Hi all,
So I’m debating on changing my ISP to Yayzi, however I have a few questions;
How reliable is the service? I’ve been seeing a lot of negative posts, not only on this forum but across the board.
I’m going to be using my own Asus router as a source of connection, however my current line is fiber, so does anyone know of a decent SFP based router.
Are there price difference between contractless and contract monthly payments?
Cheers.
Hi,
I’ll let other customers hopefully back up our downtime claims 
Thanks!
Thanks for your response.
Regarding question 2; I’m a bit skeptical on this, because what happens if either side of the ethernet has problems, is there no way to request the use of the current fiber lead?
Regarding question 3; As mentioned in my original question, I intend on using my own tools/router, my Asus router can definitely handle the speeds, I believe it can handle up to 3.6GBps
Because I intend on setting up a homelab as well, I can understand that there will be some downtime, seeing as City Fiber is new to me, I could only accept so much downtime however, what sort of percentage of downtime could I expect whilst your side is trying to stabilise things?
Thanks.
For the down time, I’ve only have the NTT issue the other day and my own pfsense issues, but my down time has been very small.
Thanks for the feedback mate.
I intend on using pfsense as well at some point, its interesting to learn, but I’m having it on proxmox.
Forgive me, but i’m not sure you have quite got your head around what you’re asking.
Your connection is provided by fibre to an ONT, it is terminated in an RJ45 port because that’s the way the network provider (CF) builds it’s network, just liek every single other pure fibre network in the UK (ignore VM and coax/fibre to coax/RFoG). What you choose to run after that RJ45 port is 100% up to you, you could choose to go 5e or better to fibre via transceiver or media convertor, or even bring it into a managed switch, tag the VLAN and then feed a pure DHCP connection out via copper or fibre, basically as long as you are prepared to support it and fault find, the world is your oyster. CF’s responsibility ends at the XGPON and your ISP’s responsability only goes from the ONT to it’s supplied router officially, beyond that you’re in the ‘good will’ zone. This is the same for almost all residential ISP’s in the UK - i’ve directly or indirectly worked for a fair few of them. So when you’re asking for SFP+ router recommendations, I start to get worried, because they don’t exist in the retail sector, outside of self build, which brings us to your current router…
I’ve almost never found anyone running a homelab with an ASUS router, let alone who openly admits to it. They’re one of the few brands on my NFC list (first word is ‘no’, last word is ‘chance’). As to what it can handle, you don’t mention a model, but I think you may have confused the claimed wireless speed, your bits (b) and bytes (B) as and port speed. 100% it does not have a ‘3.6GB’ port, they don’t exist in the consumer segment at this stage, that’s Gen4 NVME speed. What it might have is a 2.5Gb WAN port and if you are lucky a 2.5Gb LAN port and wifi 6 which could be 3600Mb/s, some consumer SoC routers include 10Gb ports, but again it’s copper, not fibre. Heck, even the top end SoC SMB routers (UDM Pro SE/ER8411) can’t handle NAT as 3.6GB/s, they’re just about capable of 10Gb/s which is about 1.1GB/s.
You don’t get (or thankfully pay for) an SLA’s on almost all residential services. The closest thing you will find in the residential market is the OFCOM voluntary compensation scheme which almost all CF resellers are not part of, those that are part of it and sell CF usually restrict inclusion to OR connections as the system is different. In terms of downtime, other than the issue this week, it’s pretty minimal seemingly. You had the Telehouse power outage, but that impacted hundreds of large companies/ISP’s/hosting providers and obviously isn’t within any ISP’s remit, beyond that it’s the odd blip while changes are made or planned maintenance (which is now back to being notified in advance). On the basis, it’s not massively different to any other ISP I have used over the last 30 years, but as Liam points out, while down time may have been rare over the last 18 months, this is probably the week to find users singing the praises of Yayzi with the downtime we’ve just had.
Hopefully that helps, I don’t like to see someone struggle, but you’re never going to get the answers you actually want with the questions asked the way they are 
Hi,
So thanks for the input.
