When I first heard about Etherlighting™ (a few months ago), my reaction was, “Hmm… okay, but why?”

For decades, we’ve had the same two little LEDs on switch ports—amber and green, or sometimes just green and green. This has been the standard for as long as I can remember—and that’s going back quite a few years. So, why change it?

Let’s think about what we’ve had until now. One LED typically indicates link status, while the other shows port speed. For example, amber might signal 100 Mbps, and green would indicate 1 Gbps. Some switches would use only green for gigabit speeds, and show nothing for lower speeds. You get the idea—but every vendor implemented this slightly differently.

Essentially, those little LEDs showed just three states. They’d blink like crazy to show traffic. And that was fine. Functional—but boring.

Then someone came along and changed it.

I kept asking myself: Why? Why mess with this?

Then it hit me: Damn, I wish this switch had Etherlighting™.

Let me explain Etherlighting™ in my own terms:
Take those two little blinking lights and toss them. Replace them with an RGB LED. That single LED can now represent virtually any color. Let’s say violet for 100 Mbps, and red for 10 Gbps. Suddenly, link status becomes instantly useful and visible. Not only to show link speed, but even VLAN assignments, blue for VLAN 20, or Green for VLAN 40(you see where this is going).

So why did I want a switch with Etherlighting™? Simple. Imagine trying to find and remove a cable on a crowded switch. You squint at tiny port numbers and risk pulling the wrong one. With Etherlighting™, you can highlight the exact port. One command, and that single port lights up clearly. No guessing. No mistakes. Now picture that across five 48-port switches in a rack. Yeah, it makes a difference.

As of now, Etherlighting™ is unique to Ubiquiti. I believe (and hope) they’ll eventually roll it out across their entire switch lineup as models get refreshed.

Now, some might say, “But the cable boot blocks the LEDs anyway.” True—if you’re using those old snagless designs that haven’t evolved in decades. Ubiquiti’s patch cables, however, have frosted/clear jacks that allow the LEDs to shine through the connector—and honestly, it looks cool. TrueCable offers something similar too (personally, I like their black patch cables).

To me, this is the evolution of the switch port. Now, when I look at a switch, those LEDs mean something. They provide actual value. Sure, it might only save a few seconds here and there. But time is the one thing you can’t get back. And if Ubiquiti is trying to give me a little more of it, I’ll take it.

Makes me wonder—what else is Ubiquiti doing to save me time?

Looks like Gen 2 is out … uhm, wait? What’s a Gen 2? Ah…. Yeah lets talk a little about it.

Ubiquiti Networks released for Early Access, Generation Two of their Cloud Key controller. This time in two flavors, Normal and Plus. Lets talk about the Plus first. The CK Plus model is small, light and comes enclosed in an aluminum shell. The CK Plus is roughly 1.5 inches in height, just under 1U, and roughly 5 x 5 inches. Cool. And, has a nice little display that shows information about cameras and how many clients are currently connected.

Hold on a second, you said cameras, yes – I did! The Plus model also acts as an update to their Network Video Recorder. Which has been updated and is now called UniFi Protect.

(Currently UniFi Protect only runs on the CK Plus — I think that has changed?? Check the UBNT Forums)

And — both models are PoE powered. “Powered by 802.3af PoE or QC 2.0 USB-C”

Note — both the Normal and Plus models have a built-in battery for automatic safe shutdown. Nice!!!

The Video Recorder, oops, the CK Plus, comes with a 1 TB 2.5 Inch Hard Drive, which can be “user” upgraded to 5 TB.

So now you have your Cloud Key and NVR in one nice little package that’s PoE powered!

Now, the other version is what I would call the Normal Cloud Key. If you do not need an NVR, this is what you would use. It is smaller, has the same feel and look. Even, has the little display with “at-a-glance system details” along with being PoE powered.  But, does not come with any option to add a hard drive(if you later want to use UniFi Protect). It does have a micro-SD card slot(just like the 1st gen) to store logs, etc…

Would you upgrade to Gen 2 Plus?

Well, if you’re constantly looking at your NVR footage–because you’re bored, sure. However, you will be running the UniFi Protect version and not the older Video 3 applications(server/mobile). Currently, Protect is not 100% feature rich or in-line(yet) with what everything Video 3 had and did do. I hear that’s coming!

