Hi Alta Labs team,
I’m using Alta gear in a production/MSP environment and wanted to share some feedback on the current colour tag system, plus a few feature requests.
At the moment, colours appear to be doing double duty:
-
Broadcast grouping – SSIDs and APs must share a colour for the SSID to be broadcast by that AP.
-
VLAN mapping context – the same colour tags are also used to determine which VLAN applies in a given area/zone.
Functionally this works, but in day-to-day use it becomes convoluted and hard to reason about, especially once you scale beyond a very simple deployment.
Why this is problematic
-
The same abstract “colour” object is being used to mean two separate things at once:
-
Where an SSID is allowed to broadcast (RF grouping), and
-
Which VLAN(s) should be associated in that context.
-
-
When you revisit a configuration later (or hand it to another engineer), there’s no clear semantic distinction. You have to reverse-engineer the meaning of each colour from scratch.
-
For MSP / multi-site setups, this increases the risk of:
-
Misconfigurations when adding new SSIDs or zones
-
Inconsistent VLAN mapping between areas
-
Documentation drift between what “red/blue/green” are supposed to mean and what they actually do in the controller
-
What would make this much clearer
A few changes would make the system far easier to work with, particularly at scale:
-
Centralised colour / zone management in main Network settings
-
A single page under the main Network / Site settings where all colours (zones) are:
-
Defined and given human-readable names (e.g. “L1 Office”, “Warehouse”, “Yard / Cameras”), and
-
Mapped to VLANs and SSIDs.
-
-
This page could act as the source of truth instead of having to click through each SSID and AP individually.
-
APs and SSIDs would then simply reference these named zones, rather than carrying fragmented configuration.
-
-
Separate logical objects for RF groups vs VLAN zones (or at least make the distinction explicit)
-
Either split “where this SSID is broadcast” (RF group) from “what VLAN(s) apply here” (VLAN zone),
-
Or keep them unified but clearly represented in that centralised view, so it’s obvious what each colour/zone is doing.
-
-
Allow colours to be named/labelled everywhere
-
Let us rename “Red” to “L1 Office”, “Blue” to “Warehouse”, “Green” to “Yard / Cameras”, etc.
-
Show these labels consistently wherever colours are referenced, so they carry real meaning for engineers.
-
-
Provide a visual matrix for SSID × Colour/Zone × VLAN
-
A table-style view showing:
-
Rows: SSIDs
-
Columns: Colours/Zones
-
Cells: Assigned VLAN IDs
-
-
This would make auditing and documentation much easier, especially on larger or multi-VLAN sites.
-
-
Support per-site colour/zone profiles for MSPs
- The ability to define and clone a standard colour/zone scheme between sites (e.g. “Corp / Guest / IoT / CCTV / POS”) would be hugely valuable and reduce human error.
I really like the flexibility of the current design, but right now it feels like colours are trying to represent both “where” and “what VLAN” without enough structure or labelling, which makes it harder to maintain over time.
Thanks for your time and for the work you’re putting into the platform.