Having issues with APs suddenly becoming slow and almost unresponsive

rbn · ‎05-29-2015

I have been fighting this for so long, I dont know what to do.

I have several sites running FGT and FAPs. Yesterday I made the desition to TFTP new firmware on all the FAPs and FGTs to see if a clean start can fix the problem. The thing is. The setup can work fine, and then all the sudden the speed is terrible. I go inside the FGT and check SNR and stuff like that and everything looks great, but it is not. Once this client had this problem and I tried to change a setting in the AP profile, and after that, poof everything was fine again.

Another client reboots the FAP when it is to slow and all the sudden everything is fine again. So it does seem to be something with the APs. But a user should have to do that.

Has anyone heard of these kind of problems. I have had so many clients having problems with the FAPs, I am att crossroad where I am seriously thinking about exchanging those and never look back. But that would be very expensive.

I spoke to some other IT guy and many of them say FAPs are ****. But I am really wondering. Is it that bad. What do you guys here on the forum think. Do you have setups with FAPs that are working great. How do you setup the FAPs.

For one thing, I noticed when I only run 5GHz on a SSID the handoff from AP to AP does not work. But if I turn on 2,4GHz it works. That seems weird. I also tried setting up different AP profiles for different APs in the same office so that I can choose band and stuff like that. As soon as I do that the users complain about lots of issues. So for now I am running everything very "auto" which I think is weird that I need to do with expensive APs like this.

Please do help out. Even if it is telling me, stay away from FAPs. But if you have a working setup with at least 3 or more APs, how does your AP profile look and things like that.

Thanks, I really hope we can solve this, or I will have a lot of APs to exchange... that will be a big hit for my company, Something I dont think I deserve since I am just trusting my distributor and selling a brand I that thought did proper products.

PS. All my clients are Mac users if that helps in some way.

eyexmeetsxeye · ‎10-28-2015

I have been working with FortiAP's and Fortigates for the past 2.5 years. It has been trying to say the least. I have over 100 of the 222B line (outdoor models), paired with 100D, 140D, 80CM, and 90D's.

Before 5.0 build 86, completely broken. Daily/nightly resets to try to get people working. Build 86, mostly stable with weird quirks, usually reset about every week or two. After build 86 (the newest build 98), I reverted back to 86 based on TACs recommendation because everything ground to a halt no matter how many soft resets we did. I wouldn't touch the 5.2.X line with a 10 foot pole (I will maybe try it around 5.2.8 or so).

The problem is there are some things that work absolutely great and other things that completely break the platform.

Resource provisioning - Does not work. I love seeing all 10 of my APs on site boot up and stay on Channel 1

Mesh Backhaul - Works great over 5ghz

AP Quality - Is hit or miss. Some units will drop and need to be powercycled. One month with zero resets and the next month 5 resets. I have begun to doubt their manufacturing source.

Multiple SSIDs - Despite what they say, putting on more than a few will cause you a lot of problems

Signal strength - Great

Single SSID Handoff between APs - Usually pretty good. I have watched a tech walk around and literally jump to different APs as he walked. The only problems you get here is the actual device itself refusing to switch

Working with Controllers - CAPWAP usually works pretty spot on. I do like the ease of pairing it with units, although my main gripe is that a WIFI unit has to use a tunnel SSID versus most of your actual AP's will benefit from bridge mode

Captive Portal with 3rd party radius- Only works with 5.2.X line on Fortigate - See above about firmware

We haven't given up yet, but hope for one day a good firmware without horrible broken bugs in it. I would like to setup a hospitality site without having to worry. After reading this forum I will be trying a couple tweaks but mainly waiting for Fortinet to put some time and effort into their firmware.

View solution in original post

yzhang_FTNT · ‎08-03-2015

Please try FAP build 0245, which is the FAP 5.2.4 release candidate. This build has fixed several power save related issues.

Wabo84 · ‎09-08-2015

I am also having the same issue

We have 5 forti AP 221C connected to a FG 100D.

