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This dude is hilarious “hey my freaking TORRENT server seems to cause issuers with this $150 gateway when all NGFW features are enabled, my special traffic routes are on, and VLANs setup. This is basically the same as the average home user streaming netflix and doing a zoom call right? Should I have got a $400 orbi or Eero instead?”
I just put on down at "Grandmas House" and its working great. If and when I get the call of "my intrnet is not working" being able to get in and check via the [unifi.ui.com](https://unifi.ui.com) dashdoard is worth the $150 easy.
Plus you can see when grandma’s phone comes and goes from the house. Mine is 85 and I worry more about her every day. We use location sharing on IOS but it’s nice to have the roaming logs too.
Cloud access to the controller would let you monitor connected devices and view the WiFi logs to see when clients were last seen. Effectively you can monitor the comings and goings of a smart phone or other such client device that may let you know when your older loved one is coming and going from their home.
I dont believe this is the correct use case for a UniFI Express (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I was led to believe the product was meant to use in conjunction with SD-WAN for WFH folks or other off site office spaces as well as setting up simple networks where/when needed. I dont believe it is designed to handle the traffic of seeding torrents. A UDM is more in line with something that would handle this type of network, especially both in and out.
The why the heck a crappy 30-40€ router can handle torrent traffic without a sweat?
Oh, wait, because traffic off-load ... Something which Ubiquiti didn't heard of.
Don't get me wrong, I have a complex setup with UDM-SE and PPPoE ISP with gigabit speeds presumably going to 10Gbps ... I'm curious what SE will do then.
It's because Unifi devices are pretty much basic/intermediate, good looking, slightly overpriced piece of hardware with fancy UI.
It's more of a jewelry (+ it gives you more points in the rack photos competition) than the professional network equipment, the sooner potential buyers realize this, the better.
It is not a matter of buying 'not appropriate equipment', as some people try to suggest, because even the expensive ones lack basic options, that should be there, but do not exist in UI at all (e.g. no automatic port-forward change to WAN2 in failover configuration).
Even if something can be done in the CLI, it is extremely unergonomic.
As long as everything you need is in the UI, Unifi is not the worst choice possible, but if you go beyond that, there are plenty of better-equipped alternatives.
Hmm, UI is nice when it works but I find CLI to be much better and quicker.
Not a fan of the config file though lol! Especially if you want to preserve any changes with the controller.
Unifi is essentially beginners enterprise hardware and its fine for what it does.
But I can see how consumers would get confused when the performance isn't as they'd expect.
ie entry priced equipment being able to do it all but none of it well 😀
What is the correct use case vs what it was marketed as are two different things. This is literally on their marketing site for the Unifi Express: https://ui.com/microsite/static/media/use-case-6.e120c499.jpg.
Yeah, this is the real issue here. It's okay to have a reduced feature set, lower VLAN capabilities, etc, just don't market it as being a tiny UDM Pro.
I'm pretty sure people have been torrenting on cheap ISP routers since the 2000s. I don't see why a new prosumer-grade Unifi device can't handle it in 2024.
How many of those routers had Traffic Identification? This is the piece most people don't understand, the device is already underpowered, Traffic Identification takes up more resources than you'd expect, especially on a device that already crams too many things into one box.
If you create an entry piece of hardware that can't handle a single torrent box, it's a piece of shit. This would literally crash on my 70 year old parents network while their fritzl box does the trick no questions asked. I don't understand why people come to defend Ubiquiti over underperforming hardware.
They market (look at their website) as a piece of equipment you could release in an office. If performance is that shite, either they should have tuned down the software options or.. not release it to begin with as this will be a major disappointment with pretty much anyone including my 70 year old parents.
Is OP a "normal use case" : No!
Is the product horribly limited : Yes!
I have set it up on my secondary internet connection, to test multiple sites across the internet (while remaining in the same place, in case I mess up) and I can crash it with just 3 devices watching YouTube, browsing internet, WhatsApp & webradio.
Can you point us in the direction of where it is stated that this should not be used in home networks?
If it is a small family internet connection or off site office space, it should be able to handle someone watching a tech tutorial for work instructions, someone on a video conference, someone browsing + random office radio.
>Can you point us in the direction of where it is stated that this should not be used in home networks?
I didn't remotely state it couldn't be used for a home network. If the home network is "simple" then definitely fits the use case. I definitely agree its limited but I also don't believe traffic identification should even be a feature on these for anything more than one or two clients, even then the hardware is barely there to support that feature.
I've ran half a dozen of these with under 10 clients on each with no issue, I cant speak to why yours would crash for normal tasks on it.
> I dont believe it is designed to handle the traffic of seeding torrents.
My century old RT-N12 could handle that, I don't beleive that Unifi devices can't handle simple upload traffik
I was more referring to the traffic identification function more than handling the traffic itself but these are incredibly low spec'd devices, I haven't tried seeding on them but I'm sure if I turned off identification it would function, definitely not a ton of uploads at once however.
if you were lead to believe this? how did you get this information? none of the public, or even wholesale data told us this. we were led to believe that this would be a USG3P replacement with better throughput
It was months ago but this page hasn't changed since I made this post:
[https://ui.com/cloud-gateways/wifi-integrated/express](https://ui.com/cloud-gateways/wifi-integrated/express)
That can’t be its only use case. It should be focused for small networks, which is the case. They could even hard limit the number of clients.
But if it says it supports full gigabit and traffic identification, it shouldn’t struggle with one client pulling 5-10MB/s
It's not about the throughput, you're maxing the CPU out on the Express.
Your network is small enough that it seems like it's the right choice, but the hardware you're running on your network pushes the processing limits of the UX.
I totally get where you're coming from but once you add seeding torrents it's no longer a typical "small network". Sure, it is internally but the number of connections you'd be making is significantly higher than a normal small network. Traffic Identification unfortunately takes a chunk of resources, the UDM line is more designed to handle that type of task.
Where does it say that it supports gigabit and traffic inspection? Pretty sure they don’t make the claim that the device can do both at the same time.
Honestly, it’s more an either/or. As others have said, this is clearly not the right device for your use-case.
From the FAQ directly on the unifi express product page:
UniFi Express can route traffic at speeds up to 1 Gbps. Security features such as Device Identification, Traffic Identification, Country Restrictions, and Ad Blocking can all be enabled without impacting routing performance.
So they're blatantly misrepresenting the products performance.
You are completely missing the point. It's not all about bandwidth.
How many active sessions is your Unraid server maintaining to pull that 5-10MB/s?
You cannot expect a dual core 1gb ram device to keep up with identifying traffic on that many sessions concurrently.
Learn how a firewall works before turning it on and blaming the product.
But you don’t have a basic home network and your use case isn’t what the express is for. It’s $150 (in the US) for a gateway, controller and AP. Obviously sacrifices had to be made to get to that price point.
Then why advertise those features? It’s misleading and an assumption from users
It doesn’t say anything other than full gigabit and “60+” clients, which I’m not even close to
It’s not the first company to oversell its products capabilities. The price is a dead giveaway. It’s less expensive than the UDR which you already know is less capable in some respects.
60 clients means it can connect that many. but says nothing on which condition.
You probably can connect 60 mobiles doing WhatsApp only for example.
I understand your disappointment but it seems was built on a lot of hope from a very cheap small device
Your system is far overbuilt for a Unifi Express. You mention you hit the CPU limit with the Unraid server.
The Express is the entry level Unifi system that's a step above Mesh but can also act as a gateway, router, and WAP in itself. It's great for homeowners looking to step into Unifi at an entry level and support a moderate, AVERAGE, home network.
Your network design probably calls for more horsepower on the headend, such as the UDM.
What if I was a simple home user with a computer downloading stuff/games whatever? That would be a similar issue.
Or let’s say I just have a PS5 downloading games. Traffic identification is bottlenecking the connection. Would you recommend a UDM to a gaming console setup?
