Happy New Year! Following a downbeat 2020, which was completely dominated by the coronavirus pandemic with a little Brexit deal anxiety added in for good measure, the rollout of several vaccines brings much more hope for 2021. In one key regard, it’s going to be an excellent year where I live because ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband is scheduled to arrive. This is a gamechanger for rural areas. I have been waiting for this moment for many years and I cannot quite believe that it will finally arrive.
FTTP services currently deliver download speeds up to 910 Mbps – 12 times faster than the maximum speed offered by Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC). For those opting for the very highest speeds available, the challenge is getting those speeds and the performance on offer to your devices without degradation. The ‘free’ equipment typically supplied by broadband providers and the way most home networks are set up mean that most people opting for the very best speeds are probably wasting their money unless they upgrade their equipment.
I am currently evaluating a broad range of equipment to find affordable solutions that can deliver the full potential of ultrafast broadband for those opting for speeds of 300 Mbps and above. I have just completed a review of an exciting product from Ubiquiti called the UniFi Dream Machine (UDM) Pro, which is ideal for the fastest ultrafast broadband connections. The review can be found here:
Review of the Ubiquiti UDM Pro | Increase Broadband Speed
The UDM Pro performs superbly as a router to make sure you extract the very best performance from your broadband connection in terms of speeds and latency (time delay). Readers of my Increase Broadband Speed site will know that an issue called ‘bufferbloat’ affects the vast majority of home networks and can wreak havoc with time-sensitive applications such as video conferencing (e.g. Zoom and Skype), online gaming and even browsing. A feature called Smart Queue Management (SQM) successfully mitigates bufferbloat. However, very few routers have SQM. Furthermore, SQM is highly processor-intensive, severely limiting throughputs. Not only does the UDM Pro have SQM but its quad-core 1.7 GHz processor ensures that it does not slow down with even the fastest ultrafast broadband connections.
To call the UDM Pro a router is a bit of an insult, and it’s much more than that. It runs Ubiquiti’s UniFi Controller software. This allows you to configure, manage and optimise multiple, best-in-class Wi-Fi Access Points to affordably deliver exceptional Wi-Fi coverage and performance in a home or office. Using Ubiquiti’s latest Wi-Fi 6 Access Points, I have been able to achieve real throughputs of 800-900 Mbps to Apple devices, including the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the M1 Macbook Air (which both support Wi-Fi 6).
The UDM Pro also acts as an impressive video surveillance system (using a range of cameras offered by Ubiquiti) with onboard video storage.
For more information, read more about this device here:
Review of the Ubiquiti UDM Pro
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