I'm getting rid of my Unifi Dream Router…

LOVE my SE. Upgrade from Pro to Pro SE. One of my major reason to choose Pro is I can have more than one access point easily. The management of other AP directly is worth the extra money. Also is the fact that as wifi standard improves, I can just change the AP instead of the router.

Hey, thanks for this video! What do you think about UDM device. I have to do good WiFi network at home and I need to hava 1Gbit access for all of my devices including terrace and small shed on which I wanted to instal WiFI camera.

Samir did you keep the UDR as an access port with the UDM SE? Or just using it as a backup ?

You broke the car

Point of note, the 2.5gbe WAN-port is plagued by a decade old problem. It will lock up if you push too much traffic through it and it will NOT recover until you hard reboot it (power off/power on). Worked with Ubiquiti for months to get it fixed, but to no avail. The used chipset has this problem in Linux, period. No fix was ever released for the chipset in Linux. I instead configured the WAN-port on port 8 (1gbe, instead of the 2.5gbe port 9). This has worked fine ever since I used it and the connection has been stable for months on end. Port 1-8 (1 gbe / poe+) are Annapurna (owned by Amazon) chipset ports. Port 9 (2.5gbe) is Realtek.

just ordered my unify udmse and can't wait to get it.

the things i don't like about my UDR.

takes a couple of minutes just to reboot

the micro SD card slot instead of a USB port, fire the engineer that came up with this dumb idea.

other than a couple of gripes i have. The UDR is a decent value, and is a great introduction into the ubiquity ecosystem

Can you connect a non-POE device to a POE port?

I bought the UDR, and it totally sucked. Ok, not totally, but for some unknown reason, the WAN port will only work as a 100 mbps port. Contacted Ubiquiti and they were unable to solve the issue. I decided to upgrade and RMA the UDR. Will sell it when I get the new one. So I just got the UDM SE and will set it up soon. Unifi OS is great, though. I really like it. And now, with all the added functions, I should hopefully be able to get full speed.

I recently switched to a UDM SE as well and also purchased a rack UPS. What bothers me is the fact that the UDM does not support out of the box NUT integration. The fact it has an internal hard drive is double concerning. Oh sure I could slap in a Pi as a NUT server and fudge my way through some SSH shutdown scripts but this is not right. If Ubiquiti want to be serious about their equipment especially ones that constantly perform database operations and record data to internal hard drives then lets get some type of power integration.

Thanks, finally a clear video on the differences.

Still not sure how it works. But I did lessen my memory usage of my UDR by adding a Pocket Switch and plugging in my wired devices to that. It went from 1.89GB to 1.71GB.

and it went further down to 1.4GB memory usage by adding a Managed Switch.
Funny enough, it's detected as a network device and the label it has on it is "Netgear Router".

Thanks pal. I'm about to get a fibre after like 9 years of fighting with every ISP in the area and your video is very useful to understand Dream Machine capabilities.

It really annoys me that the UDR caps at 1 Gb ethernet. I feel like at that price, they could at least include a 2.5 WAN, even if the switch ports are 1, just to help with congestion. I would easily pay like $300 for all 2.5 ports version of the UDR, but instead I have to consider the UDM-SE + WAP, which is over 3 times the cost.

Why am I sensing Skynet-about-to-happen vibes anytime I watch a Unifi product video?

I run ubiquiti ap’s, poe switch and a cloud key, but I built my own router. It’s insanely fast and lower power. It doesn’t allow me to have all of the unifi bells and whistles but it’s cheap and under my control.

A network closet - looks like an awfully big room to call it a closet.

Keep in mind that the 8 port "switch" or LAN ports on the UDM's (pro/SE) both are actually 9 port switches, in that the 9th 1Gbps port is what is directly connected to the CPU. This is why you can't do link aggregation on those ports. So depending on the exact use case you can have a bottleneck on those ports as well, as you only have a max of 1Gbps. Its like your 24 port switches uplink ports. Also if you have a spare port on the 8-port Link Agg switch, you can aggregate both 1Gbps links to a single 2Gbps port for higher throughput to the UDM over that 10G connection. I have a similar setup in that I come from 10G LAN port to the 32 port Aggregation switch, and from there have 2x10Gbps aggregated ports to the 24 Port POE Pro switch and 4x10Gbps to the 48 Port POE Pro switch. This allows transfers between those switches and other parts of the network to be faster. It helps remove potential bottlenecks. 🤠👍

Although I don't believe you can completely disable the built-in AP on the UDR, you can still have your SSIDs only broadcast from only your other APs to avoid interference. I'm running a similar setup right now and it works perfect for me.

You earned a subscriber ^.^

Question, why do you have an aggregation switch for such a small setup?

UDR does have a touch screen? It’s just tiny and useless, anyway the original Dream Machine was brilliant, it had the exact same processor and RAM as the Dream Machine Pro, but I guess Ubiquiti didn’t like the profit margin on it, so they scrapped it, and introduced the UDR with a vastly cut down processor and RAM, and then gave it an SD card slot, and POE, but as a result it’s MUCH slower throughput when threat management is turned on compared the the Dream Machine, but the UDR fan is quieter, the UDM being in the same case but with more powerful processor sounded like a waterfall when you downloaded anything as the fan always kicked in.

You mentioned that one of the reasons for the switch away from udr was because you needed more Poe switches and the udr only had 2. However doesn’t the 24 port switch include 16 Poe+ ports? Or doesn’t this count because the udr only allows 2 applications at any one time?

