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dieter
dieter
New Member
September 16, 2021
Solved

compatibility with older Forticlient ?

  • September 16, 2021
  • 1 reply
  • 7808 views

We are in a (painful and lengthy) transition from FortiOS 5.6 to 6.

 

Next step in the upgrade path is from 5.6.11 tot 6.0.10. Yes, I know, we are 3 years behind... But for us this upgrade to a major version, feels like a giant milestone.

 

We currently use Forticlient 6.0.3.0155 for VPN (Windows only).

 

In the release notes for 6.0.10 on page 12 it says:

FortiOS 6.0.10 greatly increases the interoperability between other Fortinet products. This includes: FortiAnalyzer 6.0.8 FortiClient EMS 6.0.8 FortiClient 6.0.9 FortiAP 5.4.4 and later FortiSwitch 3.6.9 and later Upgrade the firmware of each product in the correct order. This maintains network connectivity without the need to use manual steps.

 

On page 16 it says:

If you are using FortiClient only for IPsec VPN or SSL VPN, FortiClient version 5.6.0 and later are supported.

 

We only use Forticlient for VPN, not endpoint checking.

 

Will it work ? Or do we have to upgrade Forticlient first ?

    Best answer by FirewallNoob

    I havent had any problems running older Forticlients other than when the OS itself complains - Windows 10 doesn't seem to play nice with clients older than 6.0.8 but the fortigates themselves don't care. I was also running Forticlient 6.0.8 with FortiOS 5.0.6 (yes, five-point-zero).

     

    I am running FortiOS 6.4.4 with 6.0.8 and 6.0.9 Forticlients without issue. Anything newer than 6.0.9 loses the (free) ability to "Save password", "Auto Connect" and select "Always up".

    1 reply

    FirewallNoob
    FirewallNoobAnswer
    New Member
    September 20, 2021

    I havent had any problems running older Forticlients other than when the OS itself complains - Windows 10 doesn't seem to play nice with clients older than 6.0.8 but the fortigates themselves don't care. I was also running Forticlient 6.0.8 with FortiOS 5.0.6 (yes, five-point-zero).

     

    I am running FortiOS 6.4.4 with 6.0.8 and 6.0.9 Forticlients without issue. Anything newer than 6.0.9 loses the (free) ability to "Save password", "Auto Connect" and select "Always up".

    dieter
    dieterAuthor
    New Member
    September 21, 2021

    Thank you firewallNoob.

     

    Curious you mention Win10 not playing. We've been having no issues with Forticlient 6.0.3 . May I ask what kind of problems you experienced ?

     

    Altough we use neither, it's good to know functionality is lost with anything newer than 6.0.9.

    FirewallNoob
    FirewallNoob
    New Member
    September 21, 2021

    General instability - tunnels dropping, blue-screens related to Fortishield.sys, Certificate Errors (even though we don't use them) and the complete loss of ability to use DNS name as the remote gateway. On all clients (luckily only about 20) we had to change over to using IP address only. A Windows update just completely broke that function.

     

    Being that we want to stick with 6.0.9 else lose the "Always up" feature, we've been dealing with the issues but those are mostly past us now - the real trouble began about this time last year with the October update for Win10. Now all of us are on Version 21H1 (OS Build 19043.1237) and we've adjusted and are stable. I'm sure at some point though we're going to have to pony-up for Forticlient licenses (which I'm sure is Fortinet's plan) in order to keep upgrading Windows and maintain VPN features we want.

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