Saturday, September 18, 2021

Trouble getting FortiAP up and running

Hey all! I am hoping to obtain some guidance as i've run into a brick wall.

For some context, I am a networking noob. I have some fundamental networking knowledge and have done basic cisco router/switch configurations but nothing crazy and only in an educational environment (and that was about 4 years ago, at that). I am a Jr Sys Admin tasked with setting up a network at one of our overflow offices and I have run into a bit of a snag.

I have a Fortigate 100F that will be used as our Firewall and act as our router. I also have a Cisco SF300-48P switch underneath. Alongside this, I have a FortiAP 431f that I need to deploy.

I have the Fortigate and the switch configured and operating normally. When I plug into one of the ports on the switch I obtain network connectivity and it seems to work great.

I was tasked with deploying a FortiAP to provide a wireless option for some of our more mobile users in this office which is where the FortiAP 431F comes in. I figured it would be easy enough, configure the interface in the fortigate for wireless, plug the AP into that port on the fortigate and I should be able to configure from there. However, to my dismay, I have realized that the Fortigate 100f does not offer PoE and so when I plug the AP into the fortigate, it doesn't power on. It looks like I will need to have this AP run through the switch.

I attempted to plug the AP into the switch and the AP powered on just fine (a good sign!) however I could not see the AP in the FortiAP manager console when in the admin console of the fortigate. This leaves me at a bit of an impasse as I cannot interface the AP for configuration because it does not appear in the FortiAP section of my admin console (when remoted into the fortigate).

I assume that I am just missing something very obvious here. It doesn't seem like running an AP off a switch is an unorthodox or unusual configuration so I may just need a nudge in the right direction.

Any guidance is greatly appreciated!



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