Having issues with APs suddenly becoming slow and almost unresponsive

[rbn]

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.

[rbn]

No one any thoughts on this? I would love to hear I am wrong... but if I am not, its time I get to know that more people are having problems.

[Tim]

Hi, we were made aware of this post from Fortinet at end of March 2015 (don't know if it has been superseded and not sure of exact source to check) - but we are managing at least one customer running 5.2.3 on firewall but with 5.0.9 (downgraded from 5.2.2) on FAPs to resolve the kind of issue you describe. The downgrade can be performed via the firewall gui in one step:

"Until further notice DO NOT use any 5.2.x version in any of the 11n FAPs models with the exception of the very new models that don’t have builds in the 5.0.x branch.

If a customer is having issues in 5.2.2 in any 11n FAPs check the release notes for downgrade compatibility, if supported, downgrade to the recommended version below.

# For All deployments including Forticloud use 5.0.9 build 86 GA in these models:

FAP_112B, FAP_11C, FAP_14C, FAP_210B, FAP_220B FAP_221B, FAP_222B, FAP_223B,  FAP_224D, FAP_25D, FAP_28C, FAP_320B, FK_214B

Alternatively if the above models are already running version 5.0.9 build 86 (GA) but the customer is still experiencing problems that could be related to ARP, DHCP, FAP rejoins and others please upgrade them to build 88.

# For all 11ac models and new FAP that don’t support 5.0.X in all deployment types use 5.2 build 229. These are the models:

FAP_112D, FAP_21D, FAP_221C, FAP_222C, FAP_223C, FAP_24D, FAP_320C, FAP_321C"

Tim

GISS (UK)

[rbn]

Thank you so much Tim for this info.

Lets hope this gets solved. I did have to downgrade a client (downgrade was not possible but I did put the firmware though TFTP back in there) and until now they have not called. So I hope they are not having these issues.

It is terrible that we dont get informed about this. I am a partner to Fortinet so I think they should send these things out, even if it is embarrassing to say this to your clients (unstable uppgrades always is), it is better we know this info and know how to solve the problem instead of the user having lots of issues and becoming very unhappy.

I still dont understand why one of my clients cannot have just 5GHz turned on and still get the handoff to work, so even if they have the new FAP221AC there are still problems with these new ones too.

Tim, what kind of problems did Fortinet say the 11n units had if they where on 5.2?

[rbn]

Still looking for more people... I now have a client complaining about the new 221C. They also have troubles with the wifi suddenly becoming very slow.

Is there no one else with problems, or do you not use FAPs at all? Really need to know if it is worth working on this, or if I just should give up and put som other brand with my clients (with my money, so of course not the greatest solution)

[JohnK]

I am running 3 FAP 221C's (5.2 build 0245) with a Fortigate 100D (5.2.5 build 701).

I experience these issues often. I have only had the hardware for 1 month, but I've tried messing with the channels and other settings (lower power, auto power, Radio Resource Provision, etc) to no avail.  Things will be fine, and all of a sudden things come to a halt or move very slowly, then after waiting a minute or two, things speed up a bit.  It's very intermittent.  My SNR is somewhere between 26dB and 57dB.  Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks, John

[Tim]

We have many customers with FAPs, two I can think of specifically - a school with about 14 and a marina with about 28 - neither of which are experiencing issues since we made sure they were all on firmware version recommended above. Our view is we always want to assist FortiNet in ironing out any bugs whenever possible (not surprising as most of our many customers have fortinet kit) - no manufacturer ever produces perfect product due to the ever increasing complexity of IT these days. We'd suggest opening a ticket with Fortinet and provided as much information as possible to assist in mutually tracking down the issue to do with this unique environment (every environment is unique in some way). If it seems there is not enough time to do this - then by all means switch manufacturers, with fingers crossed that whatever complexity is causing an issue for Fortinet does not repeat itself in new manufacturer. ;)

[namitguy]

I am experiencing exactly the same issues as you are - we have full signal strength but the we lose connectivity and see lots of random time-outs.  Hardware platform is a Fortigate 240D A/P cluster (FortiOS 2.5.3) with FortiAP 221C's.

We have had cases open with TAC for more than a month and they have provided me with two interim builds (0234 and 0238) which have the improved the situation somewhat, but the issues are still such that we cannot put it in production.

The information in this thread is valuable, as this was not mentioned to me by TAC.  I will log a new case and reference this.

[rbn]

Thanks for the feedback Tim. Happy to hear you have setups that work great. That gives me hope :)

namitguy: Not happy to hear you have the same issues, but it is nice to know this is not on me. We ben having so much problems on so many sites, you start to wonder if you do something wrong :)

I just opened a case so lets see what that gives me.... I will keep you posten.

In the meantime, any one reading this post, please do post, good or bad, everything helps!!

[Johan_Witters]

We've got lots of FAP deployed at customers, running all kinds of FOS... At the moment we have little or no trouble, and in most cases where we have issues it's related to client side drivers or Mac's.

We did have some issues in the past due to radio provisioning being enabled or the ap being used as sniffer. But these were bugs in earlier releases of FGT and FAP firmware.

I suggest that you check the FAP's when facing issues to check memory and CPU load. If these are high, try disabling radio provisioning and/or rogue scanning.