But yeah, VM provides a coax cable, I’m familiar but then not to SFP, which is why I wanted to convert it to RJ45, yep I know fiber would go to RJ45.
The router I have anyway is the Asus RT AC 3200, I do at some point need to upgrade it.
As to the link speed, apparently I made a mistake, its 3.2Gbps apparently with wireless, though as you said, but I’m all wired except from my phone.
Also, yeah, I know the difference to higher and lower cases, just a typo on my part mate.
Currently for me, I’m on the learning curve towards networking, so the feedback is appreciated, I want to eliminate my ISP router, as I’m guessing its mac bound though you can spoof it, but I also want better speed for what I’m currently paying, which with VM, prices going up and their cap is 1gig download and like 100megs upload.
Which is like £67 now, looking into this ISP it does get my attention, but because of the 20 years or so being on the internet, being with BT and then NTL which was then branded to as we know, VM, having a somewhat decent internet, I can be skeptical, but I will most likely be going for this ISP, simply on the speed and the fact that we can use our own router (without MAC spoofing)
That said, over the 21 years of using PCs, I’ve not had much interaction with the networking side, besides port forwarding, and setting up my subnets (which I’m currently in the process of doing)
Not to wonder off topic anyway, but again, yeah, thanks for the information.
We’ve all done it, networking is one of those areas that can be inexpensive to learn, but can also end up being a rabbit hole, but you will learn new skills and half the fun - when the rest of the family isn’t complaining the wifi is down - is fault finding.
On the router front, you may be right about it being time to consider a change. ASUS stopped pushing firmware for the RTAC-3200 2 years ago this month, see here, Merlin dropped official support a few years earlier. That basically leaves you with DDWRT or the Kong fork, or possibly something like Freshtomato off the top of my head. Either way, the supplied Yayzi router is probably a better bet at this stage as it’s at least getting current security fixes.
I run copper from my ONT back to my router, it’s a short run and honestly no issues for 10Gb (even over 5e) but later this week i’ll be dropping 3 OM4 pairs down and bringing each out on the landing of each floor to branch switches for 2.5/10Gb three floors for backhaul. Also be warned, SFP+ cards are cheap, but they have a habit of preventing your PC reaching lower C states (power saving at idle) and getting a decent modern multi port (4) SFP+ switch isn’t that cheap, personal favourites are the 24p or above Aruba 1930 or the older Dell’s with HDMI stacking.
Unifi switches offer pretty decent value I’ve found. I mean, these things ain’t cheap but you seem to get a lot for your money. For instance there’s the USW-Flex-XG if you want 4x10Gb copper ports or the USW-Aggregation if you want 10 SFP+ ports. That one seems particularly good value at around the £250 mark. Both layer 2 but that should be fine for backbone/aggregation duties.
I have started the 10Gb journey and have one of those switches and am happy with it. Have only got my servers and gateway up at 10Gb so far. Like Avalon, need to whack a 10Gb switch in the loft to pick up feeds from the bedrooms. The plan is to get that other switch I mentioned and put it there. Will then probably just stick with 2.5Gb switches in those rooms with a 10Gb uplink to the loft. Should be overkill enough!
I’m hoping that with the correct physical switch placement, I can get away with the existing CAT6 runs. For the server/router, I use a mixture of CAT6 and DAC.
Cheers.
Keeop
I don’t actually like Unifi switches at all 
There’s a certain element of irony here because I have a UDM Pro and Unifi PoE switch due in this week to play with because it’s a slow week and someone who’s opinion I respect claims they have matured a lot in the last year or two and aren’t the consumer marketed as enterprise tat with unfulfilled promises they were when the UDM Pro launched. I still shake my head at the lack of uplink bandwidth on the onboard UDMP switch and no PoE, but not as much as I shake my head at the SE. The switches have always had quirks, and a less than perfect track record when it comes to random ports going dead. I haven’t seen that happen anything like as often on something from HP/Aruba & Dell.
