The Letter I Sent To Fortinet

[#1]

I was lucky, I was going through my mailbox and found 3 emails from internal non-tech support people within fortinet. So I wrote this nifty email and sent to all of them: Dear Sirs, A few months ago we exchange a few brief emails regarding The Fortigate line of firewalls. At the time I thought that the fortigate was a true solution that offered features at a price that another vendor simply couldn’t deliver. Now, nearly 7 months later, myself and many other find themselves battling bugs in the FortiOS code that should never make it to general availability. A case in point is the PPTP bug in 2.5MR7 that literally broke all forms of PPTP traffic from passing through the unit. Many people use PPTP as their VPN solution because it interfaces so well with many Microsoft products. Another example is the memory leak that made it into 2.8MR3. This leak uses up valuable system memory and requires you to reboot the firewall on a regular schedule or risk a system crash. These issues are major and should have never made into a major release of the FortiOS software. There seems to exist a void between the Developers, Technical support, and Salesmen. In fact the growing concensous on the fortinet user forum http://support.fortinet.com/forum is that Fortinet conducts NO pre-release testing of their software prior to release. That or the developers are being forced to release code before it is ready for various reasons. I invite you to view the forum and browse the posts. I think you will find it most enlightening. Fortinet is a young company, and has to much riding on quality products to develop a bad reputation so early in its life. Many current customers are afraid to upgrade because of the severe bugs or because they will LOSE functionality. Currently we think that our voice is not being heard. Many of the users of the forum pleaded with Fortinet to hold the release of 2.8 until it was relatively bug free. This was not the case as 2.8 was release with many many bugs. I have sold and configured 2 FG-300’s, 2 FG-200’s, 2 FG-100’s, and 2 FG-50A’s. I am not sure that I will sell any more fortigate firewalls to my customers until the Quality Assurance testing of the code releases improves. I do ask that you view the forum. That where the true fans of the fortinet line post their opinions. If they are disgruntled, then fortinet has a major problem on its hands. Sincerely, Forrest Hamm Systems Engineer MCSA, MCP, CCNA, CCDA, A+ Blue Ridge Business Development Center 336-372-1525 Ext. 30 wOoT

[#2]

So far I have heard nothing from any of the three people I sent the letter to. I will kepp you guys informed! wOoT

[#3]

Well still nothing and the 24th. I probably will not hear anything. wOoT

[#4]

Yeah, don' t hold your breath Forrest. You should know that I appreciated your letter on behalf of us here on the forum: struggling with the problems that occur in their product. So, thanks for sending it out. I think you can be assured that your breath wasn' t wasted. I believe they are trying to change. I' m betting that they have received many such letters. Any company that seeks to gain marketshare and profitability has to listen. As a bit a personal experience, I have been surprised in my contacts with Fortinet at the number of people who know who I am and have read my posts on this board or been involved in the trouble tickets that I have created. I have even had someone thank me for helping out. To me, that means that they are watching, listening, and learning. They may not be able to respond, due to marketing or political pressure from inside. But, I' m sure they aren' t turning a deaf ear to us. And change doesn' t happen overnight, of course. But I think we can expect to see steady changes over the course of months. Changes such as the new structured release timeline that was recently implemented. So, have hope. Things will come around for us.

[Johan_Lysen]

I hope u right!

[#6]

Look at it this way . . . if they aren' t listening they will either go out of business or will fire those that turned a deaf ear. If the latter happens, then there will be some openings at Fortinet and since we all have numerous hours beta test . . .um . . field testing their equipment, we' d be a shoe-in!

[#7]

well it' s good to see that tech support is checking this site out, i am sure they are doing their best with what they have to work with, IE they didn' t build it they have to support, like the position most of us are in at our jobs.

[#8]

Hi from down under. I have had the same proplems with the PPTP. Very embarassing for me when you extol the virtue of this new?? brand of hardware and find numerous difficult bugs in the appliance. I doubt that I will sell another Fortinet

[Johan_Lysen]

Hi All products has caveats. I have used Ingate, Watchguard, Cisco PIX, Checkpoint Firewall-1 - they all have some drawbacks that sucks! -- and in the end, when the most serius bug´s are fixed, i think that the Fortigate is a cool and strong firewall solution.

[#10]

I have used this forum mostly as a resource and ammunition source when speaking to Fortinet. In the interst of allowing their support structure the chance to succeed I' ve not posted too much about hte massive problems we' ve been having with our Dual 3600' s. I woud like to say, however, that recently our problems grew to a crisis/network down stage and we turned up the heat on the Fortinet sales and support structure. I think we MAY have reached the top of the food chain and there are a few things I' ve learned along the journey: 1. Their level 1 support used to be outsourced, they are brining it in house so perhaps improvements will be seen there. 2. The escalation structure at fortinet is BIZARRE. Each level above the next has a seeingly be-all-end-all title making you think you may have actualyl reached someone who coudl help. Keep asking, there are many many layers. 3. There is a major disconnect between the user community, the SE' s, the developers and the support people. After our SE has spent 3 days on site I think he has started to clue in as to what it is like to deal with Fortinet as an end user. His frusteration level with reaching out to peopel interanally at Fortinet I think was a wakeup call. Lots more, but basicly i wanted to say that at the levels we are dealing with at Fortinet the same types of concerns that you expressed in your letter have been pounded in by us.