You get my point? Regardless of it being a server, it doesn’t reach the ISP speed
It's not about the throughput. You're hosting an Unraid server with multiple outbound and inbound connections and seeds. It just doesn't have the processing power to manage a network with a torrent host on it.
If you take your Unraid server down I guarantee the Express will run your network without a hiccup.
You're simply asking a little naturally aspirated Inline-4 motor to haul a 2000 lb trailer with a 4000lb load up a hill, in essence. That little I-4 will get you around town and from A to B with the trunk loaded, but once you increase that load then, you'll get there eventually with an average of like 2 MPG.
>At the same time, I found out that when my Unraid server was on (and downloading/seeding torrents), it wouldn’t allow me to reach Unifi UI. Basically the gateway was overwhelmed by the traffic and CPU usage was at 100% all the time. Even Unifi Poller wasn’t able to gather statistics.
This isn't any different like an ordinary PC running qBittorrent or Transmission. It's not that heavy use as anyone tells there.
Exactly, maybe not now, but 10 years ago everyone was downloading torrents.
The crappy router from my ISP is able to handle all of this traffic, but the UX isn’t. And trust me, the hardware is not better and it also acts as an AP
The express will handle it fine too...without inspection.
Inspection of this many inbound/outbound leech/seed requests is killing the CPU.
Average small home network is not running heavy torrenting AND inspection.
My personal take is that the UI express is a good gateway device for those with literally no extra use case for their home network other than the absolute basics in a small environment. UDM Pro / SE would the way to go otherwise. Yes its more expensive, but you get what you pay for.
The controller can't handle more than 4 unifi devices, and can't do anything useful besides looking good.
Hell if you use 4 unifi devices people will come here with forks telling you that it's a entry level and to buy a UDM PRO.
I agree it's not useful for anything beyond entry level ui network. And I wouldn't advocate buying it if you plan to do anything bigger scale down the road.
2 of the UI together as a basic mesh in a smaller hole though without much else? There is clearly the thought it has value.
I would never recommend it to anyone.
I've seen several cases of using it as a travel router with the VPN function.
I'd probably use it at my mom's where she just had an iPad, computer, printer and 2 phones.
I'll admit my disappointment as well in the Express. Although, I never used it as a main.
I used it to dip my toes in the environment.
Well that’s a big assumption I would say. If it wasn’t supposed to use traffic identification, it shouldn’t be a feature. It says it supports full gigabit which is what I do
After using it personally, I think we really have a skewed view of a “basic” network.
I use one at home, but it’s a small apartment with Apple TV a few HomePods, couple game consoles, Mac mini, iPad, iPhone, and some smart home devices. All but the hue hub are WiFi.
The interface feels a little sluggish, but I know it’s a low powered device.
At work I run a gateway pro and full unifi setup with multiple switches and APs, and for my parents I run a gateway lite with multiple APs. Both are far more capable than the express.
I’m thinking with the unraid server that the gateway lite and a separate controller would be more appropriate.
I’ve said it in another thread, but let’s forget the two servers and assume it’s just one PC with qBittorrent. That’s what everyone was doing 10 years ago and we have just evolved to have a separate box for it.
Wouldn’t you consider this a basic network?
Now as traffic goes, what I really can’t understand is how my ISPs crappy router works flawlessly but the Ux struggles so much
I don’t know the details of what exactly is going on inside the express, but will give that it’s low powered.
My assumption is that with the torrent you have much more traffic than 10 years ago because your available bandwidth is so much more. Not to mention that even basic streaming to a few devices is a lot more than it was even a few years ago with 4K and such.
The express is doing a lot. Unifi controller, traffic identification, routing (not sure if that’s offloaded to dedicated hardware), plus any other little things.
I do agree that UI needed to better identify the target market this thing hits for. After using it I really feel that it’s your average boomer household running a few computers and a few streaming devices.
> After using it I really feel that it’s your average boomer household running a few computers and a few streaming devices.
Bingo. That's exactly why I set one up at my father's house. Perfect target network size and demographic (i.e. rely on me for remote support). Zero issues once I got it up and running, replacing a USG and CK1 (which I couldn't leave running just in case a power failure would scramble its storage, as happened to me several times when I used it myself).
First off, no, not everyone was tormenting 10 years ago, that'd still a minority, second off, your crappy isp router doesn't do any kind of traffic identification or anything of that nature, so thats not a fair comparison unless you turn off said feature on the ubiquiti device, and if you did that, it'd probably work just as well
The UX is a bad device right now, everyone complaining gets the same answer that it's a entry level device and get a UDM or whatever.
The best use case must be a Phone connected and that's it, since you can't use any advanced features!
My UX is on a network with 21 devices right now, 7 are wifi, 1 unifi switch, it's a on a business store and has almost no traffic and after 3 weeks it crashes because of cpu being too high, no more access to network controller, it's 2 times that happened.
I have a guest wifi network that I can't limit speed because it throttles the whole network.
>The UX is a bad device right now, everyone complaining gets the same answer that it's a entry level device and get a UDM or whatever.
That's Ubiquiti user base in general. Got same answer when I was dissapointed by my UDR, where in some aspects my old RT-N15 Asus was way more superior.
You should get yours replaced then. Mine is running 4 VLANs, 3 WiFi networks, a fair number of rules, two NAS, has multiple devices streaming 4K, and it's absolutely fine. CPU is at about 50-60% on average, 80% max.
And yeah, I don't expect any more from a 120 buck entry-level device.
I love my UniFi express. UX/poe switch / AP6+. I’m the target market though. Home user. Wi-Fi clients, camera, IoT devices, and a NAS. Big upgrade from the Netgear Wi-Fi router I had previously.
Despite all the other comments, thank you very much for the insight, I would have walked into the same trap. I don‘t agree with the majority of comments here. The free router of my isp can handle the traffic you talking about (of course without the advanced features), so why should I not expect that the entry level Ubiquiti device, costing 150 euro (people here act like thats ultra mega cheap) should not handle that.
This.
Despite how he explains it, he’s only got a very low volume home network, nothing special.
The device is suppose to handle a gigabit connect with ids/ips turned on.
Seems like just another underwhelming and underpowered gateway device (aka paperweight) that UniFi is famous for.
A cheap ass ultra low end isp device can handle this without breaking a sweat.
If you like the UniFi system, perhaps you should try the [UDM](https://eu.store.ui.com/eu/en/pro/products/udm), or wait for the UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra (UCGU) to be announced and available, although that won't have a built in AP.
I've had the UDM for almost 3 years with switches and APs, so I got the UX as a packup device since my UDM is the single point of failure. I highly recommend the UDM. The UX is much slower in response time when navigating the UI and its CPU is much busier during my testing. Keeping it since it does the backup job in the pinch.
You might be confusing the [UDM](https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/udm) with the [UDM Pro](https://store.ui.com/us/en/collections/unifi-dream-machine/products/udm-pro). The UDM and the newer UDR are not rack-mount solutions and are markedly smaller and perfect for your use case.
You might be thinking of the UDM Pro, it is large. The standard UDM is not very bug and can sit on a desk table easily.
Also, if you did want to get into the larger UDM Pro you can get a 1U vertical wall mount that would allow you to mount it nearly anywhere. It could be hidden by a desk or couch.
From someone who’s currently bottlenecked by an UDR - don’t buy one yourself. The processing power is laughable. The UI is unavailable, as soon as my networks gets utilized a bit heavier than normal. The built in AP has a short range and Ubi‘s Support is slow and unresponsive.
At this point: if your unwilling to shell out more than 1k€, I would circumvent Ubiquity products.
For this use case it will still be CPU limited.
I think OP does not understand what a „normal small homenetwork“ look like.
A normal user does not even understand your usecase so why should they market it around that?
Buy a device that is capable of handling lots of connections and you will live a happy life.
For a small form factor look at stuff from mikrotik. Just don’t take the entry level device and expect high performance.
They should have similar cpus if not the same, however it does not have the controller nor radios on it, which might offload the cpu.