Looks like we’re going down a similar path in terms of network upgrades
Interesting as I have had no issues with the switches at all. The APs though…!! No, nothing really. Been happy with the kit and I do like the whole single pane of glass admin possibilities. I certainly haven’t had any issues since moving over from Dell/HP switches. I’m not 100% sure on the SE yet which is why I’m currently running it in parallel to Opnsense. I’m pretty sure I will be able to switch over with minimal issue once I can get the additional kit I need to do so.
What I will also say is that the Unifi dev team do seem to be listening and are updating the software all the time. There was a big update recently (early access for now) that finally adds ACLs to the layer 3 switching which has always been a big issue by its absence. There were a load more other bits added in that update too and it’s for that reason that I’m 90% sure I will fully migrate over but keep the Opnsense ready to roll if needed!
My needs aren’t that complicated and I’ve managed to replicate most over to the SE but, yeah, just need a couple more boxes in order to fully isolation test some of the other vLAN/VPN scenarios. The other thing is, to use Unifi Protect - which I like as a CCTV system - you need either the UDM or a dedicated NVR to run the app so to avoid shelling out for the NVR as well, I do need to get that SE running how I need it.
Cheers.
Keeop
ps, oh and then I’m seriously looking at their VOIP solution which again, runs on the SE
Mine had a fun habit of deciding there was a switching loop and disabling the uplink port… which is weird, because it was physically impossible for there to be a switching loop 
that seemed to stop happening after a firmware update somewhere along the way.
I also loved the single-pane-of-glass between the switch and (numerous!) APs here, but recently I ditched the mix of Unifi switches and (very old) Netgear GS724 in the loft and replaced them all with …
… cheap Chinese tat. Which are surprisingly good for the price, IMHO. Of course the backplane bandwidth doesn’t really support two 10Gb SFP+ ports and 4 2.5Gb ports, but they’ll do for me for now. I wanted to go at least 2.5Gb everywhere in case I upgraded to the 2.5Gb service somewhere down the line… and to get rid of the Netgear with its failed fans (because I could hear them from the rooms below the loft!)
Wait till you try LAG etc., they need to be neighbouring ports last I looked which is just one of many odd little quirks.
Ubiquiti made changes and moved at least some of it’s project team out to Poland to entice two key hires a few years back iirc. They also picked up a ex Netgate/PF developer and while initially things were a little rough (throwing SPI at ageing SoC hardware that will just about do gigabit will cripple it’s throughput), a few years on from that things seem marginally more customer focused. They still have a horrible habit of ignoring threads on the forum with what at this stage are obvious and repeatable issues - the wire guard thread for example has run for ages and despite repeated tags/bumps, nobody cares. Also the lack of release parity between the UDMP and UDMP SE doesn’t fill me with happy thoughts going forward, no explanation on why UDMP owners had a longer wait longer for feature parity given the hardware similarities.
Strangely it was me saying how poor the Unifi Protect offering was when I last looked that lead to the new kit arriving - I consider it me renewing my right to hate on Unifi credentials for another 3 years. At launch the UDMP was a mess, protect was a mess and the camera hardware sucked compared to the industry standard stuff like Hikvision or Dahura. The AI detection was dire (cat’s jumping are humans apparently?) and the cameras had a nasty habit of the image turning purple over time. Then you have the doorbell. It doesn’t have PoE… did they forget they make PoE switches? Did they not know how to make an external trigger for legacy chimes? Do they honestly think anyone is waiting to read what the scrolling text on the screen says? Why is it £200? Do I get some of whatever the designers were on for my £200?
I have three sites up and running with Hikvision K2 NVR’s, the G2 cameras are superb in near pitch black, literally it’s like daylight with decent detail and the soft NVR is OK, the K2 hardware NVR is reasonable and it’s fit and forget as other than extended power cuts when the UPS gives out, they just keep working, and have given me zero issues. I want to like the UDMP at this point in it’s lifecycle, but i’m going back in with low expectations. VOIP etc. is a similar story, it’s always possible to find a better featured and often cheaper dedicated system than whatever Ubiquiti are trying to push. Hopefully i’m wrong and a giant slice of humble pie awaits rather than a large credit card bill and threats of divorce
Ha, they do now have a dedicated ‘animal’ smart detection! No, I get you. I read the forums. But for me, generally happy. Yes, the prices of some of the stuff is mental. The ‘Protect’ stuff is definitely overpriced, but then the switching is cheap for what you get and the APs are a relative bargain. Oh, btw, there is now a POE doorbell too!!
