Ubiquiti

You know how some people are what you'd call "house proud" in that they like everything very neat and organised? You walk in there and everything is in its place, nice and clean without clutter. I'm what you'd call "network proud" and the same principle applies to how I manage my IP things: That's just a slice of my Ubiquiti network map which presently has 91 IP addresses on it between clients and network devices. Each one has been meticulously customised by both name and icon so that it's immediately recognisable on the map. For example, the Nanoleaf in my daughter's room has the correct image associated to it and her name alongside it so I can easily differentiate it...

I hate dodgy WiFi, hate it with a passion. I finally lost my mind with it a few years ago now so I went and shelled out good money on the full suite of good Ubiquiti gear. I bought a security gateway to do DHCP, a couple of switches for all my connected things, 5 access points for my wireless things and a Cloud Key to control them all. I went overboard and I don't regret it one bit! Since that time, Ubiquiti has occasionally sent me new bits to play around with. I fixed the poor Wifi on my jet ski with their UniFi Mesh bits (I know, the most first world of problems). I wired my brother's house...

I have no idea who it was that first modified Maslow's hierarchy of needs in this fashion, but I do know that's it's never been truer than now: More wifi things used by more people in more corners of the house. Many people do now consider connectivity to be a pretty essential need in their life yet as our wifi demands have increased, many people are still attempting to make do with the networking gear of yesteryear. I was one of those people, at least I was until late last year when I finally lost my mind and installed Ubiquiti's UniFi devices all through the house. Ubiquiti is actually the world's largest producer of wireless access points and their UniFi...

Last year, I got fed up with my wifi. The coverage was patchy, the devices were unstable (my speed would regularly drop to less than 2Mbps until I restarted the router) and even though it was new gear, it felt just like the gear I'd had a decade ago. Same basic principle of an all-in-one device, same basic web interface and almost certainly, the same update cycle - I wasn't going to be seeing firmware updates or new management features any time soon, if at all. All of this wasn't just frustrating, it was costing me money as productivity went out the window. So I fixed it. In the post linked to above, I talk through how I built out...

The title of this blog post is what many of us techie folks dream of - free reign to build your own home network! It might seem like a pretty geeky dream (ok, it is a pretty geeky dream), but the reality is that we're increasingly dependent on our home networks these days because of the amount of stuff we connect to them. That little consumer-grade combination modem and wireless access point your ISP gave you or the one you bought from the local PC store is going to struggle to provide fast, reliable connectivity across the house to all your devices; that very architecture predates smart phones, connected TVs and the (frankly ridiculous) array of IoT things we have...

There are many challenging aspects about being an Australian. For example, being terrorised by kangaroos: Being terrorised by koalas: Or my own unique challenge: not having a decent wifi signal whilst my jet ski is moored on the jetty out the back of the house. This makes every day, normal activities like connecting to the home NAS to watch movies via Plex whilst sitting on the docked ski difficult and clearly, something had to be done. Ok, getting (a bit more) serious for a moment, a few months ago I wrote about how I finally fixed my dodgy wifi where I rebuilt my home network from the ground up with Ubiquiti products. I was sick of the problems I was...

I'm increasingly of the view that both my time and my sanity are worth more and more as the years progress. Particularly in my independent life, it really can be that black and white - if I can't work, it costs me money. Plus, I want to be happy and few things make me less happy than computer bits going wrong: Really disappointed with the @Linksys WRT1900AC wireless routers I bought a year ago, continually degrade speed and need a reset pic.twitter.com/TsEzdiHLMs — Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) September 22, 2016 I bought 2 Linksys WRT1900AC wireless routers when I moved interstate into a big house just over a year ago. They were well-reviewed and I figured I'd put...