Ubiquiti has announced UniFi Network 11, which it calls its "most impactful release yet." The headline numbers: a rebuilt telemetry engine that Ubiquiti says delivers over 30% better scalability, plus live traffic flows for every device connected to a UniFi gateway.
The part smart home people will care about is Matter. UniFi isn't becoming a Matter controller. Instead, it works alongside the controller you already use (Apple Home, Google Home and so on). You enter a device's Matter pairing code, and UniFi starts showing its battery level, firmware, signal strength and how it connects to the Matter network. Thread devices also show up next to regular IP devices in UniFi's topology map for the first time, and you can set custom alerts on the ones you care about.
Gateways pick up a few useful tricks. WiFi WAN lets a supported gateway use any available WiFi network, including your phone's hotspot, as a primary or backup internet connection. Ubiquiti hasn't listed which models in the announcement, only "supported models." There's also more VLAN capacity, Network Lists that can pull from external URLs for firewall rules and routing, and new SD-WAN policies for failover and app-based routing across multiple sites. Cybersecure Enhanced subscribers get AI-assisted explanations of detected threats, built on Proofpoint's daily signatures. A "Time Machine" topology view shows how your network changed over time, and you can make custom device icons by snapping a photo in the UniFi app.
Read the fine print before upgrading. Version 11.0.81 went out as an Early Access build last week, and according to a writeup by Leon Scott at Braedach, it requires UniFi OS 6.0 or newer and drops support for the legacy USG gateway (10.6 is the last version for those). It also ends the standalone Network Application Server in favor of UniFi OS Server, moves the database to PostgreSQL and wipes existing statistics history. Sites are also moved automatically to the zone-based firewall, which Scott says is causing the most trouble so far. If your network is running fine, it's worth waiting for a stable release.
— via Ubiquiti.