Colin Hickey has an interesting YouTube channel that features some of his cool home automation projects. What I like about his videos is that he doesn’t just show the end result: he goes through his setup step by step so that you can do the same thing yourself.
If you go back through his videos you’ll find plenty of fascinating information about his home-made PowerWall and battery management system.
His latest video should be interesting to anyone who has an iLife robot vacuum cleaner, so check it out and make sure you subscribe to his channel:
WiFi is a critical part of most home automation systems, but many people simply install the WiFi router that came with their Internet plan and forget about it. However, setting up a good home WiFi network that will handle dozens of IoT devices and still keep your home secure takes a bit more work.
The typical home network uses an all-in-one router to provide many different network services, including:
Router
Firewall
WiFi access point
Ethernet switch
Media streaming
VPN server
DNS resolution
DHCP server
Printer sharing
File serving
… and more
This usually results in a network topology that looks like this:
All-in-one WiFi routers try to do too much, so they end up being terrible at everything.
Well structured networks generally separate critical services into different devices that are optimised to do that job, and do it well. Access points don’t try to be file servers, and DHCP servers aren’t Ethernet switches.
Learning from the way that small corporate networks are structured is a great way to improve your home network and improve its reliability, performance, and security.
A better way to structure a home network is like this:
To convert the typical network into the improved network, we’re going to make changes in a series of steps.
For this tutorial I’m using parts from the UniFi range from Ubiquiti Networks, which is a range of networking products designed to be installed across small to medium corporate networks. It uses a management system that provides a single interface to control all your devices, even if they’re installed in physically separate locations.
Shopping list
The specific devices that I installed included:
1 x UniFi Security Gateway
2 x UniFi UAP-AC-Pro access points (probably should have got Nano HD though)
1 x Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (or you can use a UniFi Cloud Key)
1 x UniFi US-8-60W 8-port managed Ethernet switches (not shown in this episode: will feature in Part 2)
2 x UniFi US-24 24-port managed Ethernet switches (not shown in this episode: will feature in Part 2)
Step 1: Set up management system
Ubiquiti Networks provides management software called UniFi Network Controller. It has a web interface, so you run the UniFi Network Controller software on a computer somewhere on your network (or even outside your network) and then access it using a web browser.
The UniFi Network Controller can be run in three different ways:
On your local computer. You can download the software and run it on your Mac, Windows, or Linux computer. This is a great way to test it out and see how it works, but if your computer is turned off the management software will also stop running. If you have a computer that you leave on all the time, such as a home media server, you can run the UniFi Network Controller on it. Download it for your computer from Ubiquiti Networks.
On a UniFi Cloud Key. This is a tiny embedded computer a bit like a Raspberry Pi, which comes with the UniFi Network Controller software preinstalled. You just plug it into your network, open a web browser on your own computer, and log into it. The Cloud Key is a low-power device so you can leave it running continuously.
On a Raspberry Pi or other low power computer. This is what I’m doing. A board such as a Raspberry Pi B+ has plenty of power to run the UniFi Network Controller and still do other things as well, such as run PiHole or other services. Effectively this is just like a DIY version of the Cloud Key, but it’s cheaper and you can do other things with it.
After installation, make sure your Raspberry Pi is connected to wired Ethernet (not just to WiFi) and log in to the Raspberry Pi as the default “pi” user. The default password is “raspberry”.
Set a static IP address so that the Raspberry Pi will always boot up with the same address, to make it easier for you to log into it in future. Do this by editing the file /etc/dhcpcd.conf:
sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf
Go to the bottom of the file, and add lines similar to this:
Those particular settings suit my network, which has the gateway running at 192.168.1.1 and also providing DNS resolution. You may need to change the values to suit your network.
Press Control-X to exit, then save the file.
Now run the “raspi-config” utility:
sudo raspi-config
Use the menu system to select “Change User Password”, and set a strong password.
Then go into the “Hostname” section, and change the hostname from “raspberrypi” to something more specific. I changed mine to “controller“.
Exit from raspi-config, and allow it to reboot.
A minute or so later your Raspberry Pi should come back up on the network. Now it will be at the IP address you specified above, it will have hostname you set, and the password will have changed.
Install the haveged daemon to provide a good source of entropy. This isn’t essential, but it will help the UniFi Network Controller boot up faster, because it will be able to generate cryptographic keys more quickly:
sudo apt install haveged -y
Install a version of Java that works nicely with the Controller:
sudo apt install openjdk-8-jre-headless -y
Add the Ubiquiti Networks software repository and GPG key:
Those lines above may have wrapped in the browser. It should be 2 lines, with the second line starting with “sudo”.
Now update the list of available packages, and install the UniFi Network Controller package:
sudo apt update sudo apt install unifi -y
In future you can update the Controller package just like you would with any other Raspbian package. If you regularly update your Raspberry Pi using the following commands, it will stay up to date along with all the other packages:
sudo apt update sudo apt dist-upgrade
Step 1d: Log in to Controller software
After the installation finishes and the Controller software has finished booting, you can log in using a web browser. Use your browser to open the IP address you configured for your Controller, but make sure you prefix it with “https” and use port 8443. With the example configuration I gave above, the URL is:
https://192.168.1.2:8443
Your browser will complain because it doesn’t trust the SSL certificate being used by the Controller. You can click through and load it anyway.
Step through the setup wizard and answer each question. There aren’t many questions and they’re fairly simple to work out. You can skip the WiFi configuration and do it later, as I show in the video.