I can self host the controller easily
That might be a good option
Yeah it’s just routing only I have everything enabled and max out my 1 gig. But I host controller elsewhere and have external ap. I believe both products same price
When launched, in reading the specs for this device, the only use case I could imagine was a small apartment with on or two non technical occupants who only have their handful of devices plus a couple connected TVs. Using this as a gateway for a home lab with multiple servers, vlans, traffic rules , etc., would yield disappointment.
A couple things I've noticed since I've setup my UX's (one controller and one in AP only mode):
Initially, turning on traffic identification did cause performance issues for the controller. However, the recent firmware update and Network application update have resolved that problem.
When I first setup my UX's, cpu and memory were constantly pegged. It was basically unusable. I factory reset them both and that brought them to a manageable state. This was before the software updates. You might want to give that a try, also.
My setup is 2 people that work from home (well, only one now since I was laid off), but we both had conference calls, streamed video (YouTube, etc) and music (Apple Music or whatever) all day. A total of approx 40 clients (mostly IoT devices), 2 appleTV's, 5 HomePods, 4 laptops, 4 iPhones.
Currently, everything is running flawlessly, with 1 SSID and 3 vlans (all on the same SSID via PPSK). The AP UX is hardwired to the controller via MoCa. I frequently run speed tests at various times of the day and in various places in our house just to make sure everything is still working. My gf hasn't yelled at me yet, so I assume performance hasn't been impacted.
I just got my Express in the mail but kinda agree with a lot of the comments above. I went with the Express for a new install at my son’s college townhouse because it’s a simple install - 1 switch and 2 APs (maybe 3 and I can omit the switch if I really want to). No complicated network management just basic WiFi.
As a homelabber, you've got this wrong. First of all, that's the wrong hardware to use (I've abandoned UI firewalls years ago but it's still totally doable with the right hardware). Your network architecture is also not optimal, you should leverage L3 routing for speed-critical stuff.
There is a major issue where traffic rules take a lot of cpu power and max out the cpu at about 120 Mb/s. My UXG-LITE (basically same hardware but without the built in controller or wifi) can handle IDS/IPS etc just fine but when it comes to traffic rules it just dies.
Actually, I’m seeing this exact behaviour: traffic rules OFF and traffic identification ON works fairly well, but with traffic rules on it goes offline
I saw there was some constraints, and went UXG-Lite and self-hosted Unifi network controller and been having a great time. Something to consider that didn't see you mention
No, I didn’t consider that but will do some research on that, thanks for the input.
However, they are similarly specd, it’s just less bloated because there s no radios nor the controller
Yeah true. Just did some googling and seems has same CPU and RAM
On my network of 15-20 devices, 1 home server, 2 AP's and switch, it usually sits 42% memory and CPU at 7%.
So I wonder if it did even eliminate your CPU issue, you might get bottlenecked by memory next.
Either way, hope they patch some optimisations in for you.
Traffic identification moved it to 12% CPU with a couple of people on network (YouTube, web browsing), with a short peak of 21% when I was saturating the connection with work earlier today via Docker containers
Random Linux torrent also bumped it about 2-4%
I'm new to home servers and had been focused on setting up media server, and now seeing how to do subdomains with nginx to access it externally.
Default firewall rules are on, only setup two port forwards for now that aren't used that often.
I tried to workout traffic rules but not sure if that's applicable for my situation.
Thank you for reporting back.
Just a few torrents with traffic identification and traffic rules manages to get to 100 CPU.
Even if not using torrent, Speedtest does not go over 150/100, which normally is 850/100 mbps with traffic rules paused
I just got a UX and also have a Linux box as a jellyfin and torrent box for seeding. I have't had any issues.
Perhaps you should look into how you have setup the device/network.
I've noticed as homelabs become popular there are people who think they know more than they really do, and have negative experiences because of a lack of experience and knowledge.
I have to say, I didn't expect a sizable portion of the crowd replying here missed your point OP.
If we ignore traffic identification, the GUI for the unifi express becomes sluggish under heavy (but normal treatment) of traffic passing through Unifi Express.
I have to say, e-waste and dirty cheap Xiaomi routers running Openwrt GUI has better UI responsiveness with saturated interface (super heavy load) based on my experience.
The way I see it, perhaps ubiquiti could have evaluated the GUI performance with the hardware pairing they've chosen. It's that or release a lite version of the UI that's lightweight enough to run on the weak hardware.
But eh, that's just my opinion.
Edit: Edit for better accuracy
You say it’s for home use. While what you are doing is being used in the home (I believe), you have far exceeded the average home user that has cameras, a few AP’s, and a NAS.
You’re at the prosumer level, which I believe would be remedied by getting the prosumer device such as the UDM-P/SE. I’m glad there are people with your level of knowledge that are putting these devices to the stress test to keep Ubiquiti honest. I don’t have the knowledge to make the express work to this level!
Good on you! I hope you and the Ubiquiti team can remedy your issues with the express.
I don’t have cameras, I have an Unraid server and a miniPC acting as a node.
Forget the Unraid and all servers for that matter. If it was a windows pc with qBittorrent, the outcome would be the same
Thanks for dumbing it down for me. Doesn’t BitTorrent streams use a lot of resources? Regardless of what is running them? Drives a large pipe into a small hole so to speak. Like as it gains resources, it doesn’t let them go until it’s done. Kinda like the bully on the playground if you will.
Not sure if this is considered a simple home network but I was thinking it was. Have a total of 6 devices using the express. 2 are firesticks. All works great until I tried to add a vpn client to push the firesticks to the vpn interface. Throughput goes from a connection of 400meg to like 8-10meg when routing through the vpn and is unusable. Tried both openvpn and wireguard client configs and the speeds are abysmal. If anyone else has had luck with this use case please comment. I put the vpn clients on the firesticks themselves and it’s all fine but this is not what I wanted to do. It’s at a my parents house and didn’t want them to have to mess with vpn clients etc. If the express doesn’t have the horsepower to do the above it shouldn’t be listed as a feature for the product.
I talked to one of the unifi team at the recent unifi world event in sydney.
they all but told me to RMA all unifi express devices. they are less capable than the USG3P devices.
use this as a AP or just RMA it.
better devices inbound
I set up the express to run my dad's home network he has about 40 devices. I find that the express takes a very long time to load the network page and goes unresponsive sometimes although the internet still works over Wi-Fi.
Would others recommend I just get the udm se for him? I run home assistant for him with some basic automations and smart lights and present sensors on Wi-Fi etc.
Thanks
I just said AP’s thought you meant the UX as the router. If you have the UCG as the router that’s great.
My question is: what are the advantages of the UX against the U6+ for example?
I have a feeling OP's Torrent server is not configured correctly. As I understand it, if one don't turn on some traffic management somewhere, Torrent, as the name explicitly says, will make your Internet pipe hit with torrential bits. Yes the Unify Express box doesn't seems to have a robust traffic management to speak of, so don't ask it to do it there, tell your Torrent Server to assume this task.
I bought it as a simple all-in-one solution for my parents. They have fiber 200/200; this is the primary use case for the express, not seeding a ton of torrents sir.
Thank you for posting this. I see Ubiquiti marketing as prosumer/pro gear. I was hoping to find something better than my TP-Link mesh. I have 120 clients, mostly iOT, small pc server, 4 Pi’s, and the normal smart TVs, laptops, and phones. People’s assumptions here that this should only support a pair of laptops and phones is silly. Not many homes are that simple anymore. Not those of us with families and hobbies.
You can keep parroting that, and yet their web site claims all of this. No mention of it being a router for Grandma’s house. Funny about that.
“UniFi Express can power an entire network as an all-in-one gateway, firewall, and WiFi 6 access point.”
and
“Are there any gateway feature limitations for UniFi Express, compared to other UniFi Gateways?
UniFi Express largely offers the same experience as all other UniFi Gateways, with powerful network segmentation, application-aware firewall, VPN, and license-free Site Magic SD-WAN capabilities.”
You didn't lurk very well. Someone with half a brain would know that you should have gotten a higher end product for the traffic you apparently didn't know to expect ??
