Ubiquiti starts serving ads in their management interface

I think it&#x27;s a common sentiment here, but I&#x27;m turning into a more extreme anti-advertising zealot every day.<p>Even the large ad networks show paid content that violates what I would consider widespread ethical norms - presenting everything from hyperbolic claims to straight fraud to people with little repercussion. I&#x27;m reminded of a poignant example in television, where episodes of Jeopardy! are intertwined with their shilling quackery like Prevagen to an audience using the fear of aging. Perhaps I&#x27;m growing increasingly blind to any positive impacts of the discipline, but ethically I find it hard to separate the fraudsters from the engineers that enable them.<p>I guess advertising is saving me a lot of money in the end by cultivating this hatred, and though I can&#x27;t change the world this screed was therapeutic.

One of the reasons I have used Ubiquiti over the last few years is their product quality over other networking hardware. The inclusion of ads leads me to revisit those assumptions before my next purchase.<p>Ads, even if self-promotion, are a bellwether for a company being desperate or greedy, neither of which bodes well for their long-term product quality, usually because it indicates sales people are making the decisions. They also often lead to a slippery slope of increasing user data collection

One auto update they broke my laptop&#x27;s ability to connect. Turns out they&#x27;d auto enabled 5 GHz band steering, but my laptop&#x27;s chipset only did 2.4 GHz. Even when it was enabled, the Android management app said the setting was disabled.<p>Customer support directed me to the forums. Ubiquiti didn&#x27;t respond to my post. I posted on a thread where someone else was seeing the same problem, where a number of people gaslit me and blamed me for the problem.<p>I still have no idea if they&#x27;ve fixed their band steering. Or how they decided to force 5 GHz on a 2.4 GHz chipset. Or how to get support. Or how to report a problem.<p>Definitely won&#x27;t be buying their products in future.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.ui.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;Intel-Centrino-2200-N-client-cant-connect-due-to-Optimize-for-High-Performance-Devices-setting&#x2F;af79e64c-978d-49bb-a61d-9fe025a725ed" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.ui.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;Intel-Centrino-2200-N-cli...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.ui.com&#x2F;releases&#x2F;UniFi-Network-Controller-5-12-35&#x2F;45726736-ee4c-4172-877a-a2303f5d3627?page=10" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.ui.com&#x2F;releases&#x2F;UniFi-Network-Controller-5...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.ui.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;Default-AUTO-OPTIMIZE-NETWORK-off&#x2F;4605b0fb-52e6-4793-8e01-514b6fb39b44" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.ui.com&#x2F;questions&#x2F;Default-AUTO-OPTIMIZE-NET...</a>

Ubiquiti has really fallen far. The 5.x series of controller with the AP AC (S)HD was great, but everything since has been hot garbage. The 6.x series of controllers is still basically a public beta and riddled with bugs.<p>The newer MediaTek based APs have constant problems with client device compatibility, and can’t even reliably support DHCP on the newest official firmware and controller versions (or any of the last 10 releases).<p>I strongly advise you to look anywhere else for your WiFi needs unless they really turn the ship around somehow.

I&#x27;m going to go out on a limb here to point out the inconsistency of this entire thread. For the following reasoning, I&#x27;m going to use the word &quot;ad&quot; in the broad sense.<p>1. Everybody is excited with Github&#x27;s new features that they promote on the dashboard. Sometimes popups and flashes too. Are they not ads?<p>2. Nobody ever complains about Github showing ads.<p>3. Github is a SaaS.<p>4. unify.ui.com is a SaaS<p>5. OP is complaining about ads on a SaaS.<p>6. Most people here don&#x27;t seem to like this banner in question, but that&#x27;s not how they phrase their responses.<p>Is this a case of some random Amazonian complaining about intrusive ads or or a case of ads, even for self promotions, aren&#x27;t allowed in SaaS?

I’m even more astonished by the dismissive, misspelled, and incorrect support response.<p>* telling the customer they’re wrong...<p>* incorrectly...<p>* and with multiple typos.<p>Yes, very cool.

