Thoughts of a leaving enthusiast

General
1

This will be my last post on this forum. For as long as this remains visible, I’d like to leave a few thoughts for consideration. This is, after all, a public forum.

First, I would encourage Alta Labs to consider having someone other than the CTO serve as the primary liaison on the forum. Too often, discussions that could be productive end up feeling adversarial. Most people come here looking for help, clarification, or a place to share concerns. When those concerns are met with defensiveness rather than curiosity, it discourages participation and undermines the value of the community.

Second, I would encourage some reflection on what it means to “listen to customers.” I was here for the AP6-Pro launch and the extensive feedback regarding the mounting design. I was also here for the AP7-Pro release, which retained many of the same characteristics that users had criticized. Likewise, requests for software rollback capabilities and improved configuration backup have been recurring topics for years.

The issue is not whether every request should be implemented. No company can do that. The issue is whether customers can see evidence that their feedback is genuinely influencing priorities and product decisions. From the perspective of many forum participants, that connection is often difficult to see.

If the intention is to engage with customers, then engagement needs to be more than collecting feedback—it needs to include demonstrating that feedback is being considered and acted upon. Otherwise, the forum risks becoming less of a customer community and more of a place where users talk among themselves while waiting for decisions that seem disconnected from the discussions happening here.

I probably should have moved on a long time ago, but before doing so, I wanted to leave these observations for whatever value they may have to those willing to consider them.

2

I agree. I was surprised to see the new AP7 access points using the same mount, albeit made from a different material. We were led to believe that a different, easier-to-use mount was in the works.

In one of the videos an installer released, you can see that every crew member is struggling to mount them.

I was also shocked to see that Alta-MikeD had his account suspended and marked as offboarding. MikeD was very helpful and receptive to feedback. I see other topics pointing out issues to Alta, and instead of providing a fix, the responses seem to be explanations or excuses.

Take the User/Password/Private Key clear text in /cfg/config.json topic, for example. Saying that “someone would need to have administrator access to the device already” is shocking. Countless vulnerabilities have been patched after being identified, even when administrator access was already required to exploit them.

I think Alta needs to step back, lower its defensive tone, and be more receptive to questions and suggestions.

3

On the flip side with the CEO being on the forums can lead to a very good feedback loop. You have the top of food chain seeing posts.

I’ve never been a fan of the mounting bracket but I have learned to make it work. The mounting bracket that came with the route10 is different and better. But it’s also thicker.

No company is perfect. The flaws can be strengths.

4

Well said, Sir!

Since they opt not to listen to customers, let’s see if Alta will be around in 3-5 years. I have no Compelling reason to migrate my customers to Alta.

My NFR kit will remain in testing, nothing more.

5

We are listening :ear: right here in the forum. Happy to help. @techtegrity I sent you a DM to understand your concerns better. I did mention that we have considered encrypting the cfg filesystem.

6

Unfortunately @Alta-Jeff, I would say this response actually sums up some of the frustration people experience here. @techtegrity is not the user that mentioned the recent clear text password concern, it was @joe. This illustrates two very clear problems; 1) if you are going to respond, take the time to understand what it is that users are saying; and 2) you don’t have to get the last word in every time – ending the reply with “I did mention….” It didn’t gain you any traction the first time and won’t this time either.

I agree that many conversations here seem to turn more adversarial instead of being productive. It seems anything related to security tends to fall down this path, referencing the clear text password concern. We hear “hyper focused on security” in one breath and then “that is how other manufacturers do it too” in another. I participated in the IPS debacle discussion where it went about the same way, if an IPS detects something but does not block it, it is broken, it is very black and white in that regard, yet I’m told it works and I should stick to the facts when the facts clearly demonstrated a very different picture.

Other feedback that I would think would be extremely easy to action are the release notes. I have long been an advocate, including examples, of providing just some basic details in the release notes. Instead, some odd trust page is updated to state we might get a Knowledge Article within 30 days of release.

For consumer users, this might fly, but for MSPs, they are not being provided with the information needed to manage multiple sites effectively. Any MSP that leaves auto-updates on, in my opinion, is doing both themselves and their customers a dis-service. Updates should be controlled with backout capabilities (also mentioned by @techtegrity). Businesses and consumers alike depend on their networks to be functional. Waiting up to 30 days post release to get proper documentation is unacceptable, having no fallback capability is worse.

There has been a lot of feedback and discussion on these forums around establishing an early access model, improved release notes and the ability to roll back firmware. In my opinion, all critical components for an MSP to properly support their customers. None have been actioned and generally the discussions are shutdown. Lack of timely documentation, and no ability to revert firmware should be dealbreakers for most reputable MSPs.

For a company that seems more focused on the installer / MSP model and less on the consumer side, I truly do not understand the approach or lack of action. For me, margins are not enough of a value proposition. Service and capabilities must be there as well.

