I bought 2x Xiaomi AX3000s, to replace my older Unifi APs. Very mixed feelings about these Xiaomi units, cost me a stack of time and effort in getting to understand them. My thoughts so far:
- For starters, they come with ancient firmware which you have to update, otherwise you have to select a country that you are not in, get it connected, and then update firmware, then factory reset to start all over again.
- Documentation is totally kak, very little info in the user manual.
- The Xiaomi app is even worse than the documentation.
- Lots of quirks with these units, which you have to learn by trial and error.
- The modes, Router mode, AP mode and Repeater mode. But they don't do what they say they do, and in AP mode it states repeater on the web interface for both repeater and AP mode.
- A lot of functionality is hidden from you, it's Auto everything, which means they hide stuff (but from the logfiles you can see it is supported, just no interface to set it up), so very frustrating.
- This means that, for example, you have no choice on authentication (WPA, WPA-2 and WPA-3). You also have no visibility on how it is set up.
- I want to select the newer, more secure WIFI6 authentication (WPA-3), but it is not possible. I upgraded to WIFI6 for nothing, no visibility on auth modes.
- No alternative networks available;
- No VLAN support (that I could see and work with);
- NTP is also hidden away, not able to set it.
- The web interface is crippled, a lotof functionality is hidden.
- So I tried the Xiaomi home app, but it cannot scan the QR code like it should, cannot discover the APs, and when you finally force things manually, it tells you that the AP is offline when it isn't.
- So it is completely useless.
- Even the logging is a mission, it all gets dumped into a single zipfile, every single log of every subsystem as a file.
- So you have to wade through a bunch of directories and crap, scratching around for the logfile entry that you needed 15 minutes ago.
- Even the basics, like the ability to enable and disable PMF on 2.4Ghz is hidden away, nowhere on the interface, cannot set it, and no indication of its status.
- I didn't want router mode because I use a real firewall for that, and do not want double natting for obvious reasons. So I chose AP mode, but then I do not get things like guest networks and meshing, and a whole lot of other "advanced" features.
- They are only supposedly available in router mode, for what reason I dunno, because there is no technical reason for those features to be disabled just because it is an AP.
- The two units are meant to be used in one config, and one config only: one as a router and the other as an access point or repeater. If you do not want this config, well it sucks to be you
- It has two ways to mesh: with wireless, which is crap, and with cable.
- If you don't want meshing, you actually have to physically switch the first unit off, and then only get the second one going, and only then then switch on the first unit again.
- If you don't do this, then the wireless meshing happens automatically, which causes long outages (for around 5 minutes) every 10-15minutes as the two
- "discover" each other and decide to marry,
- then divorce,
- then remarry;
- then divorce again
- It happened so often that I renamed them Tammy 1 and Tammy 2
- If you do decide to cable them together, then remember to connect the LAN port of the main one one to the WAN port of the other. And do not connect more LAN cables to a switch because then it gets confused, resulting in more outages.
- I eventually ended up configuring them both manually as access points. This is kak, because I cannot effect change only on one interface, have to do it once on each, so twice. This means that when I made a mistake with an SSID's password, it took me two days to find it.
- It took me 7 days to get the two units setup in a stable configuration.
- Fortunately the coverage is very good, which is the only good thing that have to say about them.
I kept my old Unifi AP-AC-LR APs, because unlike the Xiaomi mesh units, they actually support multiple isolated guest networks, which is essential to secure my humble little IOT setup. I think that I may just end up buying two new Unifi APs after all, and donate the Xiaomi "mesh" to someone who doesn't care much about networking.
Does anyone know if the Reyes are any better than this?