How did you switch from the UDR to the UDM SE? Did you start from scratch or did you keep all your existing configurations and put it on the SE?

Agree 100%, I have one Gigabit internet and after enabling threat management and VPN, It did cut my internet from 941 down to 320 to 416 tops. But I plan to downgrade the my plan to a 300 or 500mb. He is on point!

Awesome video! I was originally looking at the UDR, but then learned it can't do over 700Mbps (my home internet is over 850Mbps). I was also looking for a feature rich product with room for expansion. I really want to separate out my home network. I have a synology file server, several smart devices (smart home type devices connecting to a raspberry pi running homeassistant), and then my amazon alexa devices. Currently all on the same network, which I do not like. It'd be great to take control of everything and narrow down the access to only allow specific devices to talk to specific devices. We are a tech heavy house, multiple computers, phones, printers, gaming consoles, tablets, etc, in addition to things like a philips hue light hub. Probably close to 30 devices in total. Seems like the UDM SE is the way to go, we've been talking about adding POE cameras as well.

Thanks again for this video!

I appreciate these videos. You have a great conversational style of presentation. Also, I appreciate the balanced presentation of the UDR. I think many users had sky-high expectations due to the reputation of the brand and were left disappointmed when their expectations weren't met. For me, with 50/20 fibre internet, a small apartement and a NAS, it's a good option and so much more accessible than the OpenWRT based routers I've had trouble mastering.

Amazing. Explained me a lot ! Thanks, man, just speak slower next time :) I'm joking, I can adjust the video speed :)

is it also possible to just buy a POE switch like the switch lite poe and connect it to the UDR to get more POE ports or am i missing something?

I just got my udr today, I’ll be setting it up later today and i’m looking at upgrading to to the udm pro

Heh, Samir. I'm doing the same as you and feel I won't need the US 24 as the SE has what I need and get the USW. In fact Id rather get the battery back up as the third component. Have you tried the d in-wall U6 yet as was going to use them as my access points in a few rooms? please reply with your set up thanks

damn this thing... I got my UDM-SE and a 8 Port 10Gbe SFP+ Switch because I read that the second SFP+ port can ONLY be WAN. I really just needed 2 LAN 10GBe to uplink to my switch upstairs that's 10GBe, and my QNAP 10Gbe NAS located in the rack!!!

So basically if you have a 1gb internet connection don't go for the UDR. Damnn 😢. Was just about to pull the trigger to go all in on unifi 😣. Guess I should save up. Thx for the video. You saved me from not buying the wrong things

Hi Shameer, thanks for the videos, I currently have a Linksys Velop MX 4000 (3 Nodes) I am facing significant issues mainly because almost all the channels of 2.4 ghz are crowded, i have around 150 Wi-Fi devices ( mostly 2.4 ghz devices) I also have lots of devices running in zigbee which also faces channel issues and channel selection on MX4000 seems to be limited, what will be your suggestion for my setup? I was thinking of going for a dream machine pro with single long range AP so that I can reduce channel interference, please let me know your thoughts? I have one 2.4 and 2 5 ghz access points

Love the video. I'm in the same boat. I have been running the UDR for about 3 months. Due to it limitations I have ordered a UDM SE. I was wondering what the migration was like. Were you able to backup the UDR and restore it to the UDM pro or did you have to start from scratch. I have a missive amount of time invested in building VLAN's, SSID, firewall, Port forwards, etc, and am really hoping there is a migration path and I don't have to start over from the ground up.

Use a switch for ip cams man.

Another BIG difference between the UDM Pro & UDM SE is the OS version. However, Ubiquiti is finally trying to get the Pro caught up.

I have the UDR and Gigabit speeds and I rarely see downloads from highspeed external servers (read as Steam) below the 940-1024 I'm rated for with Blocking turned on

The problem is, this machine does not have 2.5G LAN ports, given that U6 Enterprise and more access points are coming with 2.5Gbe ports, it's such a pity. Would be nice to have all 2.5Gbe WAN and LAN ports. And it's processor is kinda weak with less than 2Ghz clock speed, which can't run say several SSIDs with one SSID dedicated for traffic all go through VPN.

Next Video: am getting rid of my UDM

I finally got rid of my UDMP and went to a Firewalla Gold Plus and its been amazing. Still use the Unifi Protect Console but thats it. Firewalla has been amazing.

Go with the SE. The Pro version software is lagging and can't handle the new cameras.

How do you only 4k subs? That video was so professional I thought for a second I was in an LTT video. Keep up the good work I am sure the channel will grow over time.

If I get a DMP SE can i turn my UDR in just an AP with eth ports?

It might not have been the case when you recorded the video, but the UDM SE gets UnifiOS 3.x whereas the UDM Pro is still on 2.4.x, and who knows how long before it will get 3.x. Ubiquiti is not the best at communicating - nor fixing stuff. As an early UDM Pro adopter I had to double NAT through my USG3 as it had a bug that meant it would only run at ~660Mbps max using IPS over a PPPoE connection - for years. That said I still love my Unifi network, and I just upgraded to a UDM SE while my UDM Pro still has some resale value. For sure the UDM SE is way better than the UDR. 

Reason for my post is to point out that your advice to buy a UDM Pro if people don't need the PoE switch part is arguably no longer good.

Cheers for such a Frank review - helps me making a purchasing mistake and save up for the UDM Pro as I want protection…

Great video mate. Try slowing down just a little and have a second break in between sentances.

UDR is shit. Never been more disappointed

You definitely need a rack for your UDM hardware :) Looking forward to see a video of you upgrading your current homelab.