What is Fallback Upon Failure?

Once setup on a site, Alta devices will send a ping to ping.alta.inc every 30 seconds per device to ensure they have a valid Internet connection. They will additionally send a ping to their gateway (usually your router IP), and if both of these pings fail, then the Fallback Upon Failure mode will be triggered if enabled. Fallback Upon Failure will disregard any static IP addressing and management VLAN settings, reverting to the default DHCP request on VLAN 1.

Identifying Fallback Upon Failure

For Alta devices themselves, the easiest way to determine that this feature has been tripped is that it no longer has the assigned static IP and/or the assigned management VLAN.

For clients, it's all in the IP address they obtain. By default, the backup network is 10.188.0.0/16. If you see a device with this IP, then you know the Fallback Upon Failure feature has been triggered.  This backup network setting can be modified by going to Settings > System > Advanced > Backup Network.

If you would like to disable this feature, clear all characters out of the Backup Network field. 

Local controllers

Alta devices also need to be able to look up local controller dynamic DNS hostnames, even with DNS rebinding protection active. We employ secure DNS in addition to the local DNS server supplied by DHCP.