FortiAP Management – Discovering a FortiAP unit

Discovering a FortiAP unit

For a FortiGate acting as an AP controller (AC) to discover a FortiAP unit, the FortiAP must be able to reach the AC. A FortiAP with the factory default configuration has various ways of acquiring an AC’s IP address to reach it.

AC discovery type Description
Auto The FortiAP attempts to be discovered in the below ways sequentially within an endless loop.
Static The FortiAP sends discover requests to a preconfigured IP address that an AC owns.
DHCP The FortiAP acquires the IP address of an AC in DHCP option 138 (the factory default) of a DHCP offer, which the FortiAP acquires its own IP address from.
DNS The FortiAP acquires the AC’s IP address by resolving a preconfigured FQDN.
FortiCloud FortiCloud discovers the FortiAP.
Broadcast FortiAP is discovered by sending broadcasts in its local subnet.
Multicast FortiAP is discovered by sending discovery requests to a multicast address of 224.0.1.140, which is the factory default.
This entry was posted in Administration Guides, FortiAP, FortiGate, FortiOS 6.2 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).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.