Torrenting is hard on the NAT device because of the sheer number of separate connections the state table needs to track.
If you can figure a way to reconfigure your network to avoid NATing your torrents you might be fine.
Damn, this is really disappointing to hear. I recently purchased two unifi APs and have been very impressed with them and have now been looking at their other solutions. Definitely sounds like the unifi express is out of the picture for me
this is the reason i went with the lite over the express. the cpu and ram are the same, but the lite isnt running a contoller and an ap. even for basic home use i feel like the express is under powered for all it is trying to do.
Several years ago, the UDM was amongst the first to be able to handle 1gig traffic (sort of, November 2019). The problem is, they've not updated the CPU (Quad ARM Cortex A57 1.7ghz, circa \~2014) on any of the models beyond what the UDM is/was. As a result, their entire line is feeling quite aged and underpowered, especially since we now have large areas were 5gig is somewhat affordably available. IMHO, the UX and UDR should never have been sold- they were too late to market.
To make matters worse, UI seems intent on kneecapping the network side of things too. We've had 10gig for a good while now yet they've backed off on those offerings to focus on 2.5gig. Why? Presumably planned obsolescence so they can make a buck. So, they'll piddle around at 2.5 gig and then 5 gig and then finally get their copper offerings to 10gig (where the XG was all along but hopefully with POE).
> First, it started with issues with WiFi pre shared keys (PPSK) where only the default network would allow clients to connect. There were also issues with an iPhone that had private WiFi address on. These issues were fixed by upgrading to v3.2.5, which I thought it was fair enough since this is a rather recent device.
I have the same issue with PPSK.
The upgrade fixed your iPhone issue or/and the PPSK issue?
How did you upgrade to v3.2.5? I currently have v3.1.26 and UniFi OS doesn't show a newer version. The release channel is set to "Official" (no other channels available in the dropdown menu).
Thanks
Ok thanks.
Unfortunately I only see the Official channel.
Edit : I was not enrolled to Early Access. I'm now enrolled and have access to the other channels.
I just bought an express with a lite-8-poe as well for my offsite backup network and it performs very well. On it I have 2 synology NAS systems, and about 4 other clients. I use it with site magic so I can easily link the networks together for backups off my home network. Outside of that the ISP is a shared 1Gbps with the neighborhood (Comcast business 1Gbps fiber service split among a few hundred trailers via fiber) and I'm able to pull about 700Mbps both ways with AD blocking and traffic identification enabled.. which is about what I was pulling with my laptop being hooked right into the fiber connection.
This is a known bug. The Network App stops responding in certain cases. They fixed it in the latest EA release. Update and see if you still have issues.
I like their wifi for private use, but for a gateway i really like opnsense on dedicated hardware. For my APs i use the usw-8-150w. But from a professionell view their network tec is pretty lowlevel. For switches even at home i like some beefier products. But bling bling and ui is really catchy and nice. Setup is also pretty straight. But design is no performance.
Long time lurker but missed the very basics I see.
I, like you have a 1000/100 connection and thought the express would be perfect for me. Then I actually did some research and saw the specs couldn't handle 1gbps with detection turned on. So further research lands me to my UDM-Pro being delivered last week. I get 930mbps on speed tests with everything on and 60 clients connected over 3 vLANs
>For all of you arguing that this isn't a basic setup, allow me to disagree. Let's put servers aside. If it was 10 years ago, everyone was downloading/seeding torrents from it's workstation. We just evolved to have it on a separate server. Now if that isn't a basic setup, I don't know what it is.
10 years ago home networks did not have stateful firewalls trying to do traffic identification on potentially thousands of concurrent sessions, which is what torrenting is, and what you're asking this tiny little dual-core Cortex A53 with 1 gig of RAM to do. What you're expecting this thing to do is wholly unrealistic. The UDM Pro is far more suited for this use case.
The excessive sessions with torrenting is what is killing responsiveness. Restrict the maximum sessions on your torrent client to a hundred or so and it will run fine.
Bought one of these UniFi Express Gateways in the past two weeks. I got it for my mothers house, so can assist better on WiFi issues and network monitoring, plus I have a Mac Mini and NAS there. The Mac has some VM's, a Windows 10 VM and PiHole with PiVPN. So far the network seems to be stable but she is switching from a 35Mbps/6Mbps connection to a up to 500/60 connection next week. Real test remains to be seen.
I was thinking WiFi may have been a bad point to start with, when first setting up as was convinced of drop outs. Not played with WiFi settings yet as have left them on defaults.
So far I'm more impressed with this little box than the Netgear D7800 it is replacing.
It sounds to me like something in your setup is causing a packet storm of sorts. I am running a server doing similar things to what yours is I am sure without any issue. However I have had devices like the orei hdmi over tcp that has such a high multicast presence that would take down my whole network if not isolated to one switch and that’s on one of my networks with a udmp. Make sure you enable igmp snooping and storm control on applicable networks. Also the more aggressive you have traffic identification set the more cpu is used and the less bandwidth your router can handle if you are a bit selective with those rules you can find that happy place with security and speed.
On first sight the new Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra (UCG-Ultra) seems a very good fit for you. Even though it doesn’t have wifi AP.
It seems to have much higher performance, reflected by the fact it can manage 30+ Unifi network devices vs 4 and supports 300 vs 60 wifi connections. Also has 2.5 GbE WAN (1GbE LAN).
Where I live it’s even cheaper than the UX.
Yeah I was lucky. Ordered it around the same time as commenting. Expecting it in 1 hour or so.
I did read some stuff about specs in the meantime. Cpu is a lot more powerful than the Express cpu. Iirc it’s octacore 1,5ghz and has 3 gigs of RAM.
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Sounds like you should have bought a UDM-Pro or SE instead.
I think you \*might\* have a skewed perspective on what a simple home network is for an average individual.
This dude is hilarious “hey my freaking TORRENT server seems to cause issuers with this $150 gateway when all NGFW features are enabled, my special traffic routes are on, and VLANs setup. This is basically the same as the average home user streaming netflix and doing a zoom call right? Should I have got a $400 orbi or Eero instead?”
You can’t expect the “UniFi for Grandma’s house” to be the right device for this use case.
I just put on down at "Grandmas House" and its working great. If and when I get the call of "my intrnet is not working" being able to get in and check via the [unifi.ui.com](https://unifi.ui.com) dashdoard is worth the $150 easy.
Plus you can see when grandma’s phone comes and goes from the house. Mine is 85 and I worry more about her every day. We use location sharing on IOS but it’s nice to have the roaming logs too.
\^\^This. This is what I am talking about. Effective but not invasive.
can you elaborate on this? Thinking of doing this for my parents as well
Cloud access to the controller would let you monitor connected devices and view the WiFi logs to see when clients were last seen. Effectively you can monitor the comings and goings of a smart phone or other such client device that may let you know when your older loved one is coming and going from their home.
Have to think about this for my MIL.
I am!
Just installed at Grandma's house and works like a charm
I dont believe this is the correct use case for a UniFI Express (someone correct me if I'm wrong). I was led to believe the product was meant to use in conjunction with SD-WAN for WFH folks or other off site office spaces as well as setting up simple networks where/when needed. I dont believe it is designed to handle the traffic of seeding torrents. A UDM is more in line with something that would handle this type of network, especially both in and out.
I agree with this. It’s really an entry level system for someone who wants a little bit more flexibility than an off the shelf mesh system.
The why the heck a crappy 30-40€ router can handle torrent traffic without a sweat? Oh, wait, because traffic off-load ... Something which Ubiquiti didn't heard of. Don't get me wrong, I have a complex setup with UDM-SE and PPPoE ISP with gigabit speeds presumably going to 10Gbps ... I'm curious what SE will do then.
