The Unifi switches themselves aren’t 元 native, so inter-VLAN routing is done with the assistance of the actual Unifi router hardware, but you define all the network boundaries through the controller. You can segregate traffic on your LAN into routed VLANs and centrally redefine which ports on which switches are on which VLANs. Even switch port configurations are centrally managed-you can define a port configuration profile on the controller for, say, ports that you want to use MAC-based 802.1X authentication and a specific native VLAN and PoE, then apply that profile to specific ports on multiple switches. VLANs are managed through the controller rather than on individual switches. This means firewall rules for both your WAN and LAN segments are managed through the controller. “Software-defined networking” is a marketing term only slightly less offensive than “the cloud” and “big data.” But it applies here: pretty much everything about a Unifi deployment except its physical cabling can be centrally managed, changed, and updated through the controller application. (I mean, OK, it’s not strictly required, but without it you’ve wasted your money buying Unifi gear instead of just getting plain APs and managed switches.)Įnlarge / The Unifi controller doesn't gobble up resources if you want to run it virtualized or, as we're doing, containerized. If you have both wired and wireless Unifi gear, the controller is effectively mandatory.
#EDGEROUTER UNIFI CONTROLLER FULL#
While you can do some setup and management tasks without using the controller (primarily with the company’s iOS and Android app), you must use the controller software if you want to exploit the full capabilities of the system. The controller can be run on bare metal, in a virtual machine or container, or on a specialized PoE-powered dongle. Rather than logging into each individual switch and AP to make configuration changes, the preferred way to manage the whole setup is via the Unifi Controller application (there’s an online demo you can play with if you’re interested in exploring past my screenshots, which I definitely recommend). The key selling point of the whole Unifi system is its central management, and the large-scale configuration and topology changes that can be rolled out from that. This is software-defined networking, apparently