Duke University is reversing its claim that iPhones were causing the learning institution’s Wi-Fi network to crash.

In a statement on the Duke website, they point to the actual problem being with the Cisco network, but do not give any specifics to what caused the actual problem.

The reality is that a particular set of conditions made the Duke wireless network experience some minor and temporary disruptions in service. Those conditions involve our deployment of a very large Cisco-based wireless network that supports multiple network protocols.

They say a fix has been rolled out after Apple and Cisco worked together to discover the problem, but, again, say that they are working “to fully characterize” what the problem was. This begs the question: How does one roll out a fix to a problem that you have not fully characterized?

What information is out there says that they first believed it was the iPhone due to thousands of address requests being tracked back to the devices. Oddly, there only 150 known iPhones registered with the Duke network, so one could see how the IT department may have felt that was the problem. 150 devices sending thousands of requests might lead one to believe it was a software issue with the named device.

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Entry was posted on Sunday, July 22nd, 2007 at 1:13 pm under Wi-Fi.

Read more entries by Sean P. Aune.
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