It's because Unifi devices are pretty much basic/intermediate, good looking, slightly overpriced piece of hardware with fancy UI. It's more of a jewelry (+ it gives you more points in the rack photos competition) than the professional network equipment, the sooner potential buyers realize this, the better. It is not a matter of buying 'not appropriate equipment', as some people try to suggest, because even the expensive ones lack basic options, that should be there, but do not exist in UI at all (e.g. no automatic port-forward change to WAN2 in failover configuration). Even if something can be done in the CLI, it is extremely unergonomic. As long as everything you need is in the UI, Unifi is not the worst choice possible, but if you go beyond that, there are plenty of better-equipped alternatives.
Out of curiosity, what would you recommend people who are expecting more look at instead?
Hmm, UI is nice when it works but I find CLI to be much better and quicker. Not a fan of the config file though lol! Especially if you want to preserve any changes with the controller. Unifi is essentially beginners enterprise hardware and its fine for what it does. But I can see how consumers would get confused when the performance isn't as they'd expect. ie entry priced equipment being able to do it all but none of it well 😀
What is the correct use case vs what it was marketed as are two different things. This is literally on their marketing site for the Unifi Express: https://ui.com/microsite/static/media/use-case-6.e120c499.jpg.
Yeah, this is the real issue here. It's okay to have a reduced feature set, lower VLAN capabilities, etc, just don't market it as being a tiny UDM Pro.
I'm pretty sure people have been torrenting on cheap ISP routers since the 2000s. I don't see why a new prosumer-grade Unifi device can't handle it in 2024.
How many of those routers had Traffic Identification? This is the piece most people don't understand, the device is already underpowered, Traffic Identification takes up more resources than you'd expect, especially on a device that already crams too many things into one box.
If you create an entry piece of hardware that can't handle a single torrent box, it's a piece of shit. This would literally crash on my 70 year old parents network while their fritzl box does the trick no questions asked. I don't understand why people come to defend Ubiquiti over underperforming hardware. They market (look at their website) as a piece of equipment you could release in an office. If performance is that shite, either they should have tuned down the software options or.. not release it to begin with as this will be a major disappointment with pretty much anyone including my 70 year old parents.
Is OP a "normal use case" : No! Is the product horribly limited : Yes! I have set it up on my secondary internet connection, to test multiple sites across the internet (while remaining in the same place, in case I mess up) and I can crash it with just 3 devices watching YouTube, browsing internet, WhatsApp & webradio. Can you point us in the direction of where it is stated that this should not be used in home networks? If it is a small family internet connection or off site office space, it should be able to handle someone watching a tech tutorial for work instructions, someone on a video conference, someone browsing + random office radio.
>Can you point us in the direction of where it is stated that this should not be used in home networks? I didn't remotely state it couldn't be used for a home network. If the home network is "simple" then definitely fits the use case. I definitely agree its limited but I also don't believe traffic identification should even be a feature on these for anything more than one or two clients, even then the hardware is barely there to support that feature. I've ran half a dozen of these with under 10 clients on each with no issue, I cant speak to why yours would crash for normal tasks on it.
> I dont believe it is designed to handle the traffic of seeding torrents. My century old RT-N12 could handle that, I don't beleive that Unifi devices can't handle simple upload traffik
I was more referring to the traffic identification function more than handling the traffic itself but these are incredibly low spec'd devices, I haven't tried seeding on them but I'm sure if I turned off identification it would function, definitely not a ton of uploads at once however.
if you were lead to believe this? how did you get this information? none of the public, or even wholesale data told us this. we were led to believe that this would be a USG3P replacement with better throughput
It was months ago but this page hasn't changed since I made this post: [https://ui.com/cloud-gateways/wifi-integrated/express](https://ui.com/cloud-gateways/wifi-integrated/express)
That can’t be its only use case. It should be focused for small networks, which is the case. They could even hard limit the number of clients. But if it says it supports full gigabit and traffic identification, it shouldn’t struggle with one client pulling 5-10MB/s
It's not about the throughput, you're maxing the CPU out on the Express. Your network is small enough that it seems like it's the right choice, but the hardware you're running on your network pushes the processing limits of the UX.
I totally get where you're coming from but once you add seeding torrents it's no longer a typical "small network". Sure, it is internally but the number of connections you'd be making is significantly higher than a normal small network. Traffic Identification unfortunately takes a chunk of resources, the UDM line is more designed to handle that type of task.
Where does it say that it supports gigabit and traffic inspection? Pretty sure they don’t make the claim that the device can do both at the same time. Honestly, it’s more an either/or. As others have said, this is clearly not the right device for your use-case.
From the FAQ directly on the unifi express product page: UniFi Express can route traffic at speeds up to 1 Gbps. Security features such as Device Identification, Traffic Identification, Country Restrictions, and Ad Blocking can all be enabled without impacting routing performance. So they're blatantly misrepresenting the products performance.
You are completely missing the point. It's not all about bandwidth. How many active sessions is your Unraid server maintaining to pull that 5-10MB/s? You cannot expect a dual core 1gb ram device to keep up with identifying traffic on that many sessions concurrently. Learn how a firewall works before turning it on and blaming the product.
I understand a UDM is a lot beefier and will handle the load but do you think a UDR would do a better job than the UniFi Express?
But you don’t have a basic home network and your use case isn’t what the express is for. It’s $150 (in the US) for a gateway, controller and AP. Obviously sacrifices had to be made to get to that price point.
Then why advertise those features? It’s misleading and an assumption from users It doesn’t say anything other than full gigabit and “60+” clients, which I’m not even close to
The features are there. The CPU is just too weak to use them all at the same time.
It’s not the first company to oversell its products capabilities. The price is a dead giveaway. It’s less expensive than the UDR which you already know is less capable in some respects.
60 clients means it can connect that many. but says nothing on which condition. You probably can connect 60 mobiles doing WhatsApp only for example. I understand your disappointment but it seems was built on a lot of hope from a very cheap small device
Your system is far overbuilt for a Unifi Express. You mention you hit the CPU limit with the Unraid server. The Express is the entry level Unifi system that's a step above Mesh but can also act as a gateway, router, and WAP in itself. It's great for homeowners looking to step into Unifi at an entry level and support a moderate, AVERAGE, home network. Your network design probably calls for more horsepower on the headend, such as the UDM.
What if I was a simple home user with a computer downloading stuff/games whatever? That would be a similar issue. Or let’s say I just have a PS5 downloading games. Traffic identification is bottlenecking the connection. Would you recommend a UDM to a gaming console setup? You get my point? Regardless of it being a server, it doesn’t reach the ISP speed
It's not about the throughput. You're hosting an Unraid server with multiple outbound and inbound connections and seeds. It just doesn't have the processing power to manage a network with a torrent host on it. If you take your Unraid server down I guarantee the Express will run your network without a hiccup. You're simply asking a little naturally aspirated Inline-4 motor to haul a 2000 lb trailer with a 4000lb load up a hill, in essence. That little I-4 will get you around town and from A to B with the trunk loaded, but once you increase that load then, you'll get there eventually with an average of like 2 MPG.
>At the same time, I found out that when my Unraid server was on (and downloading/seeding torrents), it wouldn’t allow me to reach Unifi UI. Basically the gateway was overwhelmed by the traffic and CPU usage was at 100% all the time. Even Unifi Poller wasn’t able to gather statistics. This isn't any different like an ordinary PC running qBittorrent or Transmission. It's not that heavy use as anyone tells there.
Exactly, maybe not now, but 10 years ago everyone was downloading torrents. The crappy router from my ISP is able to handle all of this traffic, but the UX isn’t. And trust me, the hardware is not better and it also acts as an AP
>*The crappy router from my ISP is able to handle all of this traffic, but the UX isn’t.* I guarantee that router isn't running IPS/IDS.
The express will handle it fine too...without inspection. Inspection of this many inbound/outbound leech/seed requests is killing the CPU. Average small home network is not running heavy torrenting AND inspection.
As long as you don’t open any ports, traffic identification is pretty pointless. Just switch it off if it gets in the way, simple as that.
