Comment on Should I use a dedicated DHCP/DNS server hardware
Ecclestoned@lemmy.world 10 months agoSo this is where I’m a little confused. The USG had the option to assign a static IP (which I’ve done), but if you ever need to CHANGE that IP… Chaos. From what I understand the USG needs to propagate that IP to all your devices, but it uses the controller to do that. Then you also run into issues with IP leases having to time out. Same problem occurs if I ever upgrade my server and change out the MAC address. Because now the IP is assigned to the old MAC.
I’m not sure if there’s any way around this. But it basically locks me in to keeping the controller (and thus my server) at a single, fixed IP, without any chance of changing it.
farcaller@fstab.sh 10 months ago
Here’s how it works: unifi devices need to communicate with the controller over tcp/8080 to maintain their provisioned state. By default, the controller adopts the device with
http://vontroller-ip:8080/inform, which means that if you ever change the controller IP, you’ll must adopt your devices again.There are several other ways to adopt the device, most notably using the DHCP option 43 and using DNS. Of those, setting up DNS is generally easier. You’d provision the DNS to point at your controller and then update the inform address on all your devices (including the USG).
Now, there’s still a problem of keeping your controller IP and DNS address in sync. Unifi, generally, doesn’t do DNS names for its DHCP leases, and devices can’t use mDNS, so you’ll have to figure a solution for that. Or, you can just cut it short and make sure the controller has a static IP―not a static DHCP lease, but literally, a static address. It allows your controller to function autonomously from USG, as long as your devices don’t reach to it across VLANs.
Ecclestoned@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Ahhh that makes complete sense. I’ll look into it. Thanks!