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.

[lpetit_FTNT]

Hi Rafael,

do you have DARRP configured?

Thank

[dudarra]

yeap done that...rebooted...

[leif]

I'm having a couple of fortigate firewalls(100D/200D) running some businesses, and was considering to check out the FortiAPs instead of what the Ap's we got now, but this thread doesn't look very promising...

[dudarra]

sad but true! horrific!

[eyexmeetsxeye · Accepted solution]

I have been working with FortiAP's and Fortigates for the past 2.5 years. It has been trying to say the least. I have over 100 of the 222B line (outdoor models), paired with 100D, 140D, 80CM, and 90D's.

Before 5.0 build 86, completely broken. Daily/nightly resets to try to get people working. Build 86, mostly stable with weird quirks, usually reset about every week or two. After build 86 (the newest build 98), I reverted back to 86 based on TACs recommendation because everything ground to a halt no matter how many soft resets we did. I wouldn't touch the 5.2.X line with a 10 foot pole (I will maybe try it around 5.2.8 or so).

The problem is there are some things that work absolutely great and other things that completely break the platform.

Resource provisioning - Does not work. I love seeing all 10 of my APs on site boot up and stay on Channel 1

Mesh Backhaul - Works great over 5ghz

AP Quality - Is hit or miss. Some units will drop and need to be powercycled. One month with zero resets and the next month 5 resets. I have begun to doubt their manufacturing source.

Multiple SSIDs - Despite what they say, putting on more than a few will cause you a lot of problems

Signal strength - Great

Single SSID Handoff between APs - Usually pretty good. I have watched a tech walk around and literally jump to different APs as he walked. The only problems you get here is the actual device itself refusing to switch

Working with Controllers - CAPWAP usually works pretty spot on. I do like the ease of pairing it with units, although my main gripe is that a WIFI unit has to use a tunnel SSID versus most of your actual AP's will benefit from bridge mode

Captive Portal with 3rd party radius- Only works with 5.2.X line on Fortigate - See above about firmware

We haven't given up yet, but hope for one day a good firmware without horrible broken bugs in it. I would like to setup a hospitality site without having to worry. After reading this forum I will be trying a couple tweaks but mainly waiting for Fortinet to put some time and effort into their firmware.

[hfreel]

Same sort of issues here. We have been battling a FortiAP deployment for almost a Year. TAC is less than helpful - try this try that. No one takes ownership. Unless this one last time they can sort it out, we will have to rip and replace. 

[dudarra]

ok, get the answer from Forti Support...

they said i should disable DARRP -->  the feature that we looked for!

and my country settings were wrong! :)

i will post futher results!

cheers raffa

[Zilitonas]

I same problem with FortiAP's, sometimes it works well, sometimes very badly. Maybe you find some way to resolve?

[Frosty]

We have a Fortigate FG200B running v5.0.10 firmware and 4 x FortiAP FAP221B units running v5.0 build 86 firmware (2 per floor in our building).  The FortiAPs use a Custom AP Profile, with all the Channel boxes ticked for all Radio/Frequencies, Auto Power Control = Disabled, power = 100%, Frequency Handoff = Disabled, AP Handoff = Enabled.  We only run 2 x SSIDs (one for staff, one for guests).

This configuration has been rock solid (touch wood) ... the FortiAPs never need restarting ... and the FG200B can run for months without complaint or interruption (uptime can comfortably reach 12 months without a reboot).

Any time I see the GUI saying "A recommended update is available" for the FortiAPs, I studiously ignore this and look the other way.  Any time I get tempted by a firmware update to v5.2.anything for the FG200B, I scold myself and remind myself that there's no business value in upgrading unless there's a security hole or there's some new feature that I need.

Maybe I am just lucky?!

[dubsdj]

I've been having issues with these at two different sites. One site has 5 of them and the other site has 25 of them.

I have tried tweaking every single setting, power, channel .. Everything... They are just horribly slow.

What seems to be the issue is that a client will connect to one of the AP's but instead of connecting to the closest one it will pick the one the far end of the building! 

From what I gathered is that if I lower the 2.4ghz (Wide range) down to 5% and Raise the 5ghz (Close Range) to 100%, this should mean that clients will find a closer AP to use because it won't see the one over the other side of the building.

For the cost of these units, I do not rate them at all!