Loft Orbital builds space infrastructure to let any company, government, or institution harness the benefits of space. But just like how their standardized satellite platform provides reliable and affordable access to space, Loft Orbital found themselves in need of reliable and affordable networking for global operations.

Dante Bertana, Head of IT at Loft Orbital, explains how an unreliable VPN once hampered Loft Orbital’s connectivity. Fortunately, adopting Tailscale freed their company from disconnections, slow speeds, and constant troubleshooting.

Bringing space within reach

Loft Orbital’s satellites bring low-earth orbit a little closer to home by facilitating the transport of crucial equipment for their clients. This feat is possible because they maintain infrastructure, like satellites, and share affordable access between multiple clients.

As Dante explains, “Part of our business is timeshare of low-Earth orbit satellites. We have a fleet in space with different sensors, so if your company wants to image parts of Earth but doesn’t want to build your own camera or space vehicle, you're able to use one of ours.”

The access provided by Loft Orbital is considerably less expensive compared to the cost of clients building their own hardware, and Loft Orbital's success has led to considerable growth since it was founded in 2017. Their team grew to 300 staff members worldwide, all of whom needed to stay connected, but complaints about their unreliable VPN expanded alongside their team.

Previous disconnections and dissatisfaction

“One of our core company values at Loft is to make space simple for our customers. And similarly, I feel like Tailscale helps us do the same for networking.”

“We just grew to 300 people worldwide. There are different services that our employees need access to that are on-prem,” Dante shares. Initially, Loft Orbital had a popular VPN as its networking solution, but over time, staff became frustrated with its inconsistent performance and frequent disconnections.

“Getting the client software to work was the biggest struggle,” explains Dante. “Their apps were incredibly unreliable, and we lost faith in the product over time. I think their software team didn't scale with the features they were trying to build, and that led to a buggy app.”

These performance issues generated a slew of support tickets for IT staff, costing Loft Orbital valuable time, labor, and momentum. As Dante explains, “We had a ton of support tickets for the VPN software, crazy amounts. And even if the issue was something a staff member could fix themselves, they still had to take the time to reinstall and hope it worked. It was a rigamarole every time.”

Security first mentality

When Dante first heard of Tailscale, he tried it out himself and was impressed with its dedication to security. “It was immediately obvious that Tailscale was built from the ground up with security in mind. You see that in the granular way the ACLs can be configured and how it's using WireGuard for its point-to-point connections,” he says. “As an aerospace company, security is always our first priority.”

Dante also appreciated Tailscale’s intentional design and how Zero Trust principles were integrated from the ground up. He explains, “It's been built to be an elegant product. It has a Zero Trust architecture throughout, and everything fits where it should. This is an ideal networking tool that serves its purpose and doesn't try to be anything that’s not a core competency.”

Ending the skepticism

Once Dante experienced Tailscale, his next step was bringing his colleagues on board. Thankfully, Tailscale’s reputation preceded it. “People had already heard the name and knew about Tailscale before I brought it up,” he shares. “They said, ‘I've heard of Tailscale,’ or ‘I use it at home, and I really like it.’ It wasn't a hard sell at all.”

From there, Dante’s team brought senior members into the process and outlined Tailscale’s key features and capabilities. With the promise of better performance, at a good price point compared to their previous lackluster VPN solution, he received the go-ahead to bring Tailscale to Loft Orbital.

“It was a universal, 'Let's go for it!’ People love the feature set, and I love the price and the functionality. Even our most skeptical site reliability engineer looked into the security and was totally satisfied.”

Connected with zero-config

Now that Loft Orbital has adopted Tailscale, one of its main use cases has been facilitating access to key equipment via subnet routers. “We have subnet routers at all of our locations that allow end users to connect to the web UI of an oscilloscope or a power supply,” Dante shares. “And with the power of groups and tags in Tailscale, we’re able to quickly and securely define new groups of devices that we want to give access to.”

Loft Orbital also uses Tailscale to connect to devices that they send to their customers and partners. Dante explains, “We have a partner who has operations in a Nordic country. We sent them a rack of equipment with Tailscale on board, and we configured the Raspberry Pi subnet routers to connect back to our main Tailnet. This allowed us to have the same level of access and the same kind of site-to-site VPN capabilities that you get with more traditional tools, but with zero network configuration at our partner’s site. Once they got the OK to host our equipment, our partner didn’t need to go through an additional security review to open firewall ports. When working with partners, I had peace of mind knowing I could maintain granular control over exactly which ports and services were accessible. And we both get to space faster. It was a win-win.”

Smart and reliable connections

Tailscale has been useful for keeping Loft Orbital’s staff connected, regardless of location, with fewer disconnections and lower latency than their previous solution. Dante shares, “We have an office in San Francisco, manufacturing in Colorado, and a significant presence in Toulouse, France. We have people traveling and working remotely all around the world, and it doesn't matter where they are. The quickest, lowest-latency way to get to any device is through Tailscale.”

Connecting with Tailscale is not only faster and more efficient, but it also liberated Loft Orbital’s IT team from the support tickets that used to arise every day. This resulted in a massive reduction in support tickets, saving them considerable time and resources.

“Tailscale is very hands-off for our end users. We've had zero tickets from Tailscale infrastructure. To go from many support tickets a week to virtually zero has given tons of time back to the company that would have otherwise been lost in a troubleshooting swirl.”

Finding paths of least resistance

Given Loft Orbital's industry, Dante’s team often works within networks that have unique security restrictions. Tailscale has helped his team securely connect to equipment that would usually require significant IT burdens.

As Dante shares, “We have manufacturing partners where we'll have test equipment that we need to talk to from the outside. With a lot of these facilities, it isn’t feasible to ask for them to open WAN ports. Tailscale finds a path and makes it work without having to configure firewall rules.”

Tailscale is essential in how it enables connectivity, as Dante elaborates, “We’re able to rely on Tailscale to work and find a path back to our main infrastructure, whether the client is double NATed, traditional VPN ports are blocked, or otherwise. As an IT manager trying to deploy networks in austere environments, Tailscale has been an absolute game-changer.”

Keeping things simple

Of all of Tailscale’s benefits, Dante values its simplicity and ease of use for his users the most. He explains, “One of our core company values at Loft is to make space simple for our customers. And similarly, Tailscale helps us do the same for networking.”

This convenience and seamless connectivity are why he wholeheartedly recommends Tailscale. In his words, “It just works. As long as Tailscale has a path to the internet, it has a path back home." This convenient, zero-hassle user experience is available from any device, anywhere, and Dante is grateful to escape the management minutiae he used to expect with previous networking solutions.

“One of our customers was looking over my shoulder,” he shares. “He saw me click on the Tailscale app on my computer and get the IP of a device by going through the dropdown menu. I was doing this through my phone hotspot, and he was floored that it was working so seamlessly. I was accessing devices across multiple sites as if I were connected to the local network.”

Get stellar networking that your business can depend on

If your networking frustrates users more consistently than it connects, it’s time to explore your options. Once Loft Orbital learned of a faster, more reliable, and simpler solution for their networking, they took the leap.

Schedule a demo of Tailscale to launch your networking to greater heights.