Click around and explore the Controller interface if you like. There won’t be anything much happening in it because there aren’t any devices configured.
Step 1e: Plan your access point placement
The UniFi Network Controller has an interesting feature that lets you create a plan of the physical layout of your house, and place network devices on the plan. It can then use obstructions such as walls to do estimates of the signal strength in different parts of your house.
Go to the “MAP” menu item on the left, and you’ll see an example map. Edit the example or create a new map and upload a plan of your house, then use the Map Designer tool to draw lines where all your walls are located. Place access points, turn on coverage display in the “Layers” menu, and experiment with different locations for your APs.
Step 2: Replace all-in-one router with dedicated router
If your Internet connection uses a technology such as ADSL, or Cable, or optical fibre, you need to have it terminated in a way that gives you a simple Ethernet connection. A device that does this is called a Network Termination Unit, or NTU. The NTU is specific to the type of connection that your ISP provides.
In some cases, your ISP will have provided an NTU so that you can simply plug your new router straight into it. If that’s the case, you can skip ahead to installing your dedicated router. I’m going to use a UniFi Security Gateway (USG) as my new dedicated router for the rest of this example.
I have a Cable internet connection that comes in on coaxial cable, so it needs a device to convert the coaxial connection into an Ethernet connection. Instead of using an NTU, I used the original Telstra Gateway Max that was provided by my provider, and changed its configuration to put it into “bridge” mode.
Bridge mode is a simplified mode that turns off almost all the features of your existing router and turns it into a dumb adapter that just passes data through without trying to manage it. Effectively this is like taking a router and giving it a lobotomy to turn it into an NTU. This will also disable any WiFi functionality, so it won’t be useful as an access point anymore.
The specifics of how to do this depend entirely on your ISP setup and your existing router, so I can’t provide instructions here.
Once you have converted your ISP’s router into a bridge or replaced it with an NTU, it won’t provide any of the normal services that you need such as routing and DHCP. That will now by done by your dedicated router.
Disconnect everything from your existing router except the ISP connection.
Use an Ethernet cable to connect the “WAN” port of your new router to one of the “LAN” ports of the old router. The connection will then go:
Your ISP -> Your NTU / bridge -> New router [REPLACE WITH IMAGE]
Connect from the “LAN” port of your new router to an Ethernet switch, so that you have somewhere to connect wired devices to your network. This will include the Raspberry Pi that is now running the UniFi Network Controller software!
ADD IMAGE HERE
Turn on the new router, wait for it to start up, and then go back into the management interface on the Controller. If you’re using a UniFi compatible router such as the UniFi Security Gateway (USG) that I show in the video, the Controller should now see that you have a new device on the network. You can “adopt” the new device, which sets up a secure communication link between the Controller and the USG.
The rest of the setup of the gateway is done through the Controller interface. There’s no need to log in directly to the USG itself, because it receives its configuration from the Controller.
Step 3: Install dedicated access points
Ubiquity specialise in WiFi, so they have a huge range of access points available. In my case I stuck to the UniFi range because I wanted APs that could be managed using the UniFi Network Controller. I chose UAP-AC-Pro models because they seemed the best for my needs, but I’ve been told that I probably should have got the nanoHD model instead.
The particular APs that I got use PoE (Power-over-Ethernet) instead of plugging in a power supply directly. This means you can run a single Ethernet cable from your Ethernet switch to your AP, and the AP will take its power from the cable.
If you have a PoE Ethernet switch, there’s nothing else you need to do. Just plug in the cable, and the AP will receive power.
If you have a non-PoE switch, you can use a POE injector mounted near the Ethernet switch as an intermediary, to provide the power source. My APs came with PoE injectors included in the box, but some models of UniFi AP can be bought both with and without the injector in case you already have a PoE switch.
If you want a bit more background on Power-over-Ethernet, I did an introduction to it way back in episode #3! Check it out here:
Once your APs are plugged in and powered up, go back into the UniFi Network Controller interface to find them listed as new devices. You can then adopt them, just like you did with the Security Gateway.
However, don’t configure them directly unless you want to achieve something specific. The simplest thing is to leave them on default settings, which allows them to inherit the settings that you can apply to the entire site. In this context, “site” means your physical premises. The UniFi Network Controller is designed to scale up to installations with many devices across many physical sites, such as a group of remote branch offices, all managed through one central interface. For domestic use, you’ll probably only have one site.
To create a WiFi network that will be advertised through your fancy new access points, go to the “SETTINGS” menu item in the very bottom left of the Controller screen, then select “Wireless Networks“.
Click “CREATE NEW WIRELESS NETWORK“, and enter the details:
Set “Name/SSID” for the WiFi name that you want.
Leave the “Enabled” box ticked. Obviously!
Change the “Security” setting to “WPA Personal“. This is the common authentication type that most domestic WiFi networks use, with a single shared password for all devices.
Type the WiFi password that you want to use in the “Security Key” box.
Leave “Guest Policy” un-ticked, unless you’re specifically creating a guest network. Your first WiFi network will almost certainly be a normal network, not a guest network.
You don’t need to worry about the ADVANCED OPTIONS section for now. We’ll be coming back here in Part 2, when we look at more advanced things that you can do to improve the security of your network and provide compartmentalisation for troublesome devices.
Click the green SAVE button, and your new WiFi network will be created. This will also be automatically applied to all the access points that you have linked to your Controller, so it will become visible and you’ll be able to connect devices to the new network.
That’s all for now, but come back for Part 2 where I’ll show you how to apply more advanced concepts to really make your home network the best it can be.