Ubiquiti SFP Wizard

Before I comment, a disclaimer about my small scale. I am running probably three hundred SFP+s running and less than five years of experience with optics. I don't have stock tracking for the individual manufacturers, and the failure rate comments here are based on gut-feel only. (there will be other people here used to far larger scales)

I bucket it into there being three options: genuine, clone, and good-clone.

We had a bad run with fs.com QSFP+s. Their SFP+s have been better to me, but reckon I have had a couple fail.

Atgbics SFP+s have been a reliable clone supplier for us. I don't think I have had any of those fail, and they have been my main vendor for a while now. You can order them programmed with personalities for Cisco, etc.

Part of the edge of fs.com is that it is so easy to place an order and get fast delivery. My main site is in another country to where I live, and I do a few trips a year. Several times they have made low-notice projects possible.

Don't think I ever had a case there TAC said anything about my sfps. Most of the time if it's the SFP you replace it, code it correctly with a device like the one linked, or it's the wrong kind of SFP anyway.

It's more for enterprise gear than anything. For example, enterprise Cisco gear will absolutely reject non-cisco optics, but datacenter gear won't. As an example, the Nexus 9000 line accepts non-cisco optics by default. Granted, those are 10k+ boxes so somewhat high-end but nowhere near the ASR line.

The nexus line being more modern in spirit also helps. Catalysts still reject non-cisco optics without a configuration line afaik.

A good rule of thumb is whether the equipment tries to vendor-lock you in.

Another example that comes to mind is at least one generation of Intel NICs (don't remember if it's the 5xx or the 7xx), where even the open-source mainline (!) driver will reject the optic without a driver argument passed to it when modprobe'ing it.

It's more common the more expensive the SFP host equipment, yes. This "compatibility" stuff is generally euphemism for "ridiculously primitive DRM" - lots of higher end network equipment checks the SFP Vendor ID and Serial Number and will reject it if it doesn't match an allow-list of "qualified" hardware. Programmers like these let you clone the VID/Serial from a "qualified" SFP onto a random SFP.

I'm surprised you've never run into this. Even the "cheap" cisco/juniper switches will warn you when you plug in a generic or different branded one.

Have you never worked with Intel NICs?

The two X520s that I have will refuse to work with non-Intel transceivers unless either you're running Linux and have set the 'allow_unsupported_sfp' option, or have edited the card's EEPROM to unset the "shut down unless the transceiver is a Genuine Intel part" bit. It's my understanding that very many Intel NICs are like this.

I remember [0] the Juniper switches that I used to have (before I switched to Mikrotik) refusing to work with anything other than Official Juniper transceivers.

[0] ...and may MISremember...

If it's a PON then it's not Ethernet media. You would then be looking for an ONT SFP but those are far from ordinary SFPs. They are not just dumb devices, there is a lot going on inside them since they crammed a whole ONT into the SFP, and it communicates SFI back to the host equipment as if it would have been Ethernet.

https://hack-gpon.org/ont-wo-mac/

You would need the ISP to "adopt" your ONT into their network similar to what is observed with cable modems.

Consider that AT&T fiber device to be a literal component of their network in a way that is: adopted into the network management system, configured with appropriate settings for the particular network and network segment, maybe the device is named in a particular way for their billing/CRM solution, there may need to be e911 info configured in the device if they often do VoIP service, etc.

In short, a gpon network is not quite the same as rolling to Walmart or whatever and just grabbing a replacement cable/dsl modem.

I wish I could say that Unifi has just worked for me, but any time I add a new Unifi device to the network (say a new switch, or just recently a U6 range extender), my network gets incredibly unstable until I manually restart every UniFi device on the network, sometimes multiple times. (i.e. Some devices won't connect to WiFi due to DHCP IP configuration errors.) And that's after getting the device adopted, which generally takes multiple retries.

I've also had three instances where upon rebooting due to a power outage or a system update, my inbound firewall / port forwarding was just broken. UniFi simply did not pass packets to my server. Once again, a full reboot of every UniFi device on the network resolved it.

I really want to like UniFi, and I appreciate how much access I have to SSH in and figure out what's going on (and I did take tcpdumps and have a support case open), but it has definitely not been plug-and-play for me.

I'm using a UDR7, U7 Lite, a number of managed UniFi switches, and just recently added the U6 extender.

