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I had a Certification test to pass for work, they gave me no real deadline, so I was not rushing into it. However, my boss recently started "asking for a progress report" monthly and still applying no pressure on a particular completion date. It was getting tiresome for me and since I recently purchased the new Unifi Cloud Gateway but had not yet opened the box, I decided to play a game with myself, and promised not to open the box until after I had passed the test.
I spent 3 solid days of my "stay cation" last week. Saturday, skipped Sunday, and worked on it again most of Monday and the better part of Tuesday. I needed a 70% to pass and got an 80% and received my new Certificate.
I am now a CWNP Certified Wireless Specialist. The CWNP "Certified Wireless Network Professional" exams and certificates are actually an industry standard and well known, it will look good on my resume and my company did pay the $500 bucks for it.
I opened the box!
The old router is still working perfectly, The Ubiquity Edge Router Lite, it really has worked flawlessly for many years. However as with many things in life, nothing lasts forever. I wanted a new access point for the house, my old cisco AP was given to me by my cousin several years ago and worked good as well, but it only has 802.11ac. I had gotten myself a new router for my camper, the Netgear Tri-Band and I noticed how fast the connection speeds were with the new Wifi 7 so I wanted to get myself something new for the house.
So, I purchased the new U7 Pro Max AP by Unifi and then I discovered yet another example of the latest trend from todays manufactures, the AP cannot be controlled as a stand alone device, you must have a controller from Unifi to go with it. Vender Lock-in.
I purchased the Unifi Could Gateway Ultra and I have been working on learning all of the new ways that old things are done, port forwarding, static (fixed) IP's. At least I can finally access the AP with my PC and I don't need to use the limited phone application.
My old IP address is about to change as I get ready to turn off the trusted old Edge router lite and connect the new Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra to my Comcast modem. I had considered changing (cloning) the MAC address from the old router, but when I read up on that, I read opinions about it, if your planning to reuse or sell the old one then it's not a good idea.
There are already things about the new router I don't like, it's white like most things Unifi and being an electrical device it attracts dust like magnet, so it already looks like shit. It's not wall mountable without purchasing some extra bracket. Even the cord to plug in the power is white, so although I've pains takingly worked to have a neat appearance in the network closet to route all of the wires nicely and keep everything black, I'll have one white cable sticking out like sore thumb.
The control panel is also white, blaze white, it's like trying to read text written on the surface of the sun, well not that bad, but bad enough.
I started this post at about 9AM on Saturday, and it's now about 12 noon, I am up and running on the new fangled gadget, I found a pair of sun glasses to wear while I'm working in the control panel, j/k. (and then I found dark mode, much better)
It's all and all, quite impressive at first glance, there are still allot of buttons I did not press yet. But I did manage to get most of my static IP's configured (now known as fixed IP's in the Unifi world) I configured my port forwards, updated all the firmware in both the gateway and AP.
The Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra is not wall mountable. I don't find any brackets available to purchase on Amazon, so it look's like I'll need to print one from an STL.
I just checked the temps of the U7 with a IR, it's running at 89 degrees while the ambient temp of a normal wall is only 69, so 20 degrees warmer than the wall is noticeable, I did notice several other people in reviews mentioned the heat.
Allot of time a network upgrade will trigger idea's or rekindle old ones and this project was no exception. Although the entire cost for the pairing, AP $300 and Router a little over $100 is a little pricey, I do like the ability to configure the AP from within the router, it was disappointing at first to find out I needed a another piece to gain advanced control over the new AP but I'm over it.
I spent 3 solid days of my "stay cation" last week. Saturday, skipped Sunday, and worked on it again most of Monday and the better part of Tuesday. I needed a 70% to pass and got an 80% and received my new Certificate.
I am now a CWNP Certified Wireless Specialist. The CWNP "Certified Wireless Network Professional" exams and certificates are actually an industry standard and well known, it will look good on my resume and my company did pay the $500 bucks for it.
I opened the box!
The old router is still working perfectly, The Ubiquity Edge Router Lite, it really has worked flawlessly for many years. However as with many things in life, nothing lasts forever. I wanted a new access point for the house, my old cisco AP was given to me by my cousin several years ago and worked good as well, but it only has 802.11ac. I had gotten myself a new router for my camper, the Netgear Tri-Band and I noticed how fast the connection speeds were with the new Wifi 7 so I wanted to get myself something new for the house.
So, I purchased the new U7 Pro Max AP by Unifi and then I discovered yet another example of the latest trend from todays manufactures, the AP cannot be controlled as a stand alone device, you must have a controller from Unifi to go with it. Vender Lock-in.
I purchased the Unifi Could Gateway Ultra and I have been working on learning all of the new ways that old things are done, port forwarding, static (fixed) IP's. At least I can finally access the AP with my PC and I don't need to use the limited phone application.
My old IP address is about to change as I get ready to turn off the trusted old Edge router lite and connect the new Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra to my Comcast modem. I had considered changing (cloning) the MAC address from the old router, but when I read up on that, I read opinions about it, if your planning to reuse or sell the old one then it's not a good idea.
There are already things about the new router I don't like, it's white like most things Unifi and being an electrical device it attracts dust like magnet, so it already looks like shit. It's not wall mountable without purchasing some extra bracket. Even the cord to plug in the power is white, so although I've pains takingly worked to have a neat appearance in the network closet to route all of the wires nicely and keep everything black, I'll have one white cable sticking out like sore thumb.
The control panel is also white, blaze white, it's like trying to read text written on the surface of the sun, well not that bad, but bad enough.
I started this post at about 9AM on Saturday, and it's now about 12 noon, I am up and running on the new fangled gadget, I found a pair of sun glasses to wear while I'm working in the control panel, j/k. (and then I found dark mode, much better)
It's all and all, quite impressive at first glance, there are still allot of buttons I did not press yet. But I did manage to get most of my static IP's configured (now known as fixed IP's in the Unifi world) I configured my port forwards, updated all the firmware in both the gateway and AP.
The Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra is not wall mountable. I don't find any brackets available to purchase on Amazon, so it look's like I'll need to print one from an STL.
I just checked the temps of the U7 with a IR, it's running at 89 degrees while the ambient temp of a normal wall is only 69, so 20 degrees warmer than the wall is noticeable, I did notice several other people in reviews mentioned the heat.
Allot of time a network upgrade will trigger idea's or rekindle old ones and this project was no exception. Although the entire cost for the pairing, AP $300 and Router a little over $100 is a little pricey, I do like the ability to configure the AP from within the router, it was disappointing at first to find out I needed a another piece to gain advanced control over the new AP but I'm over it.