UniFi Enterprise WiFi: Some thoughts

 As someone who has used UniFi for his home network for many years, first in the early days of the cloud key Gen 1 and now in the UDM Pro days, I have seen firsthand how far UniFi has come. They are a company of constant growth and improvement trying to meet the end user's needs while maintaining its license-free solution. I for one am very happy to support them in their endeavor. There is a need in the market for license-free "prosumer" network solutions. While I applaud their advancements in all they have done, their UDM, switching, access, and protection have been wonderful; they still need to work on their wireless solutions.  As a wireless engineer, I notice there are a few features and capabilities that should be available if they are to make the jump into true enterprise wireless, as they mentioned at Mobility Field Day this year.

Spatial Streams

They have a wide selection of devices available, and they were very early to the market with their Wi-Fi7  devices, even if certain features were not yet available. First, I am happy to see the release of the E7 and E7 Campus APs, the first Wi-Fi7 APs to offer 4x4 radios for both 5 GHz and 6 GHz. This is a big step in the right direction, as many APs currently for sale are 2x2 radios with one spectrum, possibly utilizing a 4x4. 


WPA 2/3 Transition

UniFi like many others offer WPA 2/3 transition mode to help with the switch to 6GHz and required WPA 3 security. The issue is, we don't want to stay with transition mode for ever and in order for us to make the move to WPA 3 only we need to identify the devices connecting with WPA 2 and either upgrade them or relegate them to a WPA 2 network so we can move on to WPA 3 entirely. We have seen recently from some wireless engineers that roaming while using WPA 2/3 can cause some issues. So moving to WPA 3 solely will be the best solution to mitigate those potential problems. UniFi, as of writing this, does not provide a way to see which security suite a client used to connect to the transition mode SSID. This limits those with a desire to identify antiquated devices, and devices capable of WPA3 but choosing WPA2. It essentially makes us have to look elsewhere to find the solution or last resort trial and error. I would recommend UniFi add a column to their client page that will list whether they connected to WPA 2 or WPA 3. 


Protocol disabling

Despite what some of the "professionals" on the UI community boards say, there is a need to be able to disable protocols, both 802.11ax and 802.11be. This is specifically important in environments where the customer has not replaced all their APs at once. These mixed environments can be problematic when it comes to roaming. Devices are the decision makers when it comes to roaming, and many of them prefer the highest protocol over an older one that might be closer. This is spelled out specifically in the Apple network design documentation. "WiFi7 is preferred over WiFi6" and on down the list. The ability to turn off protocols in mixed environments is present in almost all the other vendors for enterprise wireless. If UniFi wishes to be able to move into that world they need to offer similar capabilities. 


I am impressed with UniFi and the advances they have made. I also want to help them by mentioning these few features that would really help with the enterprise grade wireless adoption, which would also help small to medium businesses as well. The UI community is great for solving quick or small problems but I feel feature requests that are truly important get lost in the stream of comments or requests for help. 






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