Unifi Express initial observations

I bought a Unifi Express to upgrade my parents in law from an old orbi mesh system that I handed down to them. I’m hoping this will improve their network, and allow me to remotely help them more easily.

After receiving the device, I decided to first test it out in my network to see if it was a viable replacement for my USG-3P and my RPI4-4GB. TL;DR: it is not.

My setup: 1x U6 Lite 1x AC-AP Lite 1x AC-Mesh 1x Nano HD 1x USW-8-60W 1x Lite 8 POE 1x Flex Mini 1x USG-3P 1x Raspberry PI 4-4GB running pihole, Homebridge, controller 1x Raspberry PI zeroW running redundant pihole and critical redundant homebridge items Centurylink Symmetric gigabit fiber

I have around 35 smart home wifi devices and in generally around 55-60 total clients connected to my network.

I loaded a backup from my RPI4 controller to get started.

My initial attempt just failed, as I tried to like set it up while connected to my existing network. I was also just not used to dealing with a UnifiOS console device and the way that it works.

Loading the backup took like 30 minutes of an NFL football game, so I guess like 1 hour, but I did not time it exactly.

After getting it up and running I can no longer get the network application to load in my browser, it just keeps loading forever.

With nothing else happening, SSH to the console and running TOP shows that unifi-network-b process is using between 20-91% of the CPU. Load averages are around 4.5. The one good thing is that I was getting around the 940Mbps up and down at first, but it always starts out a bit slow at around 45Mbps, then it gets faster after about a second. Today I’m seeing 940 down and 500 up. Not sure if it is ISP or the device just getting slow. When I was using my USG-3P I normally see the symmetric 940 jump up to full speed immediately, without the initial hang up at 45Mbps.

Ultimately, it is nice to see that it can prioritize the internet to do its primary job when it is just completely swamped by relatively modest network I have setup.

This shows me that my true path forward is definitely the UXG-Lite while maintaining my RPI4 for the controller. I have no urgency to replace my USG-3P, but I would like to have the UXG-Lite at least available for shipping before the USG-3P crapps out so I am not caught with my pants down. I do have the ISP router I can pop in for an emergency, but I would like to stay in the ecosystem if possible.

I will post another update after I setup the gateway at my parents in law’s house.