I saw a couple years ago, @LTS_Tom posted a video comparing Omada and UniFi. I believe he also mentioned that he installed it at home, and thought about maybe deploying to a couple small customers, but wanted some real-world opinions from others.
I was curious if there is any follow up on this? Good or bad issues regarding Omada stuff (APs and switches, not routers).
I’ve been running an Omada/pfSense setup in my homelab for a little over a year now and it’s been rock solid. In quite a few aspects, I actually prefer the Omada controller over Unifi. We currently have UniFi at work but are due for a big network upgrade/overhaul. We are considering moving over to Omada/pfSense there as well but haven’t really heard much in the way of real-world/business usage and opinions.
I think the questions you have to ask yourself are less about the quality of the devices itself and their functionality, which seems to be quite ok, but more about scalability, long term support and security. How well does it scale if your business is growing, and will the Omada product line even exist in 5 years? How well do they maintain their software in general and most importantly, are they on top when it comes to the security of their products?
I don’t have a definitive answer to these questions, but Unifi is a well established product line that has mostly a good track record when it comes to these things, and I don’t see any indicators that this will change in the foreseeable future. TP-Link, on the other hand, has yet to prove that they can do this over a longer period of time.
With this in mind, it also depends on how complex your network is and how much gear you intend to install. Are we talking about two access points and a single switch, or are we talking about a large installation with many APs, switches, possibly spread over several sites? With the former you can easily replace your gear if you are no longer satisfied with Omada, whereas for the latter you would rather bet on the right horse from the start.
I’ll go with what @LTS_Tom said. if history of security is to be considered, I would explore other options. I remember some sort of managed switch allowed the management IP to be reached from any vlan, cross vlan. TP-link weirdness.
Thanks for the info everyone! I will say, compared to Ubiquiti, it seems like TP-Links firmware updates are few and far between. In the year’ish I’ve had the equipment in my homelab, other than the initial firmware update when installing, I think I’ve had 1 firmware update on one of my switches. Ubiquiti seems to push firmware updates a bit more frequently, albeit sometimes those updates cause more issues. Point is, I’m not sure if the infrequency of updates is a reflection on TP-Links security stance. I do understand there are other security issues as well.
Either way, looks like the decision will be made to stay with Ubiquiti for now.
