Fortgate Patch Build numbering explanation

If you have been around fortinet for awhile, you will find the build numbers are  always increasing but not always in a +1  consecutive order for the OS that operates the fortigates appliances.

Using the fortiOS  4.0 MR3  train,  I  created a list all of the  builds starting with patch 0  thru 18

Fortinet will continue support under the 4.0MR3 release for 36 months. So  4.0 MR3 will most likely end somewhere b4 the end of 2014.

The FortiOS version 4.0 MR#3 was initially release 2011 3-18, and should have EoL 2014 4-19



Why gaps exists between builds,  has do to any of the following;

• the build that was schedule to be made public, was retracted
• the didn't pass QC, so another build was generated
• more fixes where need or add 
• or a new devices was introduce

Every time they patch the main code, and regardless if it was made public, the build # will always increment.

So for example from patch17 build 688 to  patch 18 build 689 was 1 increment.  ( There was just one build attempt ).

But between  patch10 build 639 to patch11 build 646, there was 7 unique builds before the patch11 was released.

A good indicator of major fixes or improvement, " when you see a big jump between public patch releases", that's a good indicator of some major work done to the OS version train.

Ken Felix
NSE ( network security expert) and Route/Switching Engineer
kfelix  -----a----t---- socpuppets ---dot---com

    ^    ^
=( +  - )=
      @
      /   \