So I recently upgraded my home internet to full fibre, after which I also decided to upgrade my router as there were some things I wanted to do with my network that my ISP-provided router wasn't capable of.I replaced my mesh system with a UniFi one a couple years ago, so it made sense to stick with the UniFi brand and go with one of their routers, so £250 later, I had a Cloud Gateway Max on its way to me.I figured this would be a straightforward process, but my god was I wrong!First attemptSo I took a backup of my Cloud Key1 config and figured I could unplug that, plug in the Cloud Gateway, restore the config and be done. I assumed there would be a couple things I needed to tweak, but for the most part, it would be a simple 10 minute job.Fuck. No.You see, dear reader, in order to configure the Cloud Gateway you need an internet connection. No internet connection, no configuration. So by unplugging my ISP router -thus killing the internet to my entire house - I couldn't even get to the point where I could enter my ISP credentials, let alone configure the bloody thing.Without the internet connection all I could configure was the IP and MAC of the router. Absolutely pointless!There may be a way of doing this without an internet connection, but I couldn't find it and it certainly wasn't obvious.Attempt #2So I had to reconnect my old rig - the ISP router, the Cloud Key, and access points. Then I hung the Cloud Gateway off the ISP router so it could get an internet connection.Luckily this worked and I was finally able to configure the thing. After which I disconnected the Cloud Key, assuming the access points would all fail over to the Cloud Gateway when I restored the config backup from the Cloud Key.Nope!You see, the config back from the Cloud Key is a completely different file format (*.unifi) to what the Cloud Gateway was expecting (*.unf).What the actual fuck!Attempt #3Soooooo back online went the Cloud Key, and I had to remove all 4 access points from there, just so I could "adopt" them with the Cloud Gateway. Then I had to manually setup my SSIDs and DHCP so it all matched the old rig.But finally, after 3 hours of fucking around, a job that I thought would take 10 minutes was done.Final thoughtsUniFi is really good kit and has lots of features, but I don't understand why it has to be so difficult to set up.It feels like UniFi is the Apple of the networking world - they do everything they can to keep you in their ecosystem and up sell.Want our wifi? You're gonna need one of our routers, or this arbitrary piece of hardware for that.Oh you want to move an AP to a new management device? Yeah, you can't just move it - you need to do these 5 steps instead.Had I not already spent over a thousand pound on this UniFi kit, I would have chucked it all on eBay and gone with something else, but alas WiFi Apple has me in their walled garden!Anyway, it was a painful process, but it's working. And to be fair to UniFi, once it is all setup, it's rock solid and feature rich. I won't be upgrading again any time soon though, that's for sure!Now I just need to familiarise myself with all the nifty features the Cloud Gateway offers, so I can improve my network. Fun times!A Cloud Key is a stupid piece of hardware that is needed in lieu of a UniFi router. It controls the wireless access points. ↩ Thanks for reading this post via RSS. RSS is ace, and so are you. ❤️ You can reply to this post by email, or leave a comment.