This time last year I wanted to upgrade my home internet. For around 10 years we had been stuck on a slow ADSL line, capable of 18mbps down and a measly 1mbps up. Prior to that, it had been around 2mbps down and 1mbps up since the early 2000s. At the time, I worked for a local WISP so with the working from home future a clear reality, we needed better internet.

In the header image shows the equipment I picked out, a Rocket 5AC Prism as our uplink, mated with a RF Elements UltraDish for a solid and reliable connection. This link is around 20km and even in the heavy UK weather, this has seen no issues at all. Up at the top is a LiteBeam GPS which feeds a wireless connection to the land owner and then right at the bottom is a 60GHz GigaBeam Plus - which is more than capable of doing the 800m hop to our house.

Cabinet

For the cabinet, I went with a local UK company who manufacture high quality outdoor network cabs, IT-STOCKIST. The particular model I chose is a 6U waterproof outdoor cabinet and cost a reasonable £124 ($140). It came with a lockable door, with two keys as well as a handy 1U shelf inside.

For the hardware, naturally I went with Ubiquiti. Inside, we have two important components.

Doing the switching and PoE is the EdgeSwitch 10XP, all of the devices on the tower are 24v so this was a cost effective way of getting everything powered. We also have the ER-RMKIT to keep everything tidy. For a backup system, the EdgePower 24v was the best choice, paired with a 12v battery, which says it should provide power for around 12 hours.

The EdgePower 24v and 54v devices come with pre-wired barrel plugs to connect into the EdgeSwitch directly, all you need to do is plug the EdgePower into mains power, hook up the battery and set up the charging and Ah battery size.

UISP manages all the devices I can be alerted via email when the mains power for the site goes offline and I can go and attend if needed.

Other end

At the other end is another EdgeSwitch 10XP, which powers up the CPE GigaBeam Plus as well as a UISP LTE for reduncy. Everything is then wired into my UDM SE, with a management VLAN back to the switch for management access.

HostiFi

Contact HostiFi for all your UniFi and UISP hosting needs at support@hostifi.com, or by using the live chat on our website. HostiFi Pro offers professional network services, specialising in Ubiquiti hardware and software.