The fact that the outdoor version is directional kind of limits its adoption in mobile usage, doesn't it? Most similar products have omnidirectional antenna. Can't imagine you would rotate it by hand on a boat towards the land while on passage
The spec sheet mentions 6 antennas and implies only 2 are directional:
(6) Embedded cellular antennas, including
(2) high-gain for downlink: peak 9 dBi, 85°x85°
Typically these modems are 4x4 mimo so it must have some method for switching the 2 directional with 2 of the omnis in it based on which ones is needed.
The fallback support for UniFi setups will be awesome.
I’m honestly tempted to get it for my house. My ISP downtime is pretty low but it does happen every once in a while, at the most inopportune times, which impedes working from home.
Having a wireless backup would hopefully cover those downtimes
Forgive me, I didn’t watch the videos: is that what the Dream Router supports - normal wired WAN uplink, plus 5G failover? If so, yes, that’s very attractive.
I have a T-Mobile backup home internet plan, and when I had a rack set up, it was my failover from fiber. The Dream Machine Pro did auto failover and failback flawlessly. However, I recently moved, and am redoing my homelab so I have no rack right now; internet is from a Dream Router, so I don’t have auto-failover. I doubt I’d buy this for the small window of time I expect to be in this situation, but if you didn’t have or want a rack, an AIO with failover would be great.
The 5G max outdoor looks very good and seems to be a direct competitor to the pretty good Mikrotik LHG series. I wonder about the antenna gain, though, the Mikrotik certainly looks more impressive.
(I've been using Mikrotik LHG LTE6 kit devices for years now)
Just bought a Gl.iNet Puli. It's only 4G but seems like a better option if you want to supply internet to some devices that you move around. Planning to use it for setup and management of a headless presentation PC as it can directly be connected to the LAN port.
Yeah they're not really putting out new exciting technologies. But this is cheaper than every other equivalent solution on the market for sale today in the USA.
Can anybody explain to me why these supposedly premier networking devices are lacking so much in bandwidth? I get it that mmWave is really only ever realistically going to hit 2.5G over the air, but is there any reason why they're not willing to provide at least 10G copper, or an actual SFP port? Hell, even Macs support 10G these days. I never understood this. Do they mean 2 Gbps downlink per client, or per device in total? If it's the former, 2.5G wired seems like a major bottleneck to any serious consumption.
If a single client at 2 Gbps is all the promise of 5G amounted to, well, it would be disappointing to say the least.
Probably because of the PoE. That discards SFP+, and makes difficult PoE over copper, as you'd probably need 802.3bt PoE++ (that probably most of the Unifi devices aren't compatible with), or a very short cable to avoid interference.
10Gb interfaces also tend to run quite hot and be a bit power hungry.
This is a device that needs to be in a location with good 5G reception, so it makes sense to be PoE powered so you can put it near a window or in the location that gets the best reception, and only run a long ethernet cable. And, although I don't like it too much, 2.5G or 5G NBASE-T is the nearest thing that covers 5G speeds.
The 2Gb downlink speed is the 5G downlink, the max for the whole 5G connection, so 2.5Gb ethernet is enough for that.
These things are nice when they work but when they don't you're completely in the dark. Even figuring out how much GB is left on your simcard is a nightmare.
The big question is why do we need 5g? My phone doesn’t support it and my internet is fast enough as long as I have good coverage. Coverage problems are only exaggerated by 5G since the range for short waves is shorter
Replying late, but show me where you can get a 5g modem, that is powered by POE, allows you to connect via a remote switch and automatically sets it as a failover wan to the router.
I gotta say, I hate it when companies use “xxx bits per second”, whether its Mega or Giga nobody uses bits per second and for the average consumer it’s very unclear that this differs from bytes.
Having to explain to relatives and such that “yeah you actually have to divide that by 8” is a hassle and I get tricked by it subconsciously at times as well.
2 gbps meaning 250 megabytes per second is a SCAM. A marketing sham at it’s finest.
“I have 100 mbps download” meaning “I get 12.5 megabytes download per second” is ridiculous!!
OT: Does anyone know of a setting or extension for Firefox to stop those autoplaying videos? I have gifs disabled, prefers-reduced-motion on, and those videos in that article both autoplay, and start again after pausing them manually. I have no idea what the article is about (except what the title says) because I kept getting distracted by the annoying videos.
I’ve got their unifi mobile router 4g and am quite happy with it in conjunction with one of their routers which got two lan ports you can either run in primary/primary mode where it does load balancing or primary/secondary one where the latter only gets used when the main one has issues.
I just kinda wish multipath TCP or something similar would be more in use so you wouldn’t notice a swap in connection mid air.
A few years ago I was running my UDM. Wifi on 2,4GHz and 5GHz was working fine. Then after an upgrade some of my devices start losing connectivity after a while, happened multiple times a week or day. Only restart helped.
I was going mad until I discovered that only the 2,4GHz ones are losing connectivity. Then I started researching and found out that it was not just me, it was just bad code in firmware that was not fixed in any of the versions that came out before I had enough, sold the device and swore off this garbage.
