Wireless Access Network Design and Operations: Unifi Controller Setup

# Unifi Controller Basic Setup

The goal of this exercise is to set up the Unifi network controller.

***Only one member of each group will set up the controller.***

## Logging into the Unifi Controller

As soon as you’ve installed the Unifi software, you should be able to log into the controller. If you can’t remember the IP address your controller was assigned, from the console type this to find it:

“`
ifconfig -a
“`

Your network controller will be present on your IP address, using HTTPS, on port 8443.


The first time you log in, you’ll be asked to answer a number of questions.

– Your country: Bhutan
– Timezone: (UTC+6:00)
– Configure devices: None for now
– Configure WiFi: Skip this for now
– Controller Access: Please use “admin” for the administrator name, and the classroom password.
– Device Authentication: Please use “admin” for the username, and nsrcwifilab for the password

After confirming the settings, you can skip the “Cloud Login Credentials”.

Now log in with the credentials you specified during setup, and we’ll configure a few things before we start adding devices.

## Unifi Controller Basic Setup
Once you’re logged in, the basic settings will be available via a link in the lower left-hand corner of your display.


Check all the settings to ensure you’re happy with them, but what’s most important to us is the “Device Authentication” Settings at the bottom of this configuration screen.


Here in the **Device Authentication** section we want to enable SSH authentication, set a username, a password, and add an SSH public key. This will allow us to log into our Unifi devices interactively – something that’s important for our labs this week.

If you don’t have an SSH key already, create one on your Netowrk Management Virtual Machine using these [instructions](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSH/OpenSSH/Keys). If you follow these instructions exactly, you can get your public key with the command

“`
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
“`

When you’re done making changes on this page, be sure to click the green “Apply Changes” button to save them.


## Did Your Unifi Controller Break?

It’s easy to mis-configure services running on Linux. If you’ve broken your Unifi Controller, follow these steps to fully remove and re-install it:

“`
sudo bash
rm -rf /usr/lib/unifi/data /usr/lib/unifi/logs
apt-get purge unifi
apt-get install unifi
“`