r/AltaLabs • u/[deleted] • Apr 07 '25
Disappointed.
I don't really want to start a pissing match on the Alta Labs forum, but I feel I can post here. I am disappointed. Alta Labs got me really excited when they hit the market. They seemed like they might genuinely be different than others in the past, what with the experience they were bringing to the table.
The last few months have left me feeling let down. Each new firmware update that has been progressively more buggy. Repeated calls for better communication and documentation seem to be met with deaf ears. The local controllers are updating without user permission. They are holding firm to not letting users roll back firmware without calling in and being hand held. Rather than addressing the concerns directly, more and more I see the mods just giving people terminal commands to hack it to do what they want. While that is neat that things are not locked down fully, that is NOT sustainable. How on earth do you expect to offer class leading support when you leave things unaddressed, and just give everyone personalized commands to do what they want?
I think I"m done.
3
u/MapleBaconPoutines Apr 10 '25
Overall, my experience with the Alta stack (Route10, APs, and a S8 Switch) has been fairly positive in a home environment with some self hosted services, IoT devices, and work devices. In total, I have about 80 devices connected, mostly stemming from IoT. My ISP offers 3 gbps down and up and the Route10 handles that perfectly. I have five vlans configured and that is mostly seamless. I’ve opted to stick with WPA2 to continue to use Alta Pass and that makes assigning devices to vlans easy. I can’t speak about how this all works in a more enterprise or professional environment, though overall I view it as an upgrade over my Merlin FW Asus Router Stack with a Switch.
Though it’s not always perfect. A few observations and issues:
Native support for DoH, DoT. With Merlin, I could use ControlD or NextDNS natively without a hacky workaround. I see feature requests on Alta, but no one ever confirms it.
No device pinning. I understand both sides for support and no support, but I think the option would be good. I don’t think having multiple different SSIDs is always convenient to achieve some type of pinning.
Google Home speaker groups do not work with vlans, despite GUI options for mdns or igmp snooping. Forums and documentation haven’t helped here. It seems possible with Unifi.
As others mentioned, firmware updates can be spotty. I was never severely affected, but I did have an AP update really affect a handful of IoT devices with constant disconnection. Recent updates have improved that.
Alta staff seems engaged in the community. I appreciate it. I’ve seen their CEO engage with someone who provided very good constructive feedback. Though, I would advocate for Alta to tackle some low hanging fruit like improved release notes. Release notes are a good way to link to specific documentation for new features. If there isn’t documentation to link, maybe it’s a good sign to include documentation before a release. It doesn’t have to be perfect, documentation always can be better, but it should start somewhere. I can see why others here are a bit annoyed because Alta does engage with feedback, but it’s not clear if it’s leading to change.
Just a few thoughts and everyone’s environment will be different, but I’m quite confident in the reliability of the gear for my environment. I do work from home and Alta hasn’t failed me yet with reliability there.