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IPhones Flooding Wireless LAN At Duke
coondoggie sends us to a Network World story, as is his wont, about network problems at Duke University in Durham, N.C. that seem to be related to the iPhone. "The Wi-Fi connection on Apple's recently released iPhone seems to be the source of a big headache for network administrators at Duke. The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the school's wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Campus network staff are talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help-desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown. '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.'" So far, the communication with Apple has been "one-way."
Well, I'm sure that the university admins are all morons and the iPhone is working as advertised. This is just more FUD from the haters. Go Steve!
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
This is a typical non-free cluster fuck, with a heavy leaning on the Cisco side. LSU's Wireless has adopted some stupid new "security" feature that won't even talk to iPhone. It's also causing lots of other problems, even with the wired network. On Windoze, the client deletes Firefox settings which requires lots work by lab owners. Printers have been iffy since roll out and today it knocked out the whole building all morning.
I get the feeling this was planned long ago to help push the Vista upgrade train along. There is no client software for Windoze 98, gnu/linux users are inconvenienced and Apple users get some kind of half ass support that does not include iPhone. The default page for sign on is now that crappy Windoze advertisement, which tells you all about how to set up your "outblaze" Outlook.
The reason it got used at LSU? Federal wiretap laws and poor budgeting.
No real security is going to be gained. Insecure sites will still be interceptable on the much larger internet and Windoze botnets will have no problems negotiating the new crappy network.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
God I hate to reply to my own comment.
My fellow geeks, Systems Engineers, Network Admins, and Sys Admins- Hear Ye Hear Ye:
I know what a Media Access Control address is.
Please stop defining it before my head explodes.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."