News: IPhones flooding wireless LAN at Duke University
Category: MobilePosted: July 17, 2007 11:53AM
Author: Nemo
Speaking of the law of unintended consequences, or at least I hope it was unintended - Duke University is reporting that 12-30 of the wireless access points on its campus were getting knocked offline at a time. When network admins started analyzing the wireless traffic they tracked the source of the problem back to iPhones that were flooding the netork with 18,000 address requests per second. Duke has been trying to work with Apple to resolve the issue but apparently the dialog has been a little one way up to this point. Can you imagine the chaos that could be unleashed when students return in August sporting all those new iPhones? - Nemo *News Editor*
"Because of the time of year for us, it’s not a severe problem,” says Kevin Miller, assistant director, communications infrastructure, with Duke’s Office of Information Technology. “But from late August through May, our wireless net is critical. My concern is 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."
