To start out talking about Fortinet at Mobility Field Day 14, I discovered myself thinking outside the box with them. A couple weeks after Fortinet announced their new 2026 product line at MFD14, I was golfing in Salt Lake City and discovered a lost ball with Fortinet’s logo. I was looking at a link that was an omen for what was becoming of Fortinet.. the FortiWall keeping that FortiBall traffic from entering the FortiHole in the Fortinet network. Fortinet primarily is a Firewall and Security company. So a traffic getting blocked from a Firewall port is what I usually think of when it comes to them.
My second most popular LinkedIn post from Mobility Field Day 14 was a FortiControversial one.. placing a FortiScreen on a Wi-Fi 7 FortiAP. But what did Fortinet actually announce at MFD14? If you are like me and only look at Fortinet as a security company and a Wi-Fi company second, how does these announcements fit into the security product line? Did you miss that other semi FortiEqually interesting announcement from Fortinet? Well let’s dig into their announcement at MFD14.
FortiAP Adds an LCD Screen
Let’s address the FortiElephant in the room.. who needs a LCD screen on a Wi-Fi AP? That is what all the delgates focused on in the room. What was announced.. the FortiAP FAP-231KD is an oddity.
The questions comes, where AP’s are usually located? On the ceiling. That was our biggest question that wasn’t fully answered. The answers we were given were a bit of a stretch.
The FortiAP 231KD looks like it is meant to be mounted on a wall or mount like a hospitality AP instead of mounting it on the ceiling. The use cases they showed are either to display a camera feed or a QR code or ad. They gave Retail, Hospitality, Video Monitoring, and a Digital Display as the main use cases.
It seems their intention with this LCD Screen on an AP is to replace additional digital display hardware. They gave us numbers on the Digital Display industry as an answer that makes it seem they want to get into that industry… or one big customer is pushing for this product.. more likely.
Combining products is helpful for some things.. aka to reducing the number of ethernet ports. The device requires just a single Multi-Gig POE+ ethernet port. So you can reduce your ethernet switching requirements by combining two devices into one. A big Win.. well maybe.
LoraWAN Gateway on an AP
The other semi newish idea that Fortinet introduced is something I’ve seen included on other tech like cameras trying to similarly reduce the number of POE ports. That is including a LoraWAN Gateway (aka AP side of the LoraWAN client-to-client topology.) Wireless is not just an access layer but it has become a security layer.
This makes more sense and doesn’t surprise me as much as the screen on a Wi-Fi AP. It’s just adding an additional radio and puts a big vendor out there with a solution. Most of the LoraWAN tech that I’ve played with has had the issue of being a Raspberry Pi or a small end of support Microtik Gateway. It’s good to see that one of the big vendors is looking at LoraWAN and how to keep it growing. LoraWAN definitely has a place in the industry. IOT is screaming for low power sensors. I’m running a bunch of them myself still.. albeit from another vendor.
It was good to see new innovations pushing the industry other than just AI speak. Are these something that is inticing me to switch to Fortinet from my other products? Not likely, but for my schools that live in the Forti-World with Fortinet Firewalls and FortiAPs, this might be a good move for them, if I have a use case that calls for a Screen or LoraWAN Gateway on my Wi-Fi APs.
Check out the full coverage of Mobility Field Day 14 and what Fortinet also announced.
They had a pretty cool Pelican Case that I want for my Private Cellular in a box case..
See why I want one..