entry level). Costs about the same for the same capabilities. Meraki seem a bit more solid but Araknis isn't bad. The issue with both is that they are both cloud/integrator managed so you'll be forking out $'s every month which for some is worth it and for others not. There are also a lot of security/privacy concerns with Araknis and OvrC. Do you want a bunch of $20/hr techs moonlighting from their day job at McDonalds having access to your security cameras?

[ejn1]

35 minutes ago, skippman said:

So what is the recommended alternative? I'm not personally familiar with anything in the pro-sumer arena that offers the same feature set at the same price point as the Ubiquti. I'm not saying such a thing doesn't exist, only that I'm not personally aware of it. I'm open to alternatives. My system designer is really pushing for me to use Araknis Networks equipment. I suspect his motivation for that is two fold in that it's owned by Snap AV (who he's a partner with) and their OvrC management software is obviously geared more towards being controlled by an external integrater than by a local network administrator. I've been opposed to them because speed wise they seem to be lagging behind in that they offer no WiFi 6 based AP's and I'm not looking to mix and match equipment this time around. I want everything controllable by one stack/interface.

The only other alternative I would consider is Mikrotik which I have sampled and I like a lot...  Problem is with their router, no cloud access to speak of,  to do things like setting up a simple VPN tunnel between sites requires a PHD,   and the feature set for prosumer items like cameras, phones are not there.   It's a hard core router to set it and leave it but also amazing performance and quality for the dollar.   With your networking experience, it's something to consider but I would not shy away at all from the UDMP.   The occasional bugs you may encounter, you will be able to address with your experience.