Goodbye Fritz!Box, Hello Ubiquiti
Why switch at all? The Fritz!Box 7690 is a capable device. Telephony, Wi-Fi, DECT, smart home, all in one box. That is also the problem. I want a network I actually control: VLANs, firewall rules, a proper dashboard. The Fritz!Box does a bit of everything; I want something that does the routing well and leaves the rest to me. On top of that, I kept running into performance problems over the past…
After years of slow Wi-Fi and performance issues, the author decided to replace their Fritz!Box 7690 with a Ubiquiti Cloud Gateway Ultra (UCG Ultra). They chose this device because it provides the necessary routing capabilities while allowing them to control other aspects of their network, such as VLANs and firewall rules.
Before making the switch, the author carefully reviewed the Fritz!Box configuration. They exported the configuration file using the backup function and analyzed the relevant WAN settings. The Fritz!Box was connected to the ISP's ONT via Ethernet, tagged with VLAN 700 and obtaining a public IP address through DHCP. The router also handled three VLANs: 700 for internet, 650 for telephony, and 550 for remote management by the ISP.
To configure the UCG Ultra, the author set the connection type to DHCPv4, VLAN ID to 700, and enabled IPv6 auto or DHCPv6 for dual-stack. They also assigned custom DNS servers for improved performance. Since the Fritz!Box uses a different MAC address than the UCG Ultra, the ISP might notice the change, but this can be easily resolved with a quick call to the ISP.
The author kept their LAN settings the same, with a 192.168.50.0/24 subnet and DHCP range from 192.168.50.20 to 192.168.50.200. They assigned static DHCP leases to their devices and configured IPv6 ULA prefix on the UCG Ultra for stable local IPv6 addresses.
For VoIP, the Fritz!Box handled telephony on VLAN 650, while the UCG Ultra does not support SIP. To keep their landline connection, the author ran the Fritz!Box as an IP client behind the UCG Ultra, handling only DECT and phone calls. Overall, the transition was smooth, and the author appreciated the ease of configuration using the Ubiquiti UniFi Network Controller.
Written by urgent.news from Dev.to's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