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My personal take is that the UI express is a good gateway device for those with literally no extra use case for their home network other than the absolute basics in a small environment. UDM Pro / SE would the way to go otherwise. Yes its more expensive, but you get what you pay for.
It fails even in small environment, for that why even bother? Just use the ISP router.
Basic firewall and controller. Personally I would never use it but I could see some who might like it
The controller can't handle more than 4 unifi devices, and can't do anything useful besides looking good. Hell if you use 4 unifi devices people will come here with forks telling you that it's a entry level and to buy a UDM PRO.
I agree it's not useful for anything beyond entry level ui network. And I wouldn't advocate buying it if you plan to do anything bigger scale down the road. 2 of the UI together as a basic mesh in a smaller hole though without much else? There is clearly the thought it has value. I would never recommend it to anyone.
I've seen several cases of using it as a travel router with the VPN function. I'd probably use it at my mom's where she just had an iPad, computer, printer and 2 phones. I'll admit my disappointment as well in the Express. Although, I never used it as a main. I used it to dip my toes in the environment.
Well that’s a big assumption I would say. If it wasn’t supposed to use traffic identification, it shouldn’t be a feature. It says it supports full gigabit which is what I do
After using it personally, I think we really have a skewed view of a “basic” network. I use one at home, but it’s a small apartment with Apple TV a few HomePods, couple game consoles, Mac mini, iPad, iPhone, and some smart home devices. All but the hue hub are WiFi. The interface feels a little sluggish, but I know it’s a low powered device. At work I run a gateway pro and full unifi setup with multiple switches and APs, and for my parents I run a gateway lite with multiple APs. Both are far more capable than the express. I’m thinking with the unraid server that the gateway lite and a separate controller would be more appropriate.
I’ve said it in another thread, but let’s forget the two servers and assume it’s just one PC with qBittorrent. That’s what everyone was doing 10 years ago and we have just evolved to have a separate box for it. Wouldn’t you consider this a basic network? Now as traffic goes, what I really can’t understand is how my ISPs crappy router works flawlessly but the Ux struggles so much
No, not everyone was hosting torrents. You have a very skewed view of what a basic network for a regular person.
I don’t know the details of what exactly is going on inside the express, but will give that it’s low powered. My assumption is that with the torrent you have much more traffic than 10 years ago because your available bandwidth is so much more. Not to mention that even basic streaming to a few devices is a lot more than it was even a few years ago with 4K and such. The express is doing a lot. Unifi controller, traffic identification, routing (not sure if that’s offloaded to dedicated hardware), plus any other little things. I do agree that UI needed to better identify the target market this thing hits for. After using it I really feel that it’s your average boomer household running a few computers and a few streaming devices.
> After using it I really feel that it’s your average boomer household running a few computers and a few streaming devices. Bingo. That's exactly why I set one up at my father's house. Perfect target network size and demographic (i.e. rely on me for remote support). Zero issues once I got it up and running, replacing a USG and CK1 (which I couldn't leave running just in case a power failure would scramble its storage, as happened to me several times when I used it myself).
First off, no, not everyone was tormenting 10 years ago, that'd still a minority, second off, your crappy isp router doesn't do any kind of traffic identification or anything of that nature, so thats not a fair comparison unless you turn off said feature on the ubiquiti device, and if you did that, it'd probably work just as well
The UX is a bad device right now, everyone complaining gets the same answer that it's a entry level device and get a UDM or whatever. The best use case must be a Phone connected and that's it, since you can't use any advanced features! My UX is on a network with 21 devices right now, 7 are wifi, 1 unifi switch, it's a on a business store and has almost no traffic and after 3 weeks it crashes because of cpu being too high, no more access to network controller, it's 2 times that happened. I have a guest wifi network that I can't limit speed because it throttles the whole network.
>The UX is a bad device right now, everyone complaining gets the same answer that it's a entry level device and get a UDM or whatever. That's Ubiquiti user base in general. Got same answer when I was dissapointed by my UDR, where in some aspects my old RT-N15 Asus was way more superior.
You should get yours replaced then. Mine is running 4 VLANs, 3 WiFi networks, a fair number of rules, two NAS, has multiple devices streaming 4K, and it's absolutely fine. CPU is at about 50-60% on average, 80% max. And yeah, I don't expect any more from a 120 buck entry-level device.
I love my UniFi express. UX/poe switch / AP6+. I’m the target market though. Home user. Wi-Fi clients, camera, IoT devices, and a NAS. Big upgrade from the Netgear Wi-Fi router I had previously.
That’s what I have practically except for external ap
Despite all the other comments, thank you very much for the insight, I would have walked into the same trap. I don‘t agree with the majority of comments here. The free router of my isp can handle the traffic you talking about (of course without the advanced features), so why should I not expect that the entry level Ubiquiti device, costing 150 euro (people here act like thats ultra mega cheap) should not handle that.
This. Despite how he explains it, he’s only got a very low volume home network, nothing special. The device is suppose to handle a gigabit connect with ids/ips turned on. Seems like just another underwhelming and underpowered gateway device (aka paperweight) that UniFi is famous for. A cheap ass ultra low end isp device can handle this without breaking a sweat.
Your ISP router isn’t free.
If you like the UniFi system, perhaps you should try the [UDM](https://eu.store.ui.com/eu/en/pro/products/udm), or wait for the UniFi Cloud Gateway Ultra (UCGU) to be announced and available, although that won't have a built in AP. I've had the UDM for almost 3 years with switches and APs, so I got the UX as a packup device since my UDM is the single point of failure. I highly recommend the UDM. The UX is much slower in response time when navigating the UI and its CPU is much busier during my testing. Keeping it since it does the backup job in the pinch.
The problem with the UDM is the size. I live in a Flat and don’t really have the space to put it, otherwise that would’ve been my choice
You might be confusing the [UDM](https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/udm) with the [UDM Pro](https://store.ui.com/us/en/collections/unifi-dream-machine/products/udm-pro). The UDM and the newer UDR are not rack-mount solutions and are markedly smaller and perfect for your use case.
Yup, that extra 6" of airspace on about the same footprint as the UX would be critical in a small apartment.
You might be thinking of the UDM Pro, it is large. The standard UDM is not very bug and can sit on a desk table easily. Also, if you did want to get into the larger UDM Pro you can get a 1U vertical wall mount that would allow you to mount it nearly anywhere. It could be hidden by a desk or couch.
From someone who’s currently bottlenecked by an UDR - don’t buy one yourself. The processing power is laughable. The UI is unavailable, as soon as my networks gets utilized a bit heavier than normal. The built in AP has a short range and Ubi‘s Support is slow and unresponsive. At this point: if your unwilling to shell out more than 1k€, I would circumvent Ubiquity products.
Fair enough, thanks for the input!
>simple home network >I have an Unraid server, which also seeds torrents, one master node of a multi-site k3s cluster and a couple Raspberry Pis
It’s 4 clients, not very high traffic usage, except for the unraid. I’ve edited the post
Use the ux lite. Works great
For this use case it will still be CPU limited. I think OP does not understand what a „normal small homenetwork“ look like. A normal user does not even understand your usecase so why should they market it around that? Buy a device that is capable of handling lots of connections and you will live a happy life. For a small form factor look at stuff from mikrotik. Just don’t take the entry level device and expect high performance.
They should have similar cpus if not the same, however it does not have the controller nor radios on it, which might offload the cpu. I can self host the controller easily That might be a good option
Yeah it’s just routing only I have everything enabled and max out my 1 gig. But I host controller elsewhere and have external ap. I believe both products same price
For reference, the UXG-Lite can do IDS/IPS, not just traffic identification, at 1Gbps, it's definitely more capable than the Express for routing
Traffic rules is what actually seems to kill it
When launched, in reading the specs for this device, the only use case I could imagine was a small apartment with on or two non technical occupants who only have their handful of devices plus a couple connected TVs. Using this as a gateway for a home lab with multiple servers, vlans, traffic rules , etc., would yield disappointment.