I have moved from Synology with a couple of cams (need licenses for more than 2) and I generally prefer Protect - certainly the app side is a lot better. Plus, I couldn’t get smart detections with the Reolink and HK cameras I had so was just getting a million detection messages every day for whenever a cloud moved, a car shadow dropped etc. Now I only get alerts when I should. I did look at going full HK but wanted to avoid the whole Chinese thing - I have done some work with BT on government contracts and I know back then HK, along with Huawei, was being dropped for certain projects.
It can be quite cash consuming though, I agree with that too. But again, the flipside is, the kit does hold on to its value quite well so shifting old bits on eBay is very easy and you get a decent return.
But this is the problem…you buy 1 AP and then it just spirals out of control!!
AI Detection out of the box on the G2s isnt anything magical, it takes fine tuning to get them from ok detection to very good detection, namely using minimum and maximum detection sizes, which then involves watching the camera with VCA turned on and comparing the boxes around a normal sized human walking past and making sure the minimum size is smaller than that. Each camera will see humans at different sizes on the VCA`s depending on angle of the camera to the target area where object detection is detected.
I run 6 DS-2CD2387G2-LSU/SL and my false alerts are down to pretty much 0% and human detection is 99.9% positive. cranking the target validity of a human setting to highest can lead to missed alerts as the camera then has to be 100% sure it`s a human.
Agreed the night time viewing is stunning, but thats at the cost of running the inbuilt led white light, if you dont have sufficient night time lighting in the area. The white light can annoy neighbours if you live in a built up area.
Ive played around with BlueIris with deepstack in the past, while ok, its nowhere near as good as using the inbuilt detection on the G2s and the G2s don`r require a windows pc running 24/7 with a GPU for faster detection from the models being used.
Interested to get my hands on one of these next DS-2CD2387G2P-LSU/SL but may wait for acusense 3.0 to be released
Also running Frigate with a Coral TPU for object detection just on a test basis and the G2s are feeding into it. But again it doesnt compare to the inbuilt detection on the G2`s so far, models can become a pain, different models for better night time detection etc. It ends up becoming a full time tinkering job lol
Oh great… a £340 doorbell with a screen 
Have a UDM-SE now a month in, I used PFsense which was on a mini pc with 4 connections giving me 500Mbps and some trouble and so I was looking for a long term ands future proof router.
It has 2 x SFP+ interfaces, along with A 2.5Gbps ethernet port, I’ve got 2 x 10Gbps ethernet SFPs in them which are currently configured for my network.
I’m happy with what you can do with it, security wise you can block by country, by app so it’s got ids ips built into it as well. You can filter ads etc as well
So if you’re looking for an investment it seems to be able to spin a few plates 
I also use it with Hikvision cameras and a WD NAS, I’ve had a few dodgy CCTV cameras from the likes of Swann which at the time said they was good at nights, needless to say they wasn’t fit for purpose and soon went back.
Well, I have spent the last 2 days trying to get a Grandstream VOIP adapter working behind Opnsense and finally gave up. The VOIP provider had no idea about such things and I foolishly thought it would be a simple task - should have done some more research! Anyhoo, I thought for a laugh I’d try it via the UDM SE and the bloody thing worked straight off the bat - I had already configured firewall/forwarding rules to mirror those I had created in Opnsense - but, what a result! 1-0 to the UDM there.
I was hoping to use it anyway with Unifi Talk but as they were still not able to port UK numbers or had the ATA available, I have had to go with an interim solution. So, I’m chuffed that it works. Once the Talk UK situation has matured, I will probably flip over to them as the plan looks good value.
Woah thread exploded.
At the moment, I just have 2x Cisco switches, though if I want to achieve 10Gb speed, the I guess I’d need to invest into some equipment, as I intend on hosting some game servers and my website locally.
Does anyone know of a decent software that I could use to map out my network by the way?
Cheers.