I see a lot of complaints here, but nobody offering any substantive alternatives. Mikrotik is mentioned several times, but always with the caveats that it has glitchy UIs or poorly implemented features. EnGenius... you&#x27;ve got to be kidding.<p>I&#x27;ve been a UI fan for many years and was also dismayed by the 6.x releases and the switch to Mediatek, but every time I went looking around, I saw the same tire fires at other vendors. At least with UBNT it&#x27;s &quot;the devil you know&quot;.<p>Cambium is interesting, I&#x27;ve been playing around with their cnPilot stuff and it&#x27;s been pretty solid.

An advertisement for a company’s products on the login page is one thing - but a full on banner in the interface itself (with apparently no way to disable) is another.<p>Sticking with Mikrotik for now.

The three stages of an engineer’s relationship with Ubiquiti:<p>1&#x2F; Their APs are so cool! Check out this web interface! I can manage an entire fleet of both of these, all from my home office!<p>2&#x2F; Aha, the APs run Linux and I can ssh to them and upload settings — even cooler!<p>3&#x2F; Er, you know what else runs Linux, has a pair of wired and wireless NICs, and can be managed remotely with plain text files and ssh — <i>literally every SBC on the market for $20</i>.<p>I run a mixture of UAC PROs and PoE SBCs as APs now. The latter because I’m cheap and I can manage them myself. The former because I’m cheap and refuse to retire something for which I paid $100+ a piece.<p>Ubiquiti provide some fantastic and well polished products. I thought I needed them, but all I really needed was commodity hardware and a shell script.

Just updated my controller VM (for two access points) to 6.1.71. Good thing it&#x27;s on a ZFS volume, and that I made sure to snapshot it before updating, because I just rolled it back and dropped a pin in &#x2F;etc&#x2F;apt.<p>Ye gods. Video ads in my management interface? Are you KIDDING? This is ridiculous.<p>Sigh. Everything is turning to ashes. Every. Fucking. Vendor. has decided that it&#x27;s perfectly OK to spam you and hoover up your personal data. And no, don&#x27;t say &quot;Apple&quot; since I don&#x27;t trust them any more than Microsoft or Google.<p>In any case, it makes me very hesitant to &quot;update&quot; my EdgeRouter, for that matter. :(<p>Ubiquiti has been skating on thin ice with me for a while, after their earlier telemetry kerfluffle, where they eventually did the right thing. But this is beyond the pale. The only thing I&#x27;ve seen worse was years ago when Belkin started hijacking HTTP connections to serve ads for censorware. [0]<p>At least the access points are capable of running OpenWRT, but I don&#x27;t relish the prospect of reflashing them. The ERPoE-5 is the lone EdgeRouter I don&#x27;t see in OpenWRT&#x27;s hardware table. :(<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;web-hijack-riles-belkin-router-users&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;web-hijack-riles-belkin-router-use...</a>

What’s stupid is that ubiquiti could have easily advertised its hardware less intrusively in so many different ways.<p>For example, they could show “devices that integrate with &lt;AP or Switch or Router&gt;” or integrate the changelog of all their releases into the management UI for all products.<p>The list goes on for the more thoughtful ways that could have done it, but instead they did they took the absurdly lame way of advertising via banners. Jeeze.

I&#x27;m willing to pay for major updates that include new features, even on a per-device basis. I&#x27;m not willing to pay for things I already bought that don&#x27;t work correctly (bug fixes).<p>This ad-supported model isn&#x27;t needed or wanted.

I have been watching Ubiquiti slowly go downhill over the past five years. I finally jumped ship to Mikrotik for a recent addition to my network and they seem like a good replacement for power users. Nothing they sell is quite as user friendly as the Ubiquiti gear, but I would rather have to spend a few minutes at a console then loose control over my network because a SaaS went offline

Joke&#x27;s on you, Ubiquiti - you&#x27;ve bungled so many controller upgrades I haven&#x27;t upgraded it in a long time.

I just noticed PrivacyBadger is blocking Google Analytics on the management interface now, has it always been like that? I just did the update and I&#x27;m not seeing that ad.

Bummer, I was considering switching to a full Ubiquiti setup in the future. Are there any other worthwhile competitors?

First they track you, then they pander to you, then they sell you out completely.<p>Guess we just got to step 2.

