For about 10 years our home has had its routing and WiFi services handled by Apple routers, they worked well and provided good speed and coverage. However the number of devices in our home finally exceeded the Apple’s DHCP reservation limit, and I wanted a product with better management capabilities. I looked a long time for a replacement, trying the major brands, and ended up sending them all back.
Enter Ubiquiti Networks, it’s Unifi product line, and it’s centerpiece “Controller” management software. This last piece is the key here, if you want to put together a well managed network, which in turn delivers higher performance and better security, you must first choose a device to host the Controller software. That’s right, the Controller isn’t a piece of hardware, but rather software that can reside on a variety of devices including: Windows, macOS, and Linux machines, dedicated Unifi products, or multi-purpose products like the Unifi Dream Machine reviewed here.
The Unifi Dream Machine is on the surface a fairly typical WiFi router like you might find in a home or small to medium size office. In an attractive smooth white cylinder (with a halo ring of light) it includes a WiFi Access Point, four port gigabit switch, gigabit WAN port, DHCP Server, NAT Firewall, other typical router features, and the afore mentioned Controller software. However, if I haven’t made it clear, the Controller puts the Dream Machine in another class from most other WiFi routers.
The Controller sees and displays everything going across your network, and does it in a (mostly) intuitive way that is easy to learn. DHCP reservations are handled in a very unique way, and one that allows you to display and sort your reservations any way you’d like, which for me is usually by IP Address (surprisingly virtually no other popular router lets you do this). All of the devices on your network become objects you can identify (with appropriate icons), label (with identifiable names), and address (with logical schemes); then as mentioned you can display them in a report type format that makes it easy to see what you have, what it’s doing, and what might not belong or is misconfigured.
The Controller supports many more features than I can go into here, typical ones like VLANs, QoS, DNS, etc; and unusual ones like dashboard performance monitor on both a high level and granular view. The Unifi product line also includes a myriad of related network products which can also be managed by the Controller; I have replaced all my network switches, and added two additional Unifi (outdoor) Access Points to cover major portions of my large property. The amount of control and detail available is superb!
So, why not 5 stars? In 2013 Apple introduced the AirPort Extreme Base Station with AC/WiFi 5 and 3x3 MIMO, the 2019 Dream Machine’s WiFi performance is only marginally better, still AC but with added Wave 2 and MiMo 4x4. It’s only fair that these days we should expect AX/WiFi 6. Also, in testing other routers I’ve found the WAN information more comprehensive with some brands (ASUS comes to mind); however, this is a software feature one would expect the Controller to improve. All in all for me the comprehensive management of the Controller overcomes the slight limitations these impose (a hardcore gamer might need AX).
These minor limitations aside I fully recommend the Unifi Dream Machine and it’s comprehensive Controller software, a great buy!
