unboxing:
The Ubiquiti USG comes in a small cardboard box that contains no plastic and therefore appears durable. The box contains the following items: Unifi Security Gateway, Power Adapter, Power Cord, Wall Mounting Kit, Quick Start Guide.
In use with:
I use the USG with these products: Ziggo Modem/Router, Unifi Switch 8-60W, Unifi AP-AC-LR and of course the free software from ubiquiti to manage everything (Controller software)
Installation:
Because I didn't want to bother my girlfriend too much with my hobby in the network, I chose not to include the USG in my current lan but to build a new lan. This allowed me to configure the USG, Switch and AP without any downtime.
The USG defaults to IP 192.168.1.1 and has a DHCP scope 192.168.1.1/24 preconfigured. If you connect the switch to LAN port 1 and your laptop or desktop there, it will get an IP in this series. My Controller software runs on an HPE Microserver Gen 10, which I also connected to the switch and opened the controller from there. The controller immediately shows the USG and asks if you want to add it. This will take about 2 minutes and your USG is up and running. Via the controller software it is possible to set things like: Firewall, Vlan, DHCP scopes, and much more.
If you still want to include the USG in your own network, this is also possible. As I mentioned, the USG is standard provided with the IP 192.168.1.1. If you want to replace the IP address with an IP from your current range, connect a device to the lan port. You will then get an IP from the DHCP of the series: 192.168.1.1/24. Then go to 192.168.1.1 in your browser and you will arrive at the internal web interface of the USG where you can change the IP settings.
controller software:
The USG can be managed via the controller software. Things you can configure for the USG are, Networks with own subnets, vlans, DHCP scopes etc. Static routes, Firewall rules, GeoIP Filtering (Beta) IPS (Beta) DPI to see what kind of traffic is going over the network. Radius, SIP, DHCP, SNMP,UNP,NTP, Site-to-Site VPN, Client VPN.
It is an advanced router with many possibilities that actually comes into its own if you have both a USG, Switch and Accesspoint from Ubiquiti.
In the pictures you can see the functions, Firewall, DPI, Networks, Dashboard.
