Still in business?

[wnoc]

Its been over a year an a half since the last firmware update. I still see hardware being sold, but no bugs have been fixed in over a year and a half now. Is there plans to get back on track and if not will you be willing to release the firmware as open source so hopefully someone can take it over, fix the bugs and hopefully get things rolling again with updates?

[sakita]

I doubt the firmware could ever be open sourced, unfortunately. As I understand it, development requires a Vitesse (Microsemi) SDK which is licensed and costs > $100K. That is also part of the firmware update problem too as the SDK is based on a particular Linux Kernel and dependencies as well as including some bits that are compiled binaries: which all add up to some tough limitations and challenges like having to backport stuff to run on the older Kernel.

A bit ago I looked at the last post date for the software guy and the company president and both haven't been on here in a while. It seems the engineer is the only one popping in to say anything.

Unfortunately, since they haven't been getting parts they can't make product and if they can't make product they can't make money and if they can't make money they can't pay for any development. It's a tough hole to dig out of.

[jpmoller]

Not sure about other customers, but we've still been purchasing switches constantly throughout the shortages (in spite of the product being incredibly unstable). Sure we had some delays a few times, but they are still making money, I suspect. Maybe not a whole bunch of growth, but I would think enough to keep bums on seats?

Bit of a cyclical issue. Don't have money to fix the issues. Issues stop customers buying. No money to pay staff to fix issues...


Regardless of what the the situation is, they are still operating and choosing to not reply to any of our messages. Which makes it really hard to rely on them. Even a reply to say, "Hey, we are still here, we just have staff issues" would go a long way in building a bit of confidence.
But to only be replying to customers asking about shipments is blatantly ignoring the rest of us.

[dispensamatic]

Having owned about 20 of their switches, they are finicky and can be unreliable. Necistating manual power cycling. I have 4 bircked switches in my office, and since they are (out of warranty) they can't be fixed!?!?!??!?!?!? For a switch that costs 3-4x the price of others, Supposedly for WISP, and no capability for repair, I'd never buy another one! I have 3 new (backups) in a box on a shelf. One of them is a 26-port. I am now buying a competitor's brand that will hopefully have better customer support. If this company does not change, it will go out of business, i guarantee it.

[sakita]

Check on other posts... things are moving a bit better now and it sounds like just what I was saying... selling product means cash flow which allows for things like software updates. So far on the 3rd RC of the latest WS firmware in just the last few weeks!

As for reliability, apparently YMMV. We have over 100 switches of various models (and counting) with some running for > year with no reboot (switches that are several years old), harsh desert environment, and off-hand I recall one dead switch but it was in a cabinet that got hit by a car and maybe one other?

I'm feeling hopeful things are looking up

[sirhc]

Yea we are slowly getting more and more parts and inventory is SLOWLY building up and we are now even talking about new product development again. Yes funny how cash flow from selling products does do wonders.

Luckily we were always a debt free company or we probably would have failed under Bidenomics.

Counting the days until January 20th 2025 for real change for the better.

[tallmand]

Been trying to place some orders for a while now. I go to the web sit and it says "In stock", but when I go to add it to the cart it says "The requested qty is not available". It doesn't seem to matter what quantity I put in, it says the same thing with a quantity of 1 or 10.

[sakita]

It's an annoying quirk of the e commerce platform Netonix uses:

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=7556&p=37010&hilit=magento#p37009

Sounds like Netonix is between batches or sending those out maybe to some distributors?

Streakwave looks like they are out of everything but ISPSupplies has a few of some models in stock...

[snowman2001]

Its been over a year an a half since the last firmware update. I still see hardware being sold, but no bugs have been fixed in over a year and a half now. Is there plans to get back on track and if not will you be willing to release the firmware as open source so hopefully someone can take it over, fix the bugs and hopefully get things rolling again with updates?

If they cant ship product then their out of business or going out of business very very quickly!!!!

They are pushing us to change platform and goto Cambium tower switches!

[sirhc]

What are you talking about we released firmware WS firmware v1.15rc3 in November.

What bugs are you talking about?

We just release new firmware last week for WS3.

Pretty much every model is available on our web store to buy.