UniFi-Switching and Routing

Centrally Managed

Ubiquiti's free management platform sets these products apart from the competition.

• Some brands, such as Cisco, also offer central management, but with eye-watering ongoing fees.
• Some brands offer management that requires the admin to login to each device, and to remember to save the passwords & configurations of all devices in the event of a replacement due to a product failure. And to do this via remote management usually requires editing firewall rules to permit remote access from trusted sources, opening up security risks.
• Ubiquiti's Software Defined Network (SDN) approach is far superior to the above in these very important aspects:
  1. Price: It is free. Simple as that. You can download and run the SDN Controller on Windows/Linux/MacOS hosts. Alternatively, the SDN Controller can be purchased pre-installed on a Linux appliance: The Cloud Key.
  2. Configuration Management: One of the ongoing issues for Small to Medium Enterprise (SME) network managers is maintaining a database of the configurations of all network devices in the enterprise. Often this relies on admins remembering to download and save config files in a known place. This record of configurations is critical in the event of a device failure, or the need to duplicate a known, working environment in a new location. The Ubiquiti SDN approach is different; The admins do not login to a device to edit the configuration. Instead, the configuration change is made in the SDN Controller, and the Controller downloads the new config to the device (or devices). With the SDN Controller automatically saving regular backups of the entire network, network management becomes much more robust and fail-safe.
  3. Remote Cloud Management: Not only does Ubiquiti give the SDN Controller for free, they also offer free Cloud Management. By opening a free account at unifi.ubnt.com and having your SDN Controller(s) register with your unifi.ubnt.com account, you now have access to your SDN Controller(s) from anywhere in the world without opening holes in the firewall(s) at each of your managed locations. In practice, this means you can be in a hotel in the South of France and logged into your SDN Controller(s), monitoring and managing all UniFi devices in the networks you manage in Sydney and Adelaide.
  4. Historical and Live Data: The SDN Controller also logs traffic stats for all UniFi network devices and their ports. Example: The Internet data usage for your Adelaide office spikes one day. You log into the SDN controller, and notice that the switch on the 2nd floor had a spike in traffic the same day. You look at the traffic graphs of that switch, and see port 5 (the PC in room 23) is responsible. If you also have a UniFi Security Gateway (USG) router in that office, you can even drill down with Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to see which application on that PC was responsible.
  5. Managed WiFi as well: The same SDN Controller can manage WiFi Access Points (APs) as well as switches and routers. Now a network admin can monitor and manage all UniFi switches/routers/APs from one screen. The WiFi configuration is edited on the SDN Controller screen, and downloaded to the AP(s).