Users are disconnected all the time and it's very slow, on 5 Ghz its worst. After a complete reboot that works for some users for 10 minutes... Mac disconnect more often...

Very unstable, someone find a solution?

Randall_Farr · ‎09-08-2015

After receiving a lot of flack from users and our CEO, I finally came up with a working solution, which was to abandon the FAP-221Cs for a solution from another vendor. It's certainly not the solution that I was looking for, but after nine months of users not being able to use wifi in our conference rooms, we simply had to install something that would work. I hope for everyone's sake that Fortinet will address the outstanding performance issues with this AP. Maybe someday we can revisit this, but I don't have hours and hours to go back and forth with support, and months and months to wait for a solution.

Good luck everyone!

GusTech · ‎09-10-2015

Randall Farr wrote:
After receiving a lot of flack from users and our CEO, I finally came up with a working solution, which was to abandon the FAP-221Cs for a solution from another vendor. It's certainly not the solution that I was looking for, but after nine months of users not being able to use wifi in our conference rooms, we simply had to install something that would work. I hope for everyone's sake that Fortinet will address the outstanding performance issues with this AP. Maybe someday we can revisit this, but I don't have hours and hours to go back and forth with support, and months and months to wait for a solution.

Good luck everyone!

I have the same problem at many costumers, FortiWifi does not work as it should! exactly the same problems as you describe. Fortiwifi is just crap! and my clients are pissed.

I've also given up

Fortigate <3

dudarra · ‎09-10-2015

BrUz wrote:
I've also given up

....f**k! Sad but true...i can't believe it :\

i will open a ticket...

cheers raffa

thanks in advanced Rafael

dasilva13 · ‎10-08-2015

Has any one gotten anywhere on this? RBN or RAFFAU?

I ask because I have 300d with 5.2.4 and a mix (15) 221c's and (20) 320c's on 5.2.4.

They are completely unreliable and I am going to throw them out a window. Tech support is horrible and they wanted me to change the "dhcp lease time" from 7 to 10 days. Yeah..that made a difference (NOT!!)

we have mac's and chromebooks and they work great for a minute, then drop and are really slow, wifi start stop is the only way to get them working for a couple minutes again.

complete unacceptable.

ANY HELP WOULD BE GREAT!!!

started TAC ticket but they are really slow on the uptake.

I will even accept the answer that you had to go to another solution.

Bromont_FTNT · ‎10-08-2015

How are things on 5GHz vs 2.4GHz? Make sure Radio Resource Provision is selecting different channels for adjacent APs

If you are running a higher density environment (lots of APs close together) such as for classrooms then try lowering the TX power on the 2.4 GHz radio. I would go as low as 5% in such cases.

dasilva13 · ‎10-08-2015

thanks for the reply!

i have tried both ways, and get the exact same issues.

I have played with power settings, 2.4 at 5-10 and 5 at full blast and every combination thereof.

all loadbalancing on/off and combination of them.

radio resource provision made it worse

from the other thread posts, looks like a firmware issue, but since there are so many, and no real good way to push them all out, it would take forever to test them all out in a try and see approach

Bromont_FTNT · ‎10-08-2015

If the APs are fairly close together then you will need the power dropped fairly low and I wouldn't use the auto power if the APs are evenly spaced apart. You likely want 802.11ac on the 5GHz band but to rule out sleep mode issues on the macs you could set the 5GHz radio to 802.11a only and see if this improves things.

dudarra · ‎10-12-2015

Hi guys,

the forti wifi is absolut bollocks! today i booted all AP's...after the Reboot....the first 10 AP (in the sam bulding one after one) had the same channels on both Radios. No automatic channel select, no communication between the AP's...NOTHING!

I had never Problems with H3C (3Com) and this Hardware is EOL and works stil great without any issus.

I tryed the 802.11a in th 5ghz radio...but its very very slow!

still hoping for solutions...

rafael

thanks in advanced Rafael