After some unexplainable sustained 100% packet loss (for minutes at a time) I switched from a set of eero routers to ubiquiti gear a few years ago and it&#x27;s been a great experience so far. A single AP-AC-lite covered my entire 2600sqft house from the basement.<p>Somebody I know has stayed on the eero train (on my recommendation before I gave up on them) and he says the company has prioritized features he doesn&#x27;t care about and deprioritized features he wished it had.<p>I hope Ubiquiti doesn&#x27;t go down this road.

I feel bad for the engineers there, who clearly are not in charge.

Is self-promotion considered ads? My opinion is &quot;yes&quot; but it is not universal. For example the EasyList policy[1] states &quot;Self-promotion should not be specifically removed by EasyList, although equally should not be allowed if it is blocked.&quot;<p>I asked myself the question when Wikipedia does its calls for donation. One may argue that it has a noble goal but technically, it is a huge ad banner of the annoying kind, and I would have expected indiscriminate ad blockers like uBlock Origin to block them, and they don&#x27;t. And the reason is doesn&#x27;t isn&#x27;t because it is Wikipedia, it is because it is self-promotion and is therefore allowed.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;easylist.to&#x2F;pages&#x2F;policy.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;easylist.to&#x2F;pages&#x2F;policy.html</a><p>Edit: the definition of an ad by EasyList is &quot;the promotion of <i>third party</i> content in return for goods or services&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;easylist.to&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-definition-of-advert-and-link-exchange-policy.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;easylist.to&#x2F;2011&#x2F;07&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-definition-of-advert-and-...</a>

To be honest, the reaction here seems rather absurd. From the screenshot, the user doesn’t have a USG, so the management interface can’t show data it otherwise would. This banner suggesting a UDMP is occupying space that would have otherwise just said “no data available”. It’s a bit obnoxious and should really have a “hide this” button, but it’s really pretty minor all things considered.

I sometimes wonder how these decisions get made within companies. I mean you are network hw vendor, how do you get convinced to embed adware&#x2F;spyware into your products without compromising on trust? I&#x27;d fire all concerned if I were on the board and understood what the brand meant.

This is on the hosted interface, right? I can sorta understand that, especially when the ads are for their own gear. But if I start seeing ads in my locally installed copy of Unifi, this will be a problem.

Are there any good alternatives to their higher end products, like the UAP-AC-HD?<p>I currently have 2 of those, but have been thinking about replacing them because of increasingly buggy updates and especially after the AP firmware update that added the data collection code (I&#x27;m aware it can be disabled now). When I got them, I was looking for something that supported 802.11r, supported VLANs, and could sustain 500Mbps throughput from 2 clients (one on each AP). Ruckus APs also fit the bill, though they were 2-4x the price.

Time to go research replacements for my network equipment. Ew, why would they do that?

I&#x27;m super disappointed by recent update to Unify Controller on their CloudKey Generation 2. It now requires access to Internet and a Unifi cloud account in order to setup a local controller. I, like many others, have downgraded to the 1.x version.<p>And now this BS. Ubiquiti was one company I always rooted for, and recommended to friends. Time to move on I guess (for me, I&#x27;ve already spent many $$$ on my equipment unfortunately.

Samsung does the same. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;assholedesign&#x2F;comments&#x2F;co5aw4&#x2F;unremovable_ads_on_my_2500_samsung_smart_tv&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;assholedesign&#x2F;comments&#x2F;co5aw4&#x2F;unrem...</a>

Sorry to highjack this thread looking for a product recommendation, but I&#x27;ve been running the same old netgear router with dd-wrt on it for about 8 years and am thinking of an upgrade.<p>I had been considering ubiquiti, but the stuff in this thread (not just the ads, mostly the &quot;stuff doesn&#x27;t work&quot; posts) has made me reconsider.<p>Every time I look for a router nowadays, everything looks like a hedgehog it seems[0]. Has anyone got a recommendation for a solid, high performance home router to put dd-wrt or similar onto? (also, would people recommend openwrt or something instead? I&#x27;ve not really looked at alternatives since I set this up).<p>I tend to trust flashing something open source onto it better than whatever crap the manufacturer has decided to put onto it.<p>Thanks in advance.