I can see how folks will get frustrated at both the tone of discussions and the lack of closure. Ultimately, people will have to decide on their own which platform meets their needs and provides the value they desire. I think it is fair for someone to share their feedback once they made that decision. I think they are trying to provide something for the team to consider going forward. Do I feel it will be heard; no, I do not based on current and past actions.

7

@ecs-solutions @luke.fong @techtegrity I am not sure how to make this more clear. I feel like we are starting to sound like a broken record, but I will try again.

We take all of the feedback from all of our customers and market verticals very seriously. We hold weekly meetings to review the feedback we receive and do our best to prioritize it. As has already been stated, no company can implement every feature request is receives. It’s simply impossible.

What we have found to be the most successful approach is to look at what feature request are coming in and at what frequency, in what quantity, and how big of a customer base or market they can positively impact. We then prioritize those features accordingly.

Your claims that we do not listen to customer feedback is false. Our entire feature release cadence has been set by the feedback we receive by our customers. While this forum is an important mechanism for us to source feedback, it certainly is not the only one we use. We consistently receive customer input through our support team, from our sales team, from our social media platforms and from our distribution partners. All of which is used to help us prioritize and set the features we release and changes we make to our platform.

An early release program is not something we get asked for regularly. There are a vocal minority that have requested it, but it remains a relatively uncommon request. That said, as we have stated within this forum and during our live stream events, it is something we want to and plan to develop and release. However, consistent with our development philosophy, we want want to do it correctly, with appropriate tools and feedback mechanisms in place. We will not deploy an early release program that is half-baked.

As for firmware roll back, that is asked for by a slightly larger group, but still at an order of magnitude less than those asking for features like speed test built-in to Route10, PBR, more granularity with content filtering and scheduling within AltaPass, faster IPSec VPN performance, and many others.

What we have seen significantly more demand for is the ability to schedule firmware updates for a future date and time. As a result, that is one of the things we are actively working on now.

Regarding documentation for firmware releases, when new features are introduced, we are now publishing the corresponding Knowledge Base documentation either the same day or within a few days of release. PBR is a recent example of that effort. Though we still reserver the right to take a little longer to release documentation, as needed.

Regarding tone. This forum is designed to be a place where users can come and interact with other users, see what others are doing to address challenges or how to overcome obstacles and even receive support from our team. The tone from all parties, should remain professional and constructive. When the Alta team is called out for “not listening to its customers” or “not taking security seriously” we reserve the right to stand up for ourselves and point out how that is incorrect. Especially when those comments are made in broad strokes, often without all of the available data and without having understanding the bigger picture. Just as much as we would expect you to provide specific examples or evidence of when something is not working correctly so we can troubleshoot and resolve the issue.

Finally, regarding closure. The forum consistently receives great levels of feedback and engagement. We have asked our support team to try and spend more time in the forum, as time permits, to help resolve issues that are brought up here. That said, and as we have always stated, if someone deploying Alta Labs product feels like they have run into an issue with the hardware or firmware, we recommend a support ticket get created immediately. That can be done via phone (435-773-4702 opt. 2) or email (support@alta.inc) or via chat. All three of those methods will create a case, which will remain open until the issue is resolved, or until the individual that opens the case stops responding to our support team for multiple days. Our case management system is the only way we can assure closure is provided from our side.

8

Yup! Agreed!

The community is now Us vs Them. Customers vs Alta. It’s a global trend.

Partnership and customer advocacy are not profitable.

9

To add to this, we have always advised folks to contact us for firmware downgrades, which we’ll readily do. The reason we want to be made hyper aware of such a request is because we want to understand why the request is being made.

I’ve personally handled a couple dozen cases where the claim was made that x broke with y firmware. Which we promptly do once gaining access to a site. I believe there has been one whole case in which a firmware downgrade actually solved the issue, which was already a known issue by the time the customer reached out to us. Without that direct contact, who knows how many devices would be out of date (which is a security concern, to your guys’ points). The rest of the cases, it typically turned out to be a change that was made to the configuration.

My goal here is simply to demonstrate not just that firmware downgrade isn’t a good default solution, but rather using other tools like the Audit Log to track what’s going on, what happened, when it happened, etc. Shortest path first and that’s often the path of least downtime.

:100: no argument that the support team (myself included) need to spend more time on the community and that participation is being closely monitored, I expect only upward trajectory moving forward.

10

@ecs-solutions https://forum.alta.inc/c/release-notes/13
We’ve structured this so you can subscribe to a category (for example if you only deploy our access points, you can subscribe to just access point firmware release notes) and get the release notes emailed to you.

Separate question, there are at least 2 commenters on this thread that have stated (before this thread was created, and ironically one that is violating the terms of service - but hey, no moderation) that they won’t be deploying Alta, using Alta, etc. I fully understand, vote with your wallet, we won’t be a 100% match for everyone. Obviously that’s not my or our preferred route. It does, however, leave me personally wondering why you’d take time out of your day to post on a forum that you have no active involvement with the products and/or features being discussed? I sincerely don’t mean this to be adversarial in any way, I’m legitimately curious.

