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).

[VicAndr]

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.

Well, don' t you see a contradiction here? If everything is great with this " special build" why did they place it under " /FortiAP/v5.00/5.0/5.0.7/Wireless_controller" folder but did not release as a regular FortiOS maintenance build? BTW, the very same interim build (FGT_XXXX-v500-build4457-FORTINET.out) could be found under earlier FortiAP build 5.0.6, so it is not exactly " equal to regular 5.0.7 + support for FAP 221C/320C" . ...meaning HeartBleed bug as well as other " goodies" might well be there. I suspect that the main reason for Fortinet to release " not-quite-ready-for-production" FortiOS build was - to accommodate those " WiFi enthusiasts" who acquired their hot new FAP units but can' t actually use them because Fortinet made those new FortiAPs available long before they are able to support them themselves. One of the greatest thing about FortiGate appliances is integration of multitude of networking, monitoring and security functions into a single box. A Fortigate unit is much more than a wireless controller. So if you do not have a mission critical business environment and are willing to sacrifice security, stability, reliability and upgradeability of your box in exchange for a " better WiFi functionality NOW" - install this interim build. Another " side effect" of this special build to consider is - you may not have an easy way of going forward. This particular build is not listed among supported upgrade paths for FortiOS 5.2.

[pcraponi]

@yzhang br_5-0_wifi_11ac are on FTP? are the build 4457 of " /FortiAP/v5.00/5.0/5.0.7/Wireless_controller" folder? Regards, Paulo Raponi

[yzhang_FTNT]

Should be this one.

[yzhang_FTNT]

3468 is the one corresponding to FOS 5.0.6, and 4457 is the one corresponding to FOS 5.0.7, which has the fix for HeatBleed issue.

[rwdorman]

After the abysmal experience with 221C' s on 5.0.7+ Feature releaes I can report that things are MUCH more stable under 5.2 and I' ve had no issues with the AP' s since then. Of course, upgrading to 5.2 could have all sorts of other effects to YMMV.

[Nihas]

So the issue is fixed? And how is the performance with 802.11ac clients?

[Warren_Olson_FTNT]

I would recommend to anyone experiencing above issues to try 5.2 out. It was created as a " stability" branch of the 5.x line and no new features will be added to 5.2.x in the future, only bug fixes.

[neonbit]

I' ve got two 221Cs in my lab running 5.2 and they' ve been very solid so far (no dropouts or speed issues). But then again, I only installed them when I upgraded the FGT to 5.2. I' ve never been to keen on those ' branch' releases...

[Sean_Toomey_FTNT]

I am also running a couple of FAP-221C' s in my house and I can confirm they work quite well under FortiOS 5.2 I don' t have any experience with them under 5.0 as I had FAP-221B' s for a couple years prior and just recently moved to using 221C' s. In general FortiAP' s have been consistently stable and very good signal. I have had very few problems and on the whole I would put them up against any other wireless solution out there and I think they could hold their own quite nicely. I am especially a fan of the " smoke detector" style that is discreet and doesn' t have a disco balls' worth of large blinking lights (Meru, I' m looking at you!) When any new hardware product is released there stands the chance that some fine tuning must be done but taking off my " Fortinet" hat and speaking as a consumer of the technology, I think they have done an excellent job of making them stable at this point and I am running 802.11ac now with no issues. Cheers!