I’ve owned unifi at home for about 6 years now. Their access points are a different kind of value for money. But their software stack is really annoying. First it needs java. They have switched to Apps as option but that limits the settings (and I like to fine tune). I think the UDM Pro is a great home router for up to 10G internet but I don’t find their software stack convincing given their phoning home was also under fire a while back. I think building your opnsense box and a managed switch is little more work but if you are buying udm pro you are skilled anyway to get it done on a weekend.

Maybe they decided their userbase was too demanding. This gets rid of the more discerning, high-maintenance customers while simultaneously increasing sales among the less fussy people. Win-win.

This is disappointing. I&#x27;ve been waffling on buying a full Unifi setup for my home, but all the terrible reviews for the UDMP, and now this, have given me pause.<p>Are there any decent non-Chinese pro-sumer networking suites like Unifi that folks would recommend?

All of these just made me wish Apple hadn&#x27;t discontinued their AirPort Extreme. I mean if keeping up with NetBSD codebase was expensive they could have engineered it with iOS &#x2F; tvOS instead.

I&#x27;m disappointed that the Ubiquity Dream Machine can no longer be set up and managed locally. <i>You could do so in the past, but not anymore.</i> You must use their cloud management now.

They also just deprecated a whole bunch of hardware, some of which barely a year old. I was just about to upgrade my whole setup and drop a decent chunk of change for a home office setup (outdoor APs, wireless backbone between two buildings, etc.). Between them dropping support and this… what is the best alternative to their access points? I plan on using an opensense box for my router.<p>Edit: looks like Aruba Instant On&#x2F;Aruba Networks is a frequently mentioned solution in a similar price range.

I had a Dream Machine (the all-in-one, not the pro) and it fried the very next day. Even after that I was willing to give Ubiquiti another try, but now I don’t know what to do.

For those people here saying &quot;go Ruckus unleashed&quot; ... <i>caveat emptor</i> my friends !<p>I have it on very good authority that Ruckus have started rolling out a change in their pricing model to require a Unleashed license per AP to operate, a move which obviously increases costs to the end-user.<p>Some people might say its a deliberate move prevent cannibalisation of their main business model by nudging people away from Unleashed. I couldn&#x27;t possibly comment.

I think reacting to scammy ads by banning all of them is an overreaction. There are many useful products and services I would&#x27;ve never found out about without ads. How about simply making all ad networks responsible for the content of the ads they serve?<p>You lost your life&#x27;s savings to a Ponzi scam advertised on Facebook? Sue Facebook for damages. There should be laws in place that allow it.<p>This would fix the problem instantly.

And now the hardware controller we have (Dream Machine Pro) plasters &quot;How likely are you to recommend&quot; polls and usability surveys after being forced to use the new settings and dashboard following an automatic update.<p>While not outright ads, the usability survey keeps pestering for feedback, I do not have much faith in Ubiquiti having any tact left to not pester for the recommendation feedback as well.

For people needing alternatives. I&#x27;ve had good luck with foritgate. Some of their APs are dogs, but the fortios in general has been decent.

Lots of Ubiquiti hardware can run Openwrt open source Linux-based router software. And (at least) lots of the Ubiquiti software is based on (really old versions of) Openwrt!<p>I&#x27;ve been using Openwrt for a while now, and been very happy with it. It&#x27;s not perfect, but neither is the crap software that comes with most routers, and at least you can see what&#x27;s going on - and maybe sort it.

Looking at the screenshot, the management interface is the one that&#x27;s on the Ubiquiti website, rather than a locally hosted controller. I don&#x27;t really have a problem with them putting ads on their own website. Use a local controller if you don&#x27;t want to see them. Install the software on a raspberry pi, it runs just fine.

Is there anything we can do? I mean we spend money on something that has nice reviews... Gradually they keep pushing &quot;Want want statistics&quot; in your face more and more and now this. They are (trying to make) making money of off me without any of my consent and in a sneaky way. Can&#x27;t we organize or something?

Happy Mikrotik user here.