I’m also a little baffled as to why it would be a problem for the CTO to be active in communicating with customers. I think that’s awesome and would love it if more companies had their leaders with their finger on the pulse of the actual users of their products. I legitimately thought about this and I don’t think I can name a single CTO at any other company of which I’m a customer. That’s just my $0.02, of course.

11

I can say from my experience that I have had pretty solid experiences with Alta. I do remote consulting and customers appreciate how easy it is to get the devices up and running.

I think you guys are doing a fantastic job, and the fact that you guys actually take time out of your day to respond to people in the forum and help work through issues for free is fantastic.

13

I have to agree. Whilst I don’t post a lot in here I do follow the forums to see what updates are around etc and have asked for help once and received it. I’m starting to think a lot of complaints are due to people either spamming their thoughts or not using the right channels to get the help they need. I do understand some comments where people want to feel more involved in decisions however 99% of companies don’t work this way and neither does Alta need to if they take the comments on board, which I have no indication that they don’t.

14

Fair question. You are correct, I do not sell or install any Alta Labs hardware. There was a local installer that was pushing it and installed a handful of sites (mainly high end homes), he is now out of business. I’ve had several of those consumers contact us in the past to take over management or support, which we considered initially (actually tried) but ultimately decided not to pursue for many of the reasons I shared. All of those sites agreed to move to a more mature hardware stack and stay with us as customers. We recently had another one approach us about helping them, they really did not want to do any hardware changes. I decided to revisit our initial decision so I came here to see if things had matured. I decided to weigh in and provide my thoughts on the current discussion which obviously wasn’t well received. Anyway, we worked a deal with the most recent user to migrate them to something that better meets their needs and we’ll continue to support them going forward.

15

I can atest to alot of this, i was so Grumpy having so many issues with The Ap7-pro, having it connect and not connect at 10gbe then slow performance. BUt then as stubborn as I am ill stay up to 3 am playing with tons of ideas and methods to learn the issue.

Waking up the next day to ralize hey, yeah i got this ap to review and for free but i can pickup the phone and call support where they answer the phone listen to me and help me though issues.

Not only that, they can say hey, can we call you back, we will go buy the same pieces you are using and test things out and report back,

NOT ONE OTHER MANUFACTURE I have ver worked with would do this, they would always come back with NOT our issue, we can’t support you.

This also brings up a memory with the AP6W and passthrough PoE issues that i had when I deployed 15 of them and phones would randomly reboot. They didn’t have the exact phone’s I was using but offered to help me, so I shipped my phone to them they found the minor bug and then fixed it.

Point of my post Have you be grumpy like me and a negative issue or a positive issue, they listen to us help us no matter what and improve things.

Hat’s off to the whole team, they work hard and earned my trust.

16

@ecs-solutions you’re actually not who I was referring to, but knowing the context is very handy.

I’ve said my piece, but I do want to add a little more insight on the “listening to customers” topic. I can’t emphasize enough that we do, it just may not always be apparent. I’m a big fan of not replying just for the sake of replying, I’d rather do some research and be able to come back with an answer of substance.

At a previous company, I fought (and lost) for years to develop a beefy mount that could be used through multiple generations of hardware. It makes upgrades substantially easier and doesn’t require poking more holes in the customer’s structure. It’s the type of thing where, from a consumer’s perspective, “they really put thought into this”.

The AP mount is certainly a controversial topic and part of that stems from wanting to maintain that backwards compatibility (which mounting backwards compatibility was already a consideration from day 1). We are having internal discussions on the best approach moving forward.

17

Worked with MANY MANY brands of Wireless Ap’s and they all do this, change the mounting brackets and style every different release or update. It’s annoying. Being able to use the same bracket but upgrade device is 100% satisfying.

18

I tend to give Alta Labs a measure of grace as well, they are growing and there will be pains. They have supplied the ability to tinker on the platform as well as a local gateway, if they were to stop improving. I’ll be gone, but for right now I’m happy.

19

Chiming in here, as a light home prosumer user that’s still nowhere near professional, Alta has been rock solid for me. Cant tell you the vast searching I had to do running UniFi equipment, downgrading when an update was junk, messing with multiple settings etc. I jumped ship to Alta a bit ago and honestly it’s been rock solid for me. Updates are smooth and honestly I have never seen this level of support direct from the company on a public forum.

Sure as they grow it will probably change (along with a bigger support network) but I’m hopeful, I like competition especially when the end product is better than what others offer (again just my opinion, man lol)

I don’t speak for everyone at all here and of course this is just my use case and experience but overall I’d take the occasional issue here knowing the support is great vs constant tinkering and having to wait for users to vet a new update before applying (and doing my own endless research).

20

Alta has been amazing to work with. It’s awesome to see CTOs, CEOs, and people communicating with their user base. Not under some generic handle or account. Anytime I’ve had issues it’s been resolved quickly. Alta is still new but they are not in the market of releasing half baked products.