If you don’t mind spending a few hours reading all the forum posts about UniFi Protect and are OK with a few things not available yet. Go for it. It’s a nice speed boost, smaller and PoE powered. You will like.

So, yeah, that sounds like a good title to this post.  I was thinking, I should reboot the UBNT Security Gateway. I wonder if the iOS app can do that?  And, guess what, yes—it can.  I went to the app, saw my online Cloud Keys…

I selected the site with the Device I wanted to restart, selected the Device(the screen shot of the devices was taken after I restarted it–that’s why it shows disconnected). You scroll down to the bottom, you’ll see an Actions section and you select “Restart”. Simple.

During the restart time, you’ll see the following:

The restart didn’t take long and everything showed green in the app within a minute or so. I haven’t played too much with the app, other than just viewing some basic info. I think Scott McDermott did a full install, update and configure using only the App.  And, from what I see and hear regarding the App, it looks to be a really solid way of managing your UBNT devices.

So I’m at work, doing that work stuff and I get a message:

“I haven’t been able to join games…”

That’s the abridged version of what I actually got, basically the Xbox One’s in the office had been showing a Moderate NAT setting.  And, yes, we have a couple of Xbox One’s in our office, so what, don’t you? And this Moderate NAT setting was causing some game party and chat issues. Hmm.

Now, here’s my journey of enabling UPnP support on the UBNT USG-Pro4 and my thoughts behind this. I thought I would need to create the dreaded config.gateway.json file. Not a big fan of this. As the current syntax can cause some issues if you do not get it perfect. Yes, this is a little down part on the UBNT’s side. However, I think they know about this issue and are working hard to make this easier and better for people to configure. So here’s what I had to do and how I did it.

Now I found there is another file, one called config.properties and in this file you have some settings that are set for enabled or disabled. And, this file is much easier to create and modify. Cool.

So I used WinSCP to connect to the Cloud Key, logged in with the username/password you created when you setup the Cloud Key. And then browsed to the location of my “Site“.

Finding the Site consists of two parts, finding the “base” location of where files are stored, this is different depending on what Operating System the Controller is running on. Then finding the site. Once you have the location, just create a text file called: config.properties and add the following line: config.igd.enabled=true

Save and Done.

OK, now you need to Provision the USG. This part was a little confusing as I was looking for a “re-provision” button to click. I didn’t see one. So I created a port forward on the USG, which appeared to provision the USG again, i.e. update with new settings. Hmm. For some reason that appeared to not work? Or I just didn’t wait long enough for settings to be effected. So I just told the USG to reboot.  And, that worked.

So my thoughts on this process are, it was simple–yes. It could be better–very better! Why are these settings not in the Controller GUI? I understand for the settings that have a little more than Enabled or Disabled option to not be shown(for now). But, for settings that are a yes or no, those should all be listed. So this wasn’t a complete game over, but I had to reload my weapon.

One of things that I was really curious about and really like about UBNT, is the Cloud Key.

So I asked around to a couple of folks that have UBNT, they mostly have Access Points, and asked how they are managed. I got two different responses:

1. I only have two APs, so I run the “Controller” on my laptop.
2. I run the “Controller” in Docker on my Synology.

Options. You have options! Now, this is cool. The Controller software is what you’ll need to manage, configure and update the UniFi line of products(and I hear it works for some of their other stuff too). Now this Controller piece can be installed on Mac, Windows and Debian/Ubuntu Linux.  And all of those options can be virtualize with whatever flavor of hypervisor you like. Nice.

BUT, with Cloud Key, you just plug the little PoE unit in, wait a few seconds for it to boot and you’re pretty much done, well maybe not just yet. I’ll explain…

It does have a mini-USB port for external power(for use with non-PoE switches) and has a micro-SD slot. I’m a huge fan of anything PoE, lights, temperature sensors, you name it, so this thing hit the spot!

Setup is pretty quick and easy, here’s what I did, USGPro4 connected to the Switch and the Cloud Key is connected to the Switch. I had powered on the USG and Switch prior to connecting the Cloud Key. I had the USGPro4 powered on for 10+ minutes prior to connecting the WAN link–for some reason, on the WAN side, it didn’t pull DHCP until I rebooted. Odd? There was a firmware update for the USG–maybe that resolve the issue, not sure? I need to check that again.