The problem I have seen is when I need it most, due to a rare fiber internet outage, so does everyone else nearby and cellular data becomes saturated and unusable.
In locations where fiber is not available (like my place), cable is the next best option, and cable has a lot more unexpected downtime. I could see this being a good backup, especially for small businesses like retail shops that couldn't afford to have their POS go down for half a day.
You may or may not be aware, but all plans rack and stack somewhere in a priority list called QCI (Quality of Service Class Identifier). AT&T, for example will put at QCI 7-9 depending on your plan.
Would be useful for 5G home internet if they had IMEI spoofing but I would doubt it. It sucks how the gateway from these services do not have external antenna support.
Those do exist, they’re called cell signal boosters. Once upon a time, I believe, some American cell providers would give you one for free if you had bad signal at home, which mattered a lot more before phones all had wifi calling.
I think in the US there are even public 5G frequencies that can be used. In most of Europe you would need to buy an expensive license to do that.
Private 5G networks usually need internal eSIM cards, you can't just let public devices roam into the private 5G net.
Benefits of 5G over WiFi: much better roaming between APs, higher distances, and better congestion management if there are hundreds of devices connected to a cell.
I'm glad it has a physical SIM still. I always use regular prepaid phone plans for my 4/5G backup but the providers don't like these being used with modems. So they have more options to block them with eSIM.
FAQ: "Can the UniFi 5G Max Outdoor work as a standalone device?"
-> No. The UniFi 5G Max Outdoor must be adopted by a UniFi Cloud Gateway or UniFi Gateway and cannot function independently as a router or modem.
53 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 70.3 ms ] thread(6) Embedded cellular antennas, including (2) high-gain for downlink: peak 9 dBi, 85°x85°
Typically these modems are 4x4 mimo so it must have some method for switching the 2 directional with 2 of the omnis in it based on which ones is needed.
https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/integrations/u5g-max-outdoor?...
I’m honestly tempted to get it for my house. My ISP downtime is pretty low but it does happen every once in a while, at the most inopportune times, which impedes working from home.
Having a wireless backup would hopefully cover those downtimes
I have a T-Mobile backup home internet plan, and when I had a rack set up, it was my failover from fiber. The Dream Machine Pro did auto failover and failback flawlessly. However, I recently moved, and am redoing my homelab so I have no rack right now; internet is from a Dream Router, so I don’t have auto-failover. I doubt I’d buy this for the small window of time I expect to be in this situation, but if you didn’t have or want a rack, an AIO with failover would be great.
(I've been using Mikrotik LHG LTE6 kit devices for years now)
> 2.5 Gbit/s PoE to upstream switch
Can anybody explain to me why these supposedly premier networking devices are lacking so much in bandwidth? I get it that mmWave is really only ever realistically going to hit 2.5G over the air, but is there any reason why they're not willing to provide at least 10G copper, or an actual SFP port? Hell, even Macs support 10G these days. I never understood this. Do they mean 2 Gbps downlink per client, or per device in total? If it's the former, 2.5G wired seems like a major bottleneck to any serious consumption.
If a single client at 2 Gbps is all the promise of 5G amounted to, well, it would be disappointing to say the least.
10Gb interfaces also tend to run quite hot and be a bit power hungry.
This is a device that needs to be in a location with good 5G reception, so it makes sense to be PoE powered so you can put it near a window or in the location that gets the best reception, and only run a long ethernet cable. And, although I don't like it too much, 2.5G or 5G NBASE-T is the nearest thing that covers 5G speeds.
The 2Gb downlink speed is the 5G downlink, the max for the whole 5G connection, so 2.5Gb ethernet is enough for that.
[1] https://consumer.huawei.com/en/routers/5g-cpe-pro-2/
That was available 5 years ago?
Having to explain to relatives and such that “yeah you actually have to divide that by 8” is a hassle and I get tricked by it subconsciously at times as well.
2 gbps meaning 250 megabytes per second is a SCAM. A marketing sham at it’s finest.
“I have 100 mbps download” meaning “I get 12.5 megabytes download per second” is ridiculous!!
I just kinda wish multipath TCP or something similar would be more in use so you wouldn’t notice a swap in connection mid air.
After the 2.4GHz wifi issues with UDM I swore I will never buy them again.
I was going mad until I discovered that only the 2,4GHz ones are losing connectivity. Then I started researching and found out that it was not just me, it was just bad code in firmware that was not fixed in any of the versions that came out before I had enough, sold the device and swore off this garbage.
I’ve never heard of it being enforced, and blatant violations of it are the norm.
Private 5G networks usually need internal eSIM cards, you can't just let public devices roam into the private 5G net.
Benefits of 5G over WiFi: much better roaming between APs, higher distances, and better congestion management if there are hundreds of devices connected to a cell.
:(
If both of them go down, I doubt 5G will matter much. Not like I have a big UPS in the house anyways.
Can it really be that much faster?