7MS #460: Why I'm Throwing My UniFi Gear Into the Ocean

7 Minute Security

Hey friends! Warning: this is not a "typical" 7MS episode where we try hard to deliver some level of security value.

Instead, today is a big, fat, crybaby, first-world problems whine-fest about how I used to love my UniFi gear for many years, but then a few weeks ago I hit unhealthy levels of rage while working with it...and subsequently completely ripped it all out of the wall and threw it in a plastic bin.

Let me say it one more time: if you don't like rants of rage, skip this episode and we'll see you next week!. If you want to hang in for this clown show, you'll be treated to some of the following highlights:

• How I did not pirate Boson NetSim

• How I fell in love with the Edge Router X as an up-and-coming network guru

• The schedule isn't up, but I'm speaking at Secure360 this year!

• My shiny new Dream Machine had a really fun issue where one morning Internet service was dead (even though config hadn't changed in weeks), and restoring the SAME config over the RUNNING config fixed the issue. Whaaahhhh?

• The Dream Machine GUI (at the time) doesn't have all the options one might need to stand up a site to site VPN. Neat.

• After a firmware update, my wifi started going down from 8:00 a.m. - 8:07 a.m. every morning. Were one of you hacking me? WERE ONE OF YOU HACKING ME!

• Once I got a BeaconHD, I got a new fun issue where if you were connected to it and submitted a wifi voucher, the Beacon wouldn't properly recognize it and let you on the Internet until about 5 minutes later. Guests loved that! And by "loved that" I mean "hated that."

• After upgrading UDM firmware again, a new nifty issue popped its head up which broke all my inter-VLAN rules. Yay!

• I threw hundreds of dollars at new UniFi switches and access points to solve all these problems, and everything worked perfectly (until it didn't).