Vodafone UFB, Ubiquiti USG, PoE switch and UAC APs

For years I had many issues with the ISP supplied modems and routers and finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade to a more robust solution with separate components. I've been with Vodafone on the 100/20 UFB plan for a few years now and I can't say enough how much I dislike the VF supplied Huawei HG659. My plan included a home phone line (VoIP) which sort of limited me to upgrade to other vendors' routers like Asus, Linksys, etc. Mostly the lack of structured cabling also limited me to upgrade to a hard wired solution. Our household consist of heavy internet users; mostly media streaming, YouTube, Google Play Music, social media (kids), etc. I kid you not when I say we easily use 500+GB data a month.

The big pain!! There hasn't been a week in the past 3 years where someone in the house didn't complain about "WIFI is not not working Dad"..."Internet is slow"..."reboot the router - weekly occurrence"

I HAD ENOUGH!!

I recently moved house and to my elation the new place had structured ethernet cabling and my world opened up to new possibilities. I phoned VF up immediately and cancelled my home phone because we live in a world where we can use cellphones

Reading through the forums and doing my own research, and asking for recommendations, I finally decided to go with Ubiquiti gear and placed an order with gowifi.co.nz for the following:

1x Ubiquiti USG (UniFi Security Gateway)

1x Ubiquiti PoE 8 port swictch (UniFi Switch 8 PoE 150W)

2x Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC LR

1x Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC Pro

The gear arrived with overnight courier and I didn't wait to get started.

First I downloaded the UniFi controller software and installed it on a Windows 10 pc running 24/7.

Next I connected the USG WAN port to the Chorus ONT supplied feed (uplink)

It wasn't smooth sailing to begin with as I struggled with the USG for a few hours to get it to connect to the VF UFB WAN and also talking to the controller software on the LAN. Nothing in particular but I followed a few booting sequences with one of the last ones to include the Chorus ONT as well and finally the USG had a WAN IP assigned. After that I had to update the firmware on the USG manually using cli. One other thing I also struggled with was that the controller would show the USG offline even though I had internet access. In the end I found the problem to be java. Make sure you install the 64-bit java version if you are using a 64-bit browser. Simple thing but it took some time to pin the problem.

If you're on Vodafone UFB then you need to set the USG to DHCP and using vlan 10

The rest was pretty easy to install and setup.

PoE works great as I have one AP AC LR using 24v passive and the AP AC Pro using POE+. No issues with powering them and fewer cables :).

A picture of my current setup:

Any questions please feel free to ask.

PS!! I haven't had a single complaint from anyone in the house since UniFi in the Sky!!