Support advertising vendor specific element in beacon frames 7.0.4

This enhancement adds support for advertising vendor specific element over beacon frames containing information about the FortiAP name, model and serial number. This allows wireless administrator performing site surveys to easily determine the coverage area of a FortiAP. The administrator can slowly move away from a FortiAP while continuously sniffing the beacons to determine if they can still hear from the FortiAP.

Another use case is to ensure that the FortiAP can be correctly identified during post-implementation wireless site surveys. This make troubleshooting and design improvements much easier.

To enable beacon advertising - GUI:

1. Go to WiFi & Switch Controller > SSIDs and select the SSID you want to enable Beacon advertising on.

2. Under WiFi Settings, enable Beacon advertising and select which element(s) you want to advertise:

   • Name - The FortiAP name.
   • Model - The FortiAP model.
   • Serial Number - The FortiAP serial number.

   

3. Click OK to save.

To enable beacon advertising - CLI:

config wireless-controller vap
  edit "dont_connect"
    set ssid "dont_connect"
    set pmf enable
    set passphrase ENC ********
    set schedule "always"
    set quarantine disable
    set beacon-advertising name model serial-number
  next
end

The beacon-advertising setting can select up to three items (name, model and serial number).

To verify beacon advertising - CLI:

diag wireless wlac -c wlan dont_connect | grep "beacon advertising"
     beacon advertising        : name model sn

Upon sniffing the air packet, an additional field vendor specific Fortinet can be found in SSID beacon which has name of the advertising FAP (test), model 234F and serial number of 234F.