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    configure unifi with pfsense

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • johnpozJ
      johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @JKnott
      last edited by

      @JKnott where did I say you don't need the controller? While you don't actually if not using some feature like captive portal or something. What I said was he doesn't need the router/firewall features of that DMP.. he has pfsense that can provide that functionality.

      But my guess is he wants the info provided by the controller for the clients.. this sort of info can be quite useful in troubleshooting issues or for just keeping an eye on your devices.. Is there some wifi device using a misappropriate amount of data compared to other clients.. What are the signal strengths being seen.. How often are clients roaming from one AP to another, etc.

      The stats provided by leaving the controller running can be quite handy!! But yeah its going to have to be appropriate sized to handle the amount of clients you have.. Now this is just a gut feeling, shooting from the hip sort of reaction.. But 1000, 2k clients with 4GB of ram for the DB is prob going to be problematic.. Maybe if you disable the DMP from handling the other aspects of the network, routing and assume its natting as well, maybe they have IDS enabled on it - maybe it could handle that sized network if just acting as controller?

      Might be worth testing for sure..

      An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
      If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
      Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
      SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

      JKnottJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • johnpozJ
        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @Gblenn
        last edited by

        @Gblenn that might worth trying as well - but its possible that is the data he is most interested in? But sure turning that off, and just using the DMP as just the controller and not firewall and router could maybe get to the 1000 clients unifi mentions ;) but his goal is 2k some clients.. So he prob needs a bigger box ;)

        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
        SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

        G 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • G
          Gblenn @johnpoz
          last edited by

          @johnpoz said in configure unifi with pfsense:

          @Gblenn that might worth trying as well - but its possible that is the data he is most interested in? But sure turning that off, and just using the DMP as just the controller and not firewall and router could maybe get to the 1000 clients unifi mentions ;) but his goal is 2k some clients.. So he prob needs a bigger box ;)

          Perhaps a bit of tuning the data collection could do it as well, and not turning it completely off. There is plenty you can change there...

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          • Z
            zaibi12345
            last edited by

            No routing no firewall
            actually there is a page link for candidates to access and submit their paper at the end which is stored somewhere located in other city.

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            • JKnottJ
              JKnott @johnpoz
              last edited by

              @johnpoz said in configure unifi with pfsense:

              @JKnott where did I say you don't need the controller?

              I should have said the Unifi controller box. As I mentioned, you can run the software on a separate computer. There's even a "cloud" version. I run mine on my desktop Linux system.

              PfSense running on Qotom mini PC
              i5 CPU, 4 GB memory, 32 GB SSD & 4 Intel Gb Ethernet ports.
              UniFi AC-Lite access point

              I haven't lost my mind. It's around here...somewhere...

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Z
                zaibi12345 @stephenw10
                last edited by

                @stephenw10
                sir is it be possible that users utilize whole memory and cpu of pfsense instead of unifi controller whatif I disable dhcp of unifi controller and turned on from pfsense or something like that in order to mitigate the load from unifi controller.
                actually my main concern is to handle more than 2000 users at a time in any case

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                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  Sure you can off-load DHCP though I'm not sure how that might affect data collection in the controller.

                  It really depends what features you are using in Unifi.

                  johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • johnpozJ
                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stephenw10
                    last edited by johnpoz

                    @stephenw10 said in configure unifi with pfsense:

                    might affect data collection in the controller.

                    I don't use dhcp on the controller or box the controller is running on - and it gets all the data just fine. I doubt dhcp would be the reason its falling down.. I mean dhcp doesn't use more ram the more clients that get a lease or anything. And its not a memory hungry or cpu intensive process either.

                    If I had to guess its the issue of writing data to the db for more and more clients.

                    What version of mongo is running on it? Is it still the old like 3.6, has it been upgraded to 4.4 or 7 even which the new controller supports - but it does require AVX, which is quite possible the DMP doesn't even support?

                    I would be curious if turning off history has any effect, like 600 clients before it falls down, etc.. SSH to the thing and do a mongo -version

                    user@UC:~$ mongo -version
                    MongoDB shell version v4.4.29
                    Build Info: {
                        "version": "4.4.29",
                        "gitVersion": "f4dda329a99811c707eb06d05ad023599f9be263",
                        "openSSLVersion": "OpenSSL 1.1.1f  31 Mar 2020",
                        "modules": [],
                        "allocator": "tcmalloc",
                        "environment": {
                            "distmod": "ubuntu2004",
                            "distarch": "x86_64",
                            "target_arch": "x86_64"
                        }
                    }
                    user@UC:~$ 
                    
                    

                    I am curious if their own devices for the controller, like their cloudkey and or their DMs support the ability to run mongo 7.. Since 4.4 has been end of life since feb of this year. If running on your own hardware, that is on you. But haven't look to see even if you run their hardware if you can run 7 of mongo.

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                    SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.8, 24.11

                    M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • M
                      mcury Rebel Alliance @johnpoz
                      last edited by mcury

                      @johnpoz said in configure unifi with pfsense:

                      I am curious if their own devices for the controller, like their cloudkey and or their DMs support the ability to run mongo 7.. Since 4.4 has been end of life since feb of this year. If running on your own hardware, that is on you. But haven't look to see even if you run their hardware if you can run 7 of mongo.

                      Dream Machine Pro can't, it uses Quad-core ARM® Cortex®-A57 at 1.7 GHz.
                      https://www.mongodb.com/community/forums/t/core-dump-on-mongodb-5-0-on-rpi-4/115291/14

                      That is the reason, I think, that they will be supporting mongod 3.6 for a long time..

                      https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/unifi-cloud-gateways/udm-pro

                      Edit: raspberry pi 5 can go up to mongod 6, it has a 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, but can't install mongod 7.
                      Unless you use this method: https://github.com/themattman/mongodb-raspberrypi-binaries

                      dead on arrival, nowhere to be found.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                      • P
                        Patch @zaibi12345
                        last edited by Patch

                        @zaibi12345 said in configure unifi with pfsense:

                        1 unifi dream machine pro controller with 20 access points connected with it, In lab if more than 400 users get connect, it got crashed all connected users faced disconnectivity. 1200 users is actual limit as advised by unifi support team.
                        actually we need to connect more than 2000 users at a time and 5 controllers is not a solution

                        I use a self hosted controller https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360012282453-Self-Hosting-a-UniFi-Network-Server

                        Easily installed via this script https://community.ui.com/questions/UniFi-Installation-Scripts-or-UniFi-Easy-Update-Script-or-UniFi-Lets-Encrypt-or-UniFi-Easy-Encrypt-/ccbc7530-dd61-40a7-82ec-22b17f027776

                        Which I run on a Debian VM under Proxmox on a Mini PC also running pfsense as a VM.
                        For your application, being more generous with the hardware would be sensible. https://lazyadmin.nl/home-network/unifi-controller/ and https://techspecs.ui.com/unifi/cloud-keys-gateways/cloud-key-enterprise

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