Yeah, my experience with the UAP-AC-LITE and -LR was that it would get wonky if not rebooted every month or so. That (combined with the realization that its software load is pretty much just OpenWRT with the serial numbers filed off) caused me to dump the official firmware and switch to OpenWRT.

I was quite a lot happier after the switch, as I didn't have to hassle with UniFi and my APs stopped needing roughly-monthly reboots.

My biggest issue is threat surface. You can design around it, but Mikrotik WAP's do everything a Mikrotik router can do. If they get compromised they can run scripts, create blind proxies etc, and mikrotik has a habit of resurfacing CVEs from memory.

My experience is very binary. I had some Mikrotik RF installs that Just Worked, and never needed attention. And some that were just problem children constantly demanding reboots.

Mikrotik code isnt the most stable beast in the world, but if you keep it at a certain point in time you are usually safe. But then that brings you back around to the security issues again.

I've been using Mikrotik in various capacities since 2008, I even made IoT devices using RB450 boards before the word "IoT" was coined. I also love supporting a small company that is successfully competing with the giants.

Their long-distance wireless and outdoor wireless are great, but their regular WiFI access points and software are at most adequate. They are not keeping up with the state of the art.

I haven't tried their CAP or HAP lines, but I'm happy with my RB4011. /shrug

It's particularly a problem with multiple access points, if it's just one and you need 'ok' coverage you're good.

I started with TPLink gear in a mesh mode, and it kinda sorta maybe worked? I had an access point on the ground floor, a range extender + option to connect RJ45 (for devices with out WiFi), on the middle floor, and an additional meshed AP / range extender on the top floor. The top floor meshed thing basically didn't work, the RJ45 thing got me like 50 Mbps while wireless was getting me 200 Mbps. It 'just worked', but it didn't work well.

In that same house switching over to Ubiquiti just worked, and worked well. I had the same setup (mesh nodes on every floor), but performance was substantially better (2-4x).

I've moved house, and now have wired APs on every floor, and get phenomenal performance. The management UI to see what is where / how its connected, and when something doesn't work is very good. It also enables things that were hard / difficult with other non-'prosumer' gear. Like I can have multiple WAN ports, and plug in a cellular modem, so that when my internet doesn't just work (which happens way too often) it auto-fails over to the cellular modem, and continues just working.

The reason I went with Ubiquiti in the first place was their Unifi Protect line of cameras, and again those 'just work' from the wireless small ones to domes / etc plugged into wired connections they all just seamlessly connect to my dream machine, and provides a great UI, and the data is on prem which I want.

The only thing Ubiquiti doesn't do the way I want is DHCP + DNS, so I have a seperate raspberry pi doing that.

After years of fussing around with either linux / pfsense / ... routing + firewall solutions, and different AP / meshing configurations the ubiquiti stuff is very hands off.

I think the idea is that the Ubiquiti equipment is far more capable than normal consumer-grade equipment like ASUS, and still manages to "just work". So your ASUS may also "just work" but is has a fraction of the capabilities as the unifi system in terms of feature load-out and scope of native device integrations.

Adding a new Unifi device to the network is just a matter of powering it up, responding to "adopt this new device?" prompt on your phone, and that's it. It's literally Plug'n'Play in 2025. Even if other brands let you do that with similar number of steps, the UX is so behind that it's impossible for you to discover the steps that easily. Ubiquiti uses UX quite intelligently to make complicated things feel simple. My experience hasn't been close to Ubiquiti's with any other brand I've tried.

For a start I wouldn’t trust brands that by default market mesh over wired backhaul.

* double NAT.

Depending on the model of AP, you might be able to run OpenWRT on it without too much hassle.

I made the switch to Ubiquiti from TP Link last year. 1000% worth it. The "Just Works (tm)" thing is true, but the ceiling of what you can do with it is so much higher. I'll also say that the Unifi nerds out there are legion and you can find support and comment threads all over the place for pretty much any project you want to do.

All the complaints about Ubiquiti in this thread from a few months ago dissuaded me from investing in their gear: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44746603

I ended up going with TP-Link Omada and have been happy so far (a managed switch and wifi 6 WAPs). I am a bit concerned about their security track record given how bad their soho products are, so I ended up sticking with my opnsense router at the perimeter as the first line of defense.

