APs adopted but moved to new physical site and mounted

Access Points
1

Hi Guys,

Dumb question and not sure if this has been asked so excuse my noobish ask.

Scenario is…

  • AP is adopted and used at Site New York… It is then taken down and physically shipped to Site Miami… Site New York no longer exists

  • Site Miami is a different building with a totally different ALTA Site configuration

  • If the AP is mounted to the ceiling, out of convenient reach to press the reset button, how do you have Site Miami adopt this AP? Is there a way to adopt without pressing the reset button?

Thanks for your time and help!

2

Excellent timing, I had the exact same question come in earlier.

Once a device is managed by a site, it belongs to that site. Even defaulting it won’t release it from that “ownership”. To fix your current situation, feel free to DM me the MAC addresses and we can release them on our side.

For the immediate future, I would recommend to not remove the New York site until you have the devices set up in Miami. Then, the worst that would happen is you’d have to transfer ownership by requesting the transfer of ownership in the Miami site, which would then send the request to the New York site.

I believe what’s going on with this setup currently is that the New York site may be obliterated when it’s deleted so there’s nowhere for that request to go (it would be bound to the email associated to the site). I’m waiting on confirmation from the developers that this is truly the case. If so, of course, we’ll get a bug ticket created and get that fixed.

2 Likes
3

Thanks Alta-Matt_v2 for the reply.

I assume if I were trying to adopt the APs at the Miami site that they would be seen in the local network in the dashboard and show it’s MAC address?

I’m just trying to think of ways to manage risk and not have to climb up a ladder to press the reset button (cough cough Ubiquti APs).

I’m guessing as long as the AP has internet connectivity, it’s able to communicate to ALTA labs to be troubleshot such as a release and re-adopt?

Thanks for the time!

1 Like
4

Pressing the reset button won’t help as the MAC is bound to an account in the database after it’s managed. So we need the MAC to kill the binding so that it’s considered a fresh, out of the box AP. So no need to climb a ladder.

Removing that binding is done in the database so the AP doesn’t even need to be powered on.

Yes, you should see the MAC address in the Alta management interface so you can grab the MAC from there.

1 Like
5

Awesome. That’s good to know as in lab tests, Ive only used one account so far but if I were to create test setups with different email addresses for myself or as a consultant, I would’ve run into this problem.

Security wise, that’s nice like an iOS device being stolen and can’t be used but I’d imagine second hand sellers could sell and forget to delete them from the previous account and then having to contact support which would be overhead for ALTA.

Thanks for the help again!

2 Likes
6

@Alta-Matt_v2

I probably shoulda asked, whats the proper way to remove an AP from one email address to another?

I think moving APs from one “Site” to another is easy but i guess all AP MAC’s are tied to an email address upon first adoption?

7

You’re on a roll with excellent questions!

At present, the owner of the AP is considered to be whomever managed the AP initially. For example purposes, let’s say it was johndoe@gmail.com. If John then wants to “transfer” ownership, John would have to delete the AP from whatever site it is in which will soft reset the AP to defaults.

Then, from the same network as the AP, janedoe@gmail.com (example) would then have to click “Set Up” for that AP for whatever site they wish it to belong to, then the AP is now bound to janedoe@gmail.com.

1 Like