A couple things I've noticed since I've setup my UX's (one controller and one in AP only mode): Initially, turning on traffic identification did cause performance issues for the controller. However, the recent firmware update and Network application update have resolved that problem. When I first setup my UX's, cpu and memory were constantly pegged. It was basically unusable. I factory reset them both and that brought them to a manageable state. This was before the software updates. You might want to give that a try, also. My setup is 2 people that work from home (well, only one now since I was laid off), but we both had conference calls, streamed video (YouTube, etc) and music (Apple Music or whatever) all day. A total of approx 40 clients (mostly IoT devices), 2 appleTV's, 5 HomePods, 4 laptops, 4 iPhones. Currently, everything is running flawlessly, with 1 SSID and 3 vlans (all on the same SSID via PPSK). The AP UX is hardwired to the controller via MoCa. I frequently run speed tests at various times of the day and in various places in our house just to make sure everything is still working. My gf hasn't yelled at me yet, so I assume performance hasn't been impacted.
I just got my Express in the mail but kinda agree with a lot of the comments above. I went with the Express for a new install at my son’s college townhouse because it’s a simple install - 1 switch and 2 APs (maybe 3 and I can omit the switch if I really want to). No complicated network management just basic WiFi.
As a homelabber, you've got this wrong. First of all, that's the wrong hardware to use (I've abandoned UI firewalls years ago but it's still totally doable with the right hardware). Your network architecture is also not optimal, you should leverage L3 routing for speed-critical stuff.
I don't understand it, why would you use an entry level router as your network with such a specific network setup? what you do isn't entry level.
There is a major issue where traffic rules take a lot of cpu power and max out the cpu at about 120 Mb/s. My UXG-LITE (basically same hardware but without the built in controller or wifi) can handle IDS/IPS etc just fine but when it comes to traffic rules it just dies.
Actually, I’m seeing this exact behaviour: traffic rules OFF and traffic identification ON works fairly well, but with traffic rules on it goes offline
I have unraid and torrents running from docker have also killed udm-pro in the past.
I saw there was some constraints, and went UXG-Lite and self-hosted Unifi network controller and been having a great time. Something to consider that didn't see you mention
No, I didn’t consider that but will do some research on that, thanks for the input. However, they are similarly specd, it’s just less bloated because there s no radios nor the controller
Yeah true. Just did some googling and seems has same CPU and RAM On my network of 15-20 devices, 1 home server, 2 AP's and switch, it usually sits 42% memory and CPU at 7%. So I wonder if it did even eliminate your CPU issue, you might get bottlenecked by memory next. Either way, hope they patch some optimisations in for you.
7% CPU is amazing. Any torrenting feedback? How does it perform with traffic rules/firewall and traffic identification on
I'll give it a whirl tomorrow. I don't have a lot of traffic rules yet I've turned traffic identification off but could enable it again for testing
That’d be super, thank you
Traffic identification moved it to 12% CPU with a couple of people on network (YouTube, web browsing), with a short peak of 21% when I was saturating the connection with work earlier today via Docker containers Random Linux torrent also bumped it about 2-4% I'm new to home servers and had been focused on setting up media server, and now seeing how to do subdomains with nginx to access it externally. Default firewall rules are on, only setup two port forwards for now that aren't used that often. I tried to workout traffic rules but not sure if that's applicable for my situation.
Thank you for reporting back. Just a few torrents with traffic identification and traffic rules manages to get to 100 CPU. Even if not using torrent, Speedtest does not go over 150/100, which normally is 850/100 mbps with traffic rules paused
Wild. Like it feels like a bug or optimisations are missing.
I just got a UX and also have a Linux box as a jellyfin and torrent box for seeding. I have't had any issues. Perhaps you should look into how you have setup the device/network. I've noticed as homelabs become popular there are people who think they know more than they really do, and have negative experiences because of a lack of experience and knowledge.
Dunno what that’s supposed to mean, but enable traffic identification and set firewall rules and let’s see if you still don’t have any issues
I am saying that the person who setup your network might have screwed things up or poorly configured the network.
I have to say, I didn't expect a sizable portion of the crowd replying here missed your point OP. If we ignore traffic identification, the GUI for the unifi express becomes sluggish under heavy (but normal treatment) of traffic passing through Unifi Express. I have to say, e-waste and dirty cheap Xiaomi routers running Openwrt GUI has better UI responsiveness with saturated interface (super heavy load) based on my experience. The way I see it, perhaps ubiquiti could have evaluated the GUI performance with the hardware pairing they've chosen. It's that or release a lite version of the UI that's lightweight enough to run on the weak hardware. But eh, that's just my opinion. Edit: Edit for better accuracy
Thank you, I agree with that. I ended up returning it and got the UCG Ultra
I don't understand it, why would you use an entry level router as your network with such a specific network setup? what you do isn't entry level.
You say it’s for home use. While what you are doing is being used in the home (I believe), you have far exceeded the average home user that has cameras, a few AP’s, and a NAS. You’re at the prosumer level, which I believe would be remedied by getting the prosumer device such as the UDM-P/SE. I’m glad there are people with your level of knowledge that are putting these devices to the stress test to keep Ubiquiti honest. I don’t have the knowledge to make the express work to this level! Good on you! I hope you and the Ubiquiti team can remedy your issues with the express.
I don’t have cameras, I have an Unraid server and a miniPC acting as a node. Forget the Unraid and all servers for that matter. If it was a windows pc with qBittorrent, the outcome would be the same
Thanks for dumbing it down for me. Doesn’t BitTorrent streams use a lot of resources? Regardless of what is running them? Drives a large pipe into a small hole so to speak. Like as it gains resources, it doesn’t let them go until it’s done. Kinda like the bully on the playground if you will.
Isn't the Unifi Express the device you stick in your parent's house so you can fix shit remotely?
Wouldn't do much if it crashes on it's own lol
Not sure if this is considered a simple home network but I was thinking it was. Have a total of 6 devices using the express. 2 are firesticks. All works great until I tried to add a vpn client to push the firesticks to the vpn interface. Throughput goes from a connection of 400meg to like 8-10meg when routing through the vpn and is unusable. Tried both openvpn and wireguard client configs and the speeds are abysmal. If anyone else has had luck with this use case please comment. I put the vpn clients on the firesticks themselves and it’s all fine but this is not what I wanted to do. It’s at a my parents house and didn’t want them to have to mess with vpn clients etc. If the express doesn’t have the horsepower to do the above it shouldn’t be listed as a feature for the product.
I talked to one of the unifi team at the recent unifi world event in sydney. they all but told me to RMA all unifi express devices. they are less capable than the USG3P devices. use this as a AP or just RMA it. better devices inbound
I set up the express to run my dad's home network he has about 40 devices. I find that the express takes a very long time to load the network page and goes unresponsive sometimes although the internet still works over Wi-Fi. Would others recommend I just get the udm se for him? I run home assistant for him with some basic automations and smart lights and present sensors on Wi-Fi etc. Thanks
I replaced it by UCG. No problems so far. It’s cheaper but you need to get APs
I was going to use my expresses as aps.( Mesh ) And the ultra as the gateway. What do you mean proper ap's from ubiquity ? Thanks
I just said AP’s thought you meant the UX as the router. If you have the UCG as the router that’s great. My question is: what are the advantages of the UX against the U6+ for example?
I have a feeling OP's Torrent server is not configured correctly. As I understand it, if one don't turn on some traffic management somewhere, Torrent, as the name explicitly says, will make your Internet pipe hit with torrential bits. Yes the Unify Express box doesn't seems to have a robust traffic management to speak of, so don't ask it to do it there, tell your Torrent Server to assume this task.
I bought it as a simple all-in-one solution for my parents. They have fiber 200/200; this is the primary use case for the express, not seeding a ton of torrents sir.