So on to the setup. I use Chrome and UBNT has a plugin for seeing devices and “Adopting” them. Just visit unifi.ubnt.com create your account and login. You’ll then be prompted to install the Plugin and that part done. Simple. Easy. Refreshing.

You’ll then see the Cloud Key, select the “Adopt” option. (yes, I know these images are blurry and hard to read–I took pictures of the screen I was using for the setup)

Oh wait, an update is available, yeah do it!

And, it reboots…

Once this process is done and everything is updated you’ll notice a few changes on the Cloud Key. First, the white light should now be Blue, and that’s what you want, it means Adoption is correctly done and everything is working well.

And, this part is almost done. Login in via unifi.ubnt.com, you’ll see the Cloud Key listed, you’ll click on it and see the following:

Make sure “Launch using Cloud” is selected, you have two other options and one is using your own domain. That part seems interesting, maybe a “custom branding” option is down the road, you know, for your own color scheme on the interface along with a custom logo??

And, we are done, that was simple, the Controller software is on the Cloud Key. Even though it’s local, on your network, everything can be accessed remotely. Nice.

Now, the only thing I’d like to know is—can multiple Keys be used to form a High Availability setup?

Wait, what if I don’t want to run the Cloud Key or have the Controller running someplace? Then you need Unifi Elite. This is a hosted Controller along with phone support and extended device warranties.

Spent a little more time on Twitter digging through weeks of past tweets and came across this:

Which sounds awesome, because the LED not aligning on the USG or Switch(whichever way you look at it) was bugging me. Yeah, I know, tiny little details. But c’mon this is odd looking.

Which brings me to my next odd encounter. The Port Forwarding and Firewall settings. This is where it was little confusing, I kept looking under the Firewall page for Port Forwarding settings. Nope. They’re actually(for now?) under the Device settings, you select the device, which brings up Details about that device. Then you select Configuration and there it is, Port Forwarding.

Once you create a Port Forward, they do show under the “Settings -> Routing & Firewall” settings. But, you can not make changes to that Port Forward setting, you need go back to the Device page, select the device…you get the idea.

So after a little more reading, I ran into another odd thing, the “config.gateway.json” file. Not sure how odd this is to people who’ve been using that customized method. However, I came across this:

“This may take some patience because if you get the formatting wrong you’ll trigger a boot loop on the USG.”

Wow… uhm .. so I have the option, to lets say brick my USG, interesting! This leads me into another thing I saw(I’m still trying to find where I read it) but if I remember correctly. UBNT knows this is an issue, so they hired Chris Buechler of pfSense to make this better. I think someone else made a comment to Chris about this and his response was(something along this line) “Yeah, I’m here to make that better”.  So this could be why the “Routing & Firewall” options have the label Beta next to it.

So far here’s what I don’t like about UBNT and the little things that bug me.  First lets show a little love to the USG PRO-4. Much smaller than I thought, BUT the power cable. Using that damn, what I call mouse ears power cable. I’m not sure what the technical reason behind this is, however, how many people have that type of cable laying around Maybe that could be changed? Not a show stopper. (The USG does come with the cable needed).

Now about this Cloud Key cable, odd, but kinda cool looking. I dug around on Twitter and Instagram looking for what other people did. And, they just plugged it in and left the Key hanging off a switch port. Hmm. I’m not a big fan of that. The cable is thick and can stay in a bent shape. Which would keep it a little out of way. I ended up using a two foot Belkin CAT-6 and placed it on top the Switch. Maybe they could have an accessory that would mount into a 1U space that would hold the Cloud Key. Otherwise, some double-sided velcro is in the device’s future.

Now for this part, I’m sure nobody cares, however, that was the first thing I noticed when I placed the units on top of each other. Where the device name and square logo light is at. I think that should all be in the exact same spot so when the products are stacked up, it looks nicer. As for the LED color looking like a different shade of blue, I’m pretty sure it was just the angle of the picture. I don’t remember those being different blue shades.  I did like how the LED is white until the device is “Adopted“, then it becomes blue.