Anyone use Fortinet?

[StarTrek4U]

I'm doing a firewall evaluation for my company of a number of different vendors in an effort to replace our old and dumpy firewalls that we have now. One of the vendors I'm working with (and an early contender for getting my business) is Fortinet. I'm wondering if anyone here has used them and what their experience has been. Has the support been good? Are the devices reliable? Do the work as advertised? Let me know what you think and what your experience has been.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

A few years ago (back in the Win2K days) I got dragged to some demo by them, trying to rally up resellers/partners. Didn't jump onboard.

About 2 years ago took on a client that uses them, 1x main office, 1x satellite office, the devices maintain a VPN tunnel between the sites. For a primary router...they seem steady, for their other features like AV and spam removal, I'm not impressed...this client tries to deal with a lot of SPAM (exchange server) and it doesn't seem to do much of a job filtering that.

 

[joblo37pam]

I have some gov't customers that use them (issued by the state). Plenty of features, but the gui is a pain and stability has been a problem at one site, even after replacing the router & power supply.

 

[REDYOUCH]

Fortinet is a good company with some good products. Nothing is perfect, and I've seen some issues in the past, but overall they seem to work quite well. Web/content filtering, spam, antivirus, firewall, etc all work very well on the appliances...

 

[KainPT]

We have a client that uses a Fortigate 60B. It has alot of features( many of them paid) but they dont use it( they just use it for nat and to deny some users passage to the web).

Only problem they had was that the first one bricked after about a year of usage.

 

[Private Citizen]

We've had several deployed since early 06. The largest is the 300A model that we have that is our main gateway and the satelite offices are a mix of 60 and 50A with IPSEC VPN connecting all of them. The devices have been solid and I have yet to even have to reboot them or restart a service for a hang up that seemed to have happend with our prior vendors products. So far no issues with any of them and I've also used supprt a couple of times with pleasing results. There's not much that you can't do with a Fortigate appliance.

I find the gui to be well made and easy to use. The SSL VPN features are great too and we have approx 30 deputy's cars using them in the field along with a multitue of other users using a mix of SSL VPN and IPSEC VPN (Forticlient). Since we do deal with public safety, reliablity was very important to us when selecting Fortinet. We have been pleased.

EDIT: Also FortiOS 4.0 has been released recently that is a major upgrade from version 3. I haven't deployed version 4 yet but plan to in the very near future when I can get time to do the upgrade. The bummer is that all of our 60 adn 50A models aren't able to upgrade to version 4 since they have been deemed EOL.

 

[vischo]

Our IT firm has been using Fortinet for quite a few years. I have worked with them as well. Fortinet firewalls are great pieces of equipment.

This client tries to deal with a lot of SPAM (exchange server) and it doesn't seem to do much of a job filtering that.

The SPAM filter has done wonders for another client. 50 users, something like 20K SPAM messages blocked in a weekend.

We have a client that uses a Fortigate 60B. It has alot of features( many of them paid) but they dont use it( they just use it for nat and to deny some users passage to the web).

FortiCare (support/updates/maintenance/warranty) and FortiGuard (AV/IPS/Spam/Web Filter). Yes you have to pay annually, but they make the Fortinet's that much better. If you are going to give Fortinet a real trial, pay the subscriptions.

EDIT: Also FortiOS 4.0 has been released recently that is a major upgrade from version 3. I haven't deployed version 4 yet but plan to in the very near future when I can get time to do the upgrade. The bummer is that all of our 60 adn 50A models aren't able to upgrade to version 4 since they have been deemed EOL.

Couldn't agree more with your comments on Fortinet. FortiOS 4.0 is quite the upgrade.

 

[StarTrek4U]

That's some good info, thanks for the feedback guys. One additional question would be if any of you are using the integrated WAN acceleration that the offer? I'm considering two different routes one of which includes that feature, does it work? What kind of gains have you seen?