FortiAP-221C - READ BEFORE BUYING!!

[TNT123]

I pray you are just about to order a FortiAP-221C.. don' t. I hope I have stopped you in time! They are littered with problems! Fortinet tech support has confirmed they have lots and lots of problems. They need hard reboots, drop clients.. etc. DO NOT BUY! If you do, in your WiFi Logs you WILL see: ap-leave ap-fail ap-leave ap-fail Then you realize all of the AP' s are offline and nothing but a hard reboot will fix them.. for a few hours until they need their next hard reboot. Yes we are running the latest special build as provided via tech support. Don' t do it.. wait until there is an update here or find another solution (ubnt).

[pcraponi]

221C and 320C are fresh new hardware with new technology (802.11ac / beamforming, etc...). But all issues I believe that are on software side. FortiOS 5.2 that will launch on next week can address and start to solve this problems... I working with Fortinet products over 8 years and unfortunately this always happens with new products/softwares... What I ever do are work with TAC and open tickets and more tickets until solve all Regards, Paulo Raponi

[TNT123]

I understand they are new products. What I don' t understand is why partners and end users are doing the alfa/beta testing..

[TNT123]

I have now upgraded to 5.2.. I will update once I have a few days under my belt.

[VicAndr]

Did you upgrade to v5.2 just your FortiGate box or both - FG and FAP? The thing is that FortiOS 5.2.0 release notes explicitly says that " The FortiAP device must be running FortiAP v5.2.0 build 0212 or later." On the other hand, FortiAP v.5.2.0 release notes says that " FortiAP v5.2.0 is supported by FortiOS v5.2.0" but doesn' t say anything about FortiOS v.5.0.X support. The way we usually implement upgrades of Fortinet devices throughout our network environment is - first we upgrade all our FortiAP units. And after a while (it could be months), if everything works fine, we go ahead and upgrade FortiGate and FortiWiFi units FortiAPs are connected to. The question is whether FortiAP v5.2.0 is supported by FortiOS v.5.0? Anyway, did you manage to resolve your FAP-221C issues?

[VicAndr]

Upgraded few WiFi access points (several FAP-220Bs and one FAP-320C - another 802.11ac-compatible model) from FortiAP v5.0.7 to FortiAP v.5.2.0 without upgrading FortiGate units themselves. So far so good (need to monitor situation for a little longer to be completely sure though). So FortiAP v.5.2.0 seems to be supported by FortiOS v.5.0.7. ...although it would have been nice if Fortinet reflected this fact in their release notes saving us from risks of our own experimenting. After upgrading firmware on FAP-320C to FortiAP v.5.2.0 it started to work reliably. Otherwise it was practically unusable on FortiOS v.5.0.7. Unfortunately, FortiOS v5.0.7 does not support FAP-221C, which is the main subject of this thread, at all.

[pcraponi]

New FortiAP 5.2 firmware will be released too but are not yet on FTP

[yzhang_FTNT]

>>Unfortunately, FortiOS v5.0.7 does not support FAP-221C, which is the main subject of this thread, at all. Which release are you talking about in here? FAP-221C and 320C support are added to FortiOS at the same time. If you are not using the FortiOS v5.0.7 from feature branch br_5-0_wifi_11ac, try with that build.

[VicAndr]

I am among those who are reluctant to use a " interim" FortiOS build in a mission-critical environment, as it brings a whole host of new questions. I mean a regular v5.0.7 build: it does support FAP-320C but not FAP-221C.

[yzhang_FTNT]

This feature branch br_5-0_wifi_11ac is different from other branches. It was created to add the support for 11ac support since 5.0 regular branch is locked from adding supports for new features and platforms. 5.0.7 from br_5-0_wifi_11ac is equal to regular 5.0.7 + support for FAP 221C/320C. Regular 5.0 will not support 221C, and 221C will only be supported in FOS5.2 and later.