I’m curious to hear what you think you’re missing out on with Omada.

Not omoda, but TP-Link - recently built a deco setup - 3x be65, 2x be25, one WiFi mesh node, the rest is wired 2.5gbe backhaul and performance is excellent, though I’m not a fan of only being able to configure stuff from the app, and there isn’t that much to configure anyway. It just works, but if it wouldn’t, I’d probably have to return the whole set.

I've used both and was super interested to use Omada because of its price and performance. Honestly, Ubiquiti is just so much easier. The whole controller model for Omada tries to be way more "enterprisey" at the cost of a SOHO ease of use.

Based on having migrated multiple clients from UniFi to Omada but still has UniFi deployed across a few sites too, I'll give you a different take from the replies you've gotten so far. TP-Link's Omada is a newer, direct competitor to UniFi, and when it came out Ubiquiti was an absolute fucking dumpster fire in terms of, well, everything. Their software, hardware, and even the forums (which they killed in favor of the current mess). Their gateway/routing/network service story sucked, they were missing key features, their firmware was rotting in basic ways (like ssh being so old it literally included only insecure ciphers and you couldn't even connect to it anymore without + options), and finally were also starting to make more and more concerning and ugly choices that pointed towards serious organization issues (constant UI bike shedding churn in favor of ancient features and bugs they'd agreed were important) and enshitification (tying software applications to required hardware). However, they were also the only player doing that sort of fully self-hostable unified configuration networking. I migrated all the gateway/routing/simple service stuff to OPNsense, but then was stuck.

TP-Link stepped in and have been working hard on Omada being a direct competitor. It's clearly inspired liberally from UniFi but that's A-OK by me, it's healthy for both to be going head to head. In my experience it had somewhat fewer features, particularly initially, and they definitely don't cover the full breadth of cool and useful niches that Ubiquiti does either. But what there is has worked well and been more reliable for me, particularly in a mixed environment. For example Omada worked perfected day 1 with automatic L3 controller discovery using a simple DHCP Option 138 set on my OPNsense unit pointing right at my controller FQDN. It was easy and built-in to supply a proper certificate for the Web GUI. I never got either of those to work with the UniFi controller. The switching has been rock solid reliable and the WiFi more performant, better coverage, and features like PPSK were added way before Ubiquiti did and have a much better interface.

However, Ubiquiti does seem to perhaps be turning things around a bit. Their router hardware is no longer garbage, even if it is of course far less then you can do yourself. From what I can see in simple ongoing tests they do a better job on the software side for router features now as well, so if you're all-in on both systems for the total single-pane experience UniFi might once again be better. Their announcement of the "UniFi OS Server" 3 months ago (in Early Access) and publicly last month was both a surprise and heartening. Rarely does one see companies that start down the path of lock-in reverse course at all. If they make it possible to run all their various controller applications on your own hardware I'd definitely start to add more back into my mix.

So if you've got decently modern Omada hardware (and you probably do because not like it's been around that long, in terms of networks anyway) I'd be in no massive rush to switch to UniFi unless you see some key specific things you'd like. If you think you ever might want to roll your own other infra same thing even harder. But if you're thinking about a bunch of upgrades anyway then worth keeping an eye on and looking carefully at the various feature mixes each have.

And that's a really statement that makes me super happy to say, because I think each is now driving the other, which is really healthy for this ecosystem!

Funnily enough, this 10gtek worked on one of my 3 switches, but I could only establish a gigabit connection. I returned it [1]

These 10gtek fiber modules on the other hand have worked flawlessly so far. [2]

This Mikrotik module would not establish a 10 gb link with my Thunderbolt dock no matter what I tried. Works fine with my servers though so I swapped it out.

I've pretty much resigned myself to just buying the full brand Ubiqitui SFP+ adapters [4] for converting to copper.

I recently purchased [5] to run to my living room, but I have not found the time/energy to do the run.

1. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01KFBFL16

2. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BP4M8LV

3. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078SNK1MY

4. https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/accessories-modules-fibe...

5. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CYC6P6KF

> * I will note that the 10gb sfp+ modules from 10gtek on a Mikrotik just don't work.

Weird. For the past three years, I've had 10Gtek 10gbit SFP+ optical modules in all of my Mikrotik switches [0] and they Just Work.

