FortiAP opinions

[Rick_H]

I' m looking to replace an Aruba-based WLAN. As an existing FortiGate customer I' m considering FortiAPs, but I' m finding a dearth of recent reviews and no one in my IT circle has them deployed. I know asking a Fortinet community is astroturfing to an extent, but I' m curious if anyone could offer information/opinions on the successes and challenges they' ve faced with their FortiAP deployments. Just in case it helps, I' m running a FGT 80c on 4.3.10, though a move to 5.0.3 is planned. The APs I' m looking at purchasing are 221Bs. Cheers, Rick

[rwpatterson]

Being an Alctel-Lucent/Aruba user myself, what don' t you like about the product?

[Rick_H]

The Aruba kit I have is problematic at best. The controller frequently stops processing traffic from the APs requiring a reboot of the entire controller to regain control. I' ve brought in a consultant to help with the problem and was told that one of the primary culprits are my older APs (AP61s), which should be replaced for dual band APs due the high number of other WLANs in my building (I' m in a multi-tenant high-rise). So, since I have a history of problems and I probably need to replace my radios anyway, I' m evaluating other options. Leveraging my existing Fortinet infrastructure makes a lot of sense. I also don' t find the user interface on the Aruba controller to be particularly user-friendly, but that' s just a matter of opinion.

[rwpatterson]

ORIGINAL: Rick H I also don' t find the user interface on the Aruba controller to be particularly user-friendly, but that' s just a matter of opinion.

Agreed. What a bear to configure.... Thanks for that. We upgraded a while ago to the AP105s. Not bad. Also have an SC3 controller in the 6000 chassis. No horsepower issues here.

[emnoc]

I' ve brought in a consultant to help with the problem and was told that one of the primary culprits are my older APs (AP61s), which should be replaced for dual band APs due the high number of other WLANs in my building (I' m in a multi-tenant high-rise).

You do know the 60s are dual-band. Did you mean dual-radios? There' s a big difference in the latter. Also part of your problems could be your location in a MTU building and the available channels utilization. You might want to reinvest into a proper RF survey and monitor and then make adjustment, based on your survey & findings. And next, your max and concurrent user counts should be monitored. Maybe you have more clients associated than the suggested limits. I try to stay under 30-40 clients against any one AP ( Ideally <20 ) Now back to the Fortinet FAPs, I don' t think any thing could beat a Aruba or even Cisco wireless as far as that goes. Now managing the APs from the firewall ( hence the controller ) is a plus and then having all of the other UTMs features is a double plus. But to be quite frank when compared ( aruba, ruckes, and cisco), the fortinet lineup is not superior or let' s say; " Not yet" . Fortinet AP product are not as matured as the others. A 100 series AP from Aruba are flat out nice & hard to beat for $$s and performance:)

[Rick_H]

Dual-radio is indeed what I meant. The AP61s are dual-band but single-radio. Surveys have been done and done. As you seem to be suggesting, signal quality is at least part of my problem. Signal strength is always good. The surveys told us that the 2.4GHz band was pretty thoroughly saturated in this building and we should diversify our coverage with 5GHz. To do so we were going to have to invest in different (dual-radios WAPs) or more radios. The other issue is a seeming lack of horsepower where the controller simply stops processing the tunneled traffic from the WAPs. That problem has persisted through several firmware revisions to the chagrin of my predecessor. With that said, I decided to give the FortiAP 221Bs a go since I was going to have to buy something one way or the other. I don' t expect them to be superior--just to be reliable. I let my rep know that I felt like I was taking a bit of a risk since there is so little information on the performance of these WAPs, but was willing to try them out. He got me a couple of references and that helped my decision, but I am still a little uneasy. I' ll update here once I have them deployed and tuned to give my own opinion.

[emnoc]

What' s your channel utilization looking at the duty cycle ? 2.4ghz can get crowd in MTU ( mult tentant units ) and everybody seems to be stacked at 1 6 11 channels. On the controllers what model of controller?

[rwpatterson]

What' s the core gear in the closet(s)?

[Rick_H]

What' s your channel utilization looking at the duty cycle ? 2.4ghz can get crowd in MTU ( mult tentant units ) and everybody seems to be stacked at 1 6 11 channels.

Most of the other visible networks in this building do indeed trend towards channel 1 with 6 and 11 being close behind. I' ve been up on FAP 221Bs for the past two weeks. My wireless issues are all but gone with none of the previous problems reported. I' ve just needed to do normal tuning here and there. Despite the possibility of interference between channels, I decided to just disable 1, 6, and 11 outright on the 221s and let the FAPs load-balance on the other channels. This seems to be working swimmingly. All-in-all I' m pretty happy.

[pkley]

What firmware are you running that is allowing the FortiAP' s to auto select the best channel? 032 doesn' t work (at least not with 5.0.1 or .3) and while 039 does auto select, 039 seems to have a bug that if you roam between APs it drops your network connection for several minutes. Not the WLAN connection, just no traffic will pass.