FortiWLC – WAN Survivability

WAN Survivability

FortiWLC (SD) provides the following support for bridged and tunneled devices during a WAN connection outage.

When a Bridged APs Lose Controller Contact

When a bridged AP loses contact with its host controller, it will provide uptime for a default period of 120 minutes or for the time specified in controller’s Link Probe (1 – 32000 minutes) setting. During this time existing clients will function normally but cannot roam between APs.

New clients cannot join a bridged AP during this time.

In a tunneled mode:

  • You can specify a backup ESS for both bridge and tunneled modes. This backup profile is activated with the controller link is down. Backup ESS is not supported on AP1000.
  • New devices connecting during the outage will connect using clear and PSK profiles.

The clients will now be serviced until the links up and all new devices that connected during outage will reconnect after the link is up.


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This entry was posted in Administration Guides, FortiWLC on by .

About Mike

Michael Pruett, CISSP has a wide range of cyber-security and network engineering expertise. The plethora of vendors that resell hardware but have zero engineering knowledge resulting in the wrong hardware or configuration being deployed is a major pet peeve of Michael's. This site was started in an effort to spread information while providing the option of quality consulting services at a much lower price than Fortinet Professional Services. Owns PacketLlama.Com (Fortinet Hardware Sales) and Office Of The CISO, LLC (Cybersecurity consulting firm).

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