My switches are the CRS326-24G-2S+, and the SFPs were the "generic" versions. I wonder why yours were so troublesome.

[0] ...and (after fixing their eeproms) my Intel x520 NICs...

I have a few SFP+ doing 10GbE over UTP from 10Gtek in a Mikrotik. They work perfectly, although hot (to be expected).

Copper 10gbe or fibre? All copper 10gbit devices produce a lot more heat than their 1gbit brethren.

It's one of the reasons I switched to running fiber even to desktops at home; it's like 1/10th the heat output.

You want one of the latest ones rated for 100m (1.8W peak); the older 80m (2.5W) ones run hotter and the 30m ones are really hot.

For high speed home stuff, I usually pick up some old Mellanox infiniband cards and cables. They're usually dirt cheap and insanely quick. Difficult to work with if you do not know what your are doing.

> Ubiquti is actually offering better pricing here (outside of 10G LR)

Ubiquiti's 10GB LR of $59 is for a 2-pack, not per-module. So that still comes out cheaper than FS for the sale duration at least. Not by a lot, granted, but still cheaper.

Whats the best solution for short runs (rack) between Mikrotik switches and Dell servers. Will a DAC still work between different vendors or is it always best to buy individual transceivers?

Fun fact: each one also consumes approximately $4 in electricity per year.

Assuming 2.5W typical consumption, $0.18/kWh rate. More like $8/year if you are in a high rate area!

Nice prices from Ubiquiti. I think fs mostly competes against Cisco which have much higher prices. IIRC we hade like a 95% discount off Ciscos list price for optics.

> I suspect it is; and we'll see the price increase later.

I used to use Ubiquiti gear a number of years ago, but left when they started moving into an Apple-esque "prosumer" direction with corresponding price increases. That, and the constant bugs.

That app also sends ser# and other info to FS forcing you to help them build out the DB.

It is pretty bad...I use a crap laptop to run it (same thing I do for all my PLC software that is just horrible)

Same setup for me. Unifi just has to many limits to advanced networking. Trying to force tunnels to just do basic routing.

I've only been using it for a couple months, but OPNsense (FreeBSD based) is such a solid piece of software. I installed it on a cheap Beelink mini PC with dual 2.5 gb NICs and an N150 processor (model EQ14), and it's been reliable and a pleasure to use as my router. I have a TP-Link Omada setup which I've been pleased with, but I feel no need to purchase one of their gateways.

What do you use for OpenBSD hardware? Is it power hungry? Is it performant?

I had a great stint with OpenBSD on an older Pentium 4 Dell tower a few years back. For basic firewall rules, I had line-rate performance on my NICs. But for a home network I'd love to have something more energy efficient.

I'd expect it to go nowhere fast. UBNT being weird and inconsistent about IPv6 has been a thing since before I was using their official software... which was from like 2015 through 2018 or so.

> Often Cisco/etc will refuse support cases if you aren't using their optics, if the switches/routers even work with them in the first case, which isn't a given as often they'll refuse to work with non branded optics.

As others here have pointed out, Cisco reserves the right to do this but doesn't do it in practice. They don't even have a realistic chance to _detect_ a Cisco-programmed FS SFP, since it simply identifies the same as a genuine Cisco module.

If your case was directly related to the SFP (“I can't get a link on this fiber port”), then yes, they could probably refuse it. But if your case is about basically anything else on the switch, they won't care.

"The only difference is how it presents itself to the switch (ie, says its a Cisco optic), not actual difference in performance."

That's not the only difference. I have had situations where I ran equivalent optics side-by-side, and then touched one and it was hot, and touched the other and it was not hot. They do contain different components. In the case of that test - the atgbics SFP was cool, and the other clone unit was hot. My dealer was able to get me in contact with someone technical at atgbics (the cool-running unit) who explained the difference, "The DSP might be say 13nm where more modern more expensive ones are 5nm."

But you definitely do not need to pay for "genuine" optics to get high-reliability optics. You just need to shop around the clones - atgbics is a clone.

Better UI is stretching it a bit... Maybe for the amateur/enthusiast (homelab) market...

I certainly don't need or want their rack augmented reality... 'feature'? fad? And their clunky web UI is both limiting and slowing me down. Thanks, I'm perfectly fine with a console and simple LEDs.

Broadcom in nearly all cases (default Dell option, I think). Elsewhere, Intel.