Usage and Monitoring

Here is how the router and Teleport were both connected during testing. The router had, of course, the power plug and WAN port connected to my modem, and then I also had an Ethernet connection as well to ensure LAN network speeds in addition to Wi-Fi. Similarly, I had the Teleport connected via Ethernet in addition to the Wi-Fi network at the two places I tested it at outside of my home. Both light up when powered on; the Teleport with the blue LED circle and the router with white LEDs diffused by the protective periphery at the bottom.


The touch screen on the router can display one of several screens which can be swiped through to get to the one you want to see, including a traffic monitor for both upload and download through the router, a date and clock screen, and a visual indicator of the ports in use on the back. The screen display is legible from as far as 6-8' away in most cases owing to the bright screen, large font size, and contrasting colors used.


Here, you can see a quick overview of the options available, beginning with the overview page where you can quickly see the status of the AmpliFi devices, whether or not something is wrong, or a firmware/app update is available, as well as the number of clients connected and the real-time upload and download throughput. The performance page is next with a more detailed throughput chart with time, usage statistics from the day you set it to when you reset it to begin again, and the option to run a quick ISP test to monitor these with time as well. The third menu is for guest access, wherein you can set the maximum number of guests who can connect to the account (default is three), start/stop the guest access, share the notification and also configure the wireless settings for the router. This last set of options feels out of place on that menu page since also a part of the other options available for the device specific settings we will look at next.

The fourth page is where you can set up profiles for yourself and/or family members to get more control over connection access for them, and also monitor what devices are currently connected as well. There are no firewall or content-specific rules you can set here, which is something other Wi-Fi solutions in the price range this kit comes in will offer. You do have the option to pause access to specific devices, or even prioritize their access as one of three stages; normal, streaming, and gaming. The final page has diagnosis options, and this shows a quick status of the WAN link and Internet connection while also confirming that the IP address, Gateway address, and DNS address are all good. Since this page shows the information specific to my usage case here, I refrained from showing it publicly. There is a final menu accessible through the three bars in the top-left corner which allows you to access a 24/7 help center and live support, read the terms of service, and add/log out of remote access. This is where AmpliFi could have just given the option to create a login credential via a username/email and password, but instead, the only options are to log in via a Google or Facebook account. I am certainly not pleased with this, but for the sake of testing, I used my Facebook account and ensured that access was as minimal as possible.


Clicking on the device icon in the first menu gives you device-specific settings, and these have sub-menus as well. The General settings allow you to change the device name, operating time zone, 12/24 hour clock selection, volume of the built-in speaker, which can chime and/or vibrate for alerts, and locate the device, which is where the lighting and speaker both come into effect. The Internet settings have the same options as we saw before on page three, including the ability to rename the SSID and change the password and set up separate SSIDs for 2.4 and 5 GHz networks, and the Advanced settings even include the ability to pick the channel and bandwidth for the networks, set up night mode, whereby the screen and lighting will turn off beginning and ending at the times you pick, which will also help prolong the life of those components, set up WPS via touch on the LCD screen, port forwarding, all DHCP settings, and more.


As far as the Teleport goes, the menu here gives you a real-time qualitative status of the connection's strength. You can also turn the LED on/off, pause the device's operation, locate what would trigger the LED to blink rapidly, and reboot the Teleport. If not connected, you can set it up again if you want to pair it to a different home network. Also, and somewhat interestingly, you can actually change the band for the wireless N network the Teleport will generate from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz. In a typical case, say in a hotel room or similar, the distance from the Teleport to the connected clients will not be large, so I ended up changing over to the 5 GHz band here and saw no change in the signal strength.


The performance page is useful for monitoring real-time throughput, which does match the popular speed test results for my home network, but the ISP performance test does not seem to take full advantage of the available throughput. In fact, I re-ran that test as I was writing this section, and the new test gave a higher download speed (~146 Mbps) with the upload and ping numbers remaining the same. I suggest using it as a tool for a comparison within the set of results it generates, and not necessarily as a test to figure out the maximum throughput to/from the router or your real-time Internet speed from your service provider.


There are some non-app-based monitoring tools available as well for the AmpliFi products, with the first being a quick browser-based control page accessible by merely going to the IP address of the device as with any other router (use IPconfig in command prompt to find the Gateway device if you are unsure). Here, we can see that the available options pale in comparison to the app, and it assumes you have their router and mesh access point kit. Perhaps this will get updated to allow for more Teleport-specific options, but as it stands, there is not much to see here.


Ubiquiti Labs has also been working on a portal for more access, and this is where the remote access from before comes in. It is still in beta, but can be accessed from here. Once logged in, you can customize a floor plan to match that of your residence or even upload an image for the floor plan as well. I ended up doing the latter so you can get a better idea of the test environment, and you can also set an accurate scale bar. The connected device, the HD mesh router in this case, is seen on the left, and you can get a visual estimate of the network strength at various points of your residence depending on where the router is placed for both the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands. Not shown in the images above is the list of connected devices and IP address that come up on the right, which I again chose to not display publicly. Perhaps this portal is where we will see more options added in, but as it is now know that the AmpliFi Teleport kit is best used with a relatively recent iOS or Android device.