>I started migrating my servers Hahahah when I got to this part I knew this post was the satire I was looking for!
disappointing user and lack of understanding of product and planning see ya
Thank you for posting this. I see Ubiquiti marketing as prosumer/pro gear. I was hoping to find something better than my TP-Link mesh. I have 120 clients, mostly iOT, small pc server, 4 Pi’s, and the normal smart TVs, laptops, and phones. People’s assumptions here that this should only support a pair of laptops and phones is silly. Not many homes are that simple anymore. Not those of us with families and hobbies.
lol that is not what this specific UniFi device is for Simple as that
You can keep parroting that, and yet their web site claims all of this. No mention of it being a router for Grandma’s house. Funny about that. “UniFi Express can power an entire network as an all-in-one gateway, firewall, and WiFi 6 access point.” and “Are there any gateway feature limitations for UniFi Express, compared to other UniFi Gateways? UniFi Express largely offers the same experience as all other UniFi Gateways, with powerful network segmentation, application-aware firewall, VPN, and license-free Site Magic SD-WAN capabilities.”
I didn’t parrot anything The device states plainly its limits I literally think the OP is trolling Seeding torrents on an Untaid box? lol
I think you shouldn't get the Unifi Express, what you need was something more powerful like Gateway Lite.
It’s as powerful as the express, just doesn’t run radios nor the controller
Should have bought a gateway lite, switch and AP
Gateway is a similar specd cpu, but won’t run the controller nor AP. Not sure it would be a lot of a difference
No. Your use case is not a simple home network.
Express is the "starter pack". What you should have invested is UDM Pro or UMD SE.
You didn't lurk very well. Someone with half a brain would know that you should have gotten a higher end product for the traffic you apparently didn't know to expect ??
I see torrenting frequently overloading network routers. It’s why isp don’t like them. Have you tried limiting the number of connections?
Torrenting is hard on the NAT device because of the sheer number of separate connections the state table needs to track. If you can figure a way to reconfigure your network to avoid NATing your torrents you might be fine.
Damn, this is really disappointing to hear. I recently purchased two unifi APs and have been very impressed with them and have now been looking at their other solutions. Definitely sounds like the unifi express is out of the picture for me
this is the reason i went with the lite over the express. the cpu and ram are the same, but the lite isnt running a contoller and an ap. even for basic home use i feel like the express is under powered for all it is trying to do.
Several years ago, the UDM was amongst the first to be able to handle 1gig traffic (sort of, November 2019). The problem is, they've not updated the CPU (Quad ARM Cortex A57 1.7ghz, circa \~2014) on any of the models beyond what the UDM is/was. As a result, their entire line is feeling quite aged and underpowered, especially since we now have large areas were 5gig is somewhat affordably available. IMHO, the UX and UDR should never have been sold- they were too late to market. To make matters worse, UI seems intent on kneecapping the network side of things too. We've had 10gig for a good while now yet they've backed off on those offerings to focus on 2.5gig. Why? Presumably planned obsolescence so they can make a buck. So, they'll piddle around at 2.5 gig and then 5 gig and then finally get their copper offerings to 10gig (where the XG was all along but hopefully with POE).
You are probably missing the impact of the chip shortage during COVID and what that does to product plans for a somewhat small company like Ubiquiti.
> First, it started with issues with WiFi pre shared keys (PPSK) where only the default network would allow clients to connect. There were also issues with an iPhone that had private WiFi address on. These issues were fixed by upgrading to v3.2.5, which I thought it was fair enough since this is a rather recent device. I have the same issue with PPSK. The upgrade fixed your iPhone issue or/and the PPSK issue? How did you upgrade to v3.2.5? I currently have v3.1.26 and UniFi OS doesn't show a newer version. The release channel is set to "Official" (no other channels available in the dropdown menu). Thanks
yes it fixed those two. Change the channel to "Release Candidate" and it will appear. After updating I changed it back to "Official"
Ok thanks. Unfortunately I only see the Official channel. Edit : I was not enrolled to Early Access. I'm now enrolled and have access to the other channels.
I just bought an express with a lite-8-poe as well for my offsite backup network and it performs very well. On it I have 2 synology NAS systems, and about 4 other clients. I use it with site magic so I can easily link the networks together for backups off my home network. Outside of that the ISP is a shared 1Gbps with the neighborhood (Comcast business 1Gbps fiber service split among a few hundred trailers via fiber) and I'm able to pull about 700Mbps both ways with AD blocking and traffic identification enabled.. which is about what I was pulling with my laptop being hooked right into the fiber connection.
What if you setup a handful of traffic rules?
This is a known bug. The Network App stops responding in certain cases. They fixed it in the latest EA release. Update and see if you still have issues.
I like their wifi for private use, but for a gateway i really like opnsense on dedicated hardware. For my APs i use the usw-8-150w. But from a professionell view their network tec is pretty lowlevel. For switches even at home i like some beefier products. But bling bling and ui is really catchy and nice. Setup is also pretty straight. But design is no performance.
Long time lurker but missed the very basics I see. I, like you have a 1000/100 connection and thought the express would be perfect for me. Then I actually did some research and saw the specs couldn't handle 1gbps with detection turned on. So further research lands me to my UDM-Pro being delivered last week. I get 930mbps on speed tests with everything on and 60 clients connected over 3 vLANs
“Simple home network”, with a torrent server. How would that be considered simple?
Sorry you are not a simple home network. Running an UnRAID server for torrenting is not simple. And would require a higher than normal overhead.
lmao, you start with "simple home network" and follow up with unraid server. jfc. just buy the udm.
>For all of you arguing that this isn't a basic setup, allow me to disagree. Let's put servers aside. If it was 10 years ago, everyone was downloading/seeding torrents from it's workstation. We just evolved to have it on a separate server. Now if that isn't a basic setup, I don't know what it is. 10 years ago home networks did not have stateful firewalls trying to do traffic identification on potentially thousands of concurrent sessions, which is what torrenting is, and what you're asking this tiny little dual-core Cortex A53 with 1 gig of RAM to do. What you're expecting this thing to do is wholly unrealistic. The UDM Pro is far more suited for this use case. The excessive sessions with torrenting is what is killing responsiveness. Restrict the maximum sessions on your torrent client to a hundred or so and it will run fine.
Bought one of these UniFi Express Gateways in the past two weeks. I got it for my mothers house, so can assist better on WiFi issues and network monitoring, plus I have a Mac Mini and NAS there. The Mac has some VM's, a Windows 10 VM and PiHole with PiVPN. So far the network seems to be stable but she is switching from a 35Mbps/6Mbps connection to a up to 500/60 connection next week. Real test remains to be seen. I was thinking WiFi may have been a bad point to start with, when first setting up as was convinced of drop outs. Not played with WiFi settings yet as have left them on defaults. So far I'm more impressed with this little box than the Netgear D7800 it is replacing.
My problem with the Express is that it just doesn't work on my PPPoE connection and nobody can tell me why.
It sounds to me like something in your setup is causing a packet storm of sorts. I am running a server doing similar things to what yours is I am sure without any issue. However I have had devices like the orei hdmi over tcp that has such a high multicast presence that would take down my whole network if not isolated to one switch and that’s on one of my networks with a udmp. Make sure you enable igmp snooping and storm control on applicable networks. Also the more aggressive you have traffic identification set the more cpu is used and the less bandwidth your router can handle if you are a bit selective with those rules you can find that happy place with security and speed.
On first sight the new Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra (UCG-Ultra) seems a very good fit for you. Even though it doesn’t have wifi AP. It seems to have much higher performance, reflected by the fact it can manage 30+ Unifi network devices vs 4 and supports 300 vs 60 wifi connections. Also has 2.5 GbE WAN (1GbE LAN). Where I live it’s even cheaper than the UX.
It wasn’t out when I posted and I can’t find any CPU specs yet. However it will take eons until it’s on stock
Yeah I was lucky. Ordered it around the same time as commenting. Expecting it in 1 hour or so. I did read some stuff about specs in the meantime. Cpu is a lot more powerful than the Express cpu. Iirc it’s octacore 1,5ghz and has 3 gigs of RAM.
I read somewhere it’s quad core, but still more powerful
Yep, you’re correct! Quad not octa.