If this is calling out, even to just their own servers for information about just their own products, even if only when an admin is actively using the UI and we can lock that account down, and there is no way to completely disable it, we will have to replace all the kit we have of theirs and never buy more. As well as offending our idea of security it simply won&#x27;t pass the security audits we have to perform for our clients.<p>And for a &quot;to completely disable it&quot;, blocking at the firewall level is not sufficient. Anything <i>trying</i> to call out will fail us on such audits.<p>Holding software&#x2F;firmware versions back to avoid the feature won&#x27;t wash either. Unless there is a security related reason to hold back an update beyond a reasonable &quot;not jamming new code into kit the office relies on in case it breaks things&quot; testing&#x2F;resting period, then holding back on infrastructure updates is itself a security audit fail.<p>[FYI: getting Ubiquiti kit in the first place was not our call but it has worked well enough - it might be our call to plan its replacement with something else, and if I shall name this activity Project Ubiquiti-quity]

Is there anything opensource that can replace the main server? I run the docker (linuxserver.io) and every update I need to re-opt out of tracking. So annoying. I thought they were like the Apple of this space, you pay a bit more but no shenanigans. Looks like they’re the Google. Shame.

Any other makers to look at for setting up more than the b basic access point setup for a weekend warrior?

I made an ad block list for these ads. It&#x27;s not great that we have come to this, but here we are.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;synthead&#x2F;unifi-adfree" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;synthead&#x2F;unifi-adfree</a>

Is this as bad as when they put spyware into the AP firmware that phoned home without consent?<p>AIUI they made it opt-in in subsequent firmware revs after a backlash. Maybe they will fix this, too.

We need an excise tax on advertising. It’s more destructive than alcohol.<p>And a prohibition on adding it to any product after purchase.

What is this interface? I have ubiquiti hardware but not any UniFi hardware, is this only a UniFi thing?

three days ago smallnetbuilder reviewed a bunch of routers. I noted that the most recent router on the list that could run openwrt was the three year old r7800. someone mentioned building their own box for an ap and I discussed how hard it is to get wifi add-on cards[1], and oh, by the way, good luck running anything modern yourself.<p>the state of our wifis, right now, is extremely poor. upmarket expensive gear becoming a hostile rent-seeking shark is a sign of how late-stage the market is right now.<p>i will allow: there is a lag somewhat to be expected. wave2 and wifi6 and wifi6e have been all kind of sounding this new stuff stuff out. wifi6e feels a bit like a natural culmination, for a while, but we&#x27;re only just making it across a long series of changes just now. the standards have been in flux, enhancing.<p>still, the driver situation feels terrible. hardware is hard to get except as consumer electronics running provided shrinkware. even in terms of stations not ap&#x27;s, companies like intel can both do a good job, insure reasonable support, decent enough hardware these days, but also neglect basic love &amp; care things like support for 802.11s mesh &amp; other sincere basics.<p>anyhow. wifi6e looks like the culmination of a lot. the situation might stabilize some. the future is finally here &amp; only now do we commence more evenly distributing use&#x2F;usability of it. maybe. maybe not. maybe vendorization floggings will continue. i&#x27;m hoping somehow more ap class add-on systems start becoming in any way available again. hoping systems like wifi-p2p and wifi-aware and wifi mesh (802.11s) see general support. I&#x27;d love to see some pro-active movements in wifi world, some chipmakers really doing right, but wifi feels forever like the most cagey &amp; slowest developing linux driver area. communication, not well supported.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26597238" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=26597238</a>

Well now I&#x27;m glad I stuck with Mikrotik...

to be fair, the Dream Machine Pro is actually a great piece of kit :)

OpenWrt!

&gt; Ubiquiti starts ~~serving ads in~~ smearing fermented feces all over their management interface<p>FTFY

What an absolute ghetto. I’m so glad I didn’t buy this garbage.

Ads for their own products? Companies have the right to advertise upgrades for their own stuff. If this were ads for other companies, perhaps I would share some sympathy. How often do folks log into the management interface to actually do something everyday? I opened mine once to acquire the APs and configure the network, then shut it off and haven&#x27;t opened it for months.

Misleading tweet. This looks more like them promoting an update to their own product than them &quot;serving ads&quot;.