Apple Products over WIFI

[tmoe]

I am having a very difficult time with Apple products in general over our wifi network provided by a FortiWifi 80CM. It is running MR3 P7 and has been for quite some time. We get complaints and i have seen it firsthand about the wifi taking so long to hook the website, mostly iPad iPhone users. Once you have the site loaded and are communicating with the wifi it seems to run normally but it' s that first hook that sometimes takes 5 minutes of the spinning wheel of death on the device to hook up. Just wondering if anyone else experiences this issue. I don' t want to replace my fortinet by any means but a standard $50 Linksys from Walmart runs better than my $900 fortinet and it' s embarrassing to say the least when a dumb user comes in and says I don' t have this issue at home on my Linksys so it' s not my device. Help please, I can' t stand any more bad mouth comments about our wifi network. Thank you in advance, Tmoe

[veechee]

I don' t have experience with FWF-80CM, but your experience matches mine with a FWF-60C. I' ve had a FWF-60C at one site for over two years and in wireless-N mode it has never worked well with certain wireless clients; clients running Atheros chipsets in particular it seems, which is what I believe Apple uses. Fortinet support has never been able to provide any help on the issue. I even upgraded to external antennas and it didn' t help (see this post: http://support.fortinet.com/forum/tm.asp?m=88932&appid=&p=&mpage=1&key=&language=single&tmode=&smode=&s=#88932). When I switch to wireless-G mode all clients connect just fine, so that' s what I' m forced to run it in. Personally I' m not deploying any FWF units anymore after my first experience. I was briefly considering a FAP for a new office expansion I' m budgeting out right now, but to be safe I think I will go Cisco or Ruckus wireless instead.

[tmoe]

Well that just opens up a can of worms. It just so happens and I didn' t post this earlier to save on confusion that our entire network is comprised of HP6535b laptops running the Atheros chipset for the wireless. They constantly disconnect and reconnect. That certainly tells me a lot. I am so happy you were online to reply to this message. Thank you again.

[Paul_Dean]

We tend to use Ubiquiti Network Unifi access points. They are reliable and can be centrally managed. Very good value for money too.

[veechee]

ORIGINAL: tmoe ...our entire network is comprised of HP6535b laptops running the Atheros chipset for the wireless. They constantly disconnect and reconnect.

HP, Acer and Apple have all been problematic for me. I' ve watched an HP with Atheros seem like dial-up speed talking to a FWF. Flip it to G-mode wireless though on the FWF and things greatly improve. My lesson is learned: 1) No more FortiWiFi. 2) I configure all laptops with Intel wireless (e.g., Advanced-N 6205, Ultimate-N 6300).

[Robert_Cerny]

We deployed FortiAP 220B on two places where are almost Macs without issues.

[Rob_Fugate]

The only issue I have ever seen with FortiWiFi and IOS devices is when utilizing the Captive Portal wireless settings, and that is simply the auth page spinning for 5+ min on iPhone 5 only, and as a MSSP we have a bunch of 20C, 40C, 60C, 80C WiFi typically in customer environments where iPhone and iPad usage is heavy. I suggest 3 things before getting a new wireless device: Packet Capture Log review Ticket with Fortinet TAC And if you do go with another wifi solution, Ubiquity or FortiAP should be the only way to go in the enterprise.

[veechee]

Rob, Just curious if you are all on 4.0MR3? My WiFI device is still on 4.0MR2, and I' m wondering if there are issues that have never been addressed in that release that may go away with 4.0MR3.

[veechee]

Also while I realize I said Apple in my previous post, I was specifically referring to Mac computers. I haven' t had complaints about iPads and iPhones, which I believe use different wireless chips than Macs.

[Dave_Hall]

Just curious if you are all on 4.0MR3? My WiFI device is still on 4.0MR2, and I' m wondering if there are issues that have never been addressed in that release that may go away with 4.0MR3.

We have deployed about 20 to 25 x 220Bs to various remote sites we manage. We were kinda forced into moving both our main Fortigate units and the FortiAPs to the MR3 path due to some incompatibility issues (at the time) at the config level. Only real problems we had with these FortiAps is not being able to firmware upgrade them from MR2 to MR3 unless they were directly connected to a port on the Fortigate, and sometimes they would lose their connection with the Fortigate and never bother to reconnect unless you physically reboot them. We have deployed about 25 x Fortiwifi 80CM units but never heard any serious complaints about the wifi connection on them ever since we upgraded them to MR3 patch 5 or higher. However, we did have to RMA about 5 of these units due to a faulty network (wifi?) chipset. (Units keep failing the HQIP hardware diag test.) We have some Fortiwifi 30b units (deployed inhouse) in which we have nothing about issues with (they " lock up" and need to be rebooted about once a week or so).