Apple iPhone can kill your wi-fi network
By Danny Mendez
Duke University network admins fear the Apple iPhone as the device has a tendency to take down the school’s network.
According to Network World, the cause of the problem originates from the phone’s wireless network adapters. The component has an unpleasant habit of flooding the school’s wireless LAN with MAC address requests.
This tends to happen when users transfers the phone from one section of the wireless LAN to another. The phone disconnects in the process and attempts to reconnect using a familiar address, most likely the address of the previous access point or the wireless router at the owner’s home.
When the access points go down, there’s no way of communicating with them for the next ten to fifteen minutes. “When the problem occurs, we see dozens of access points in that condition,” says Kevin Miller, assistant director of communications infrastructure at Duke?s Office of Information Technology.
Attempting to alleviate the problem before students return in August, Miller expresses his concern.
“How many students will be coming back in August with iPhones? It?s a pretty big annoyance, right now, with 20-30 access points signaling they?re down, and then coming back up a few minutes later. But in late August, this would be devastating.”
Duke’s campus network is strongly populated with Cisco thin access points and controllers. Miller doesn’t have reason to believe Cisco’s routers are at fault. An analysis of wireless traffic is what pointed the finger at the new phone, but Apple has yet to do anything about the problem. As of right now, about 150 iPhones populate the school’s network with many more expected to appear in late August.
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Stumble It!
July 18th, 2007
This is just irresponsible reporting/blogging. Pls do a lil bit of research first. There is no root cause for this problem yet and they are still working on figuring out who’s responsible. According to experts, its most probably the configuration of the cisco router thats not done right or hasn’t been optimized for the iphone. This problem hasn’t been heard of anywhere else. Wonder why ?
July 18th, 2007
The article was simply meant to summarize the problem for the readers, not to get into the details of the whole matter. The details indicate that most likely not ALL iPhones are involved in the problem and only a handful of them are involved. Regardless, the IT group at Duke (the “experts”) name the iPhone as the #1 suspect. And if the network needs to be optimized for one non-standard device, it’s not the network’s fault. It’s the device’s fault.
July 19th, 2007
şafalğ
July 19th, 2007
nasıl beğendinizmi
July 20th, 2007
NetworkWorld.com: Duke IT staff & their Cisco network confused by Apple iPhones; trade rags take bait
Let me see if I can wrap my head around this — some bored students figured out what the MAC address range is on the iPhones, and they styled an attack using a couple of Linux machines hidden somewhere on campus to masquerade as Apple ‘troublemakers’, and are sniggering at the resulting buffoonery created between the Duke ‘network admins’ and the press.
Hello!?!??!? If these are actually the people responsible for Duke’s network, they would have better communication skills — what they are saying is happening is less unlikely than impossible (unless the iPhone and Cisco’s routers’ SuperPowers are being boosted by the Earth’s yellow sun and are no longer hindered by their original design limitations).
Why has this been going on for several days and yet no one has reported the same issue on another network?
It’s because: It’s not happening on Duke’s network, either. It’s a hack. A scam. A ruse.
By some students who can probably be identified by a duct-taped WiFi canon made from a couple of Pringles cans protruding from their backpacks.
The ‘reporter’ should be ashamed for not doing his homework.
July 22nd, 2007
He’s not a reporter. He’s a Microsoft shill. Look at the negative headlines these guys associate with iPhone while the Zune headlines glow, so please don’t deny it and feign impartiality.
Here’s the updated story of the Duke U. WiFi problem. It turns out it’s a problem with Cisco, not the iPhone.
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9027538&intsrc=news_ts_head
You’re welcome.