Slashdot Mirror
Bug Forces Android Devices Off Princeton Campus Network
pmdubs writes "A major bug in the Android DHCP implementation has forced network administrators to (effectively) ban the use of such devices on the Princeton campus. In the last few months, Princeton has had to kick more than 400 Android devices off the campus network for using IP addresses well beyond the allotted DHCP lease (to the detriment of other users), sending invalid DHCPREQUEST messages after lease expiration, and a variety of other wacky behaviors. The link provides a clearly documented explanation of the buggy behavior, as does this largely neglected bug report. Without doubt, this buggy behavior is affecting other, less vigilant networks, and disrupting Wi-Fi traffic for Android and non-Android devices alike."
oh, google will fix it. But there will be carriers who will never roll those fixes out to their users.
If they didn't, It'd be harder to pull stunts like closing the Honeycomb source.
Android uses the Linux kernel, nothing more that is GPLed. Even their libc is developed inhouse. Tho, dhcp-client by ISC has a very permissive license. Little bit of advertising, that's all. Closing the source is allowed.
Apple had a similar issue:
http://www.net.princeton.edu/announcements/ipad-iphoneos32-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address.html
At this point, one has to wonder what Princeton is doing on their network that they keep uncovering such bugs.
At this point, one has to wonder what Princeton is doing on their network that they keep uncovering such bugs.
Princeton's network was for the longest time very old. We had shared 10mb over cat3 cable to most of the campus. To keep things working, the network was heavily monitored and anything that did not belong was promptly disconnected.
Fast forward to now. We have a modern network that can handle some problems, but the motioning form the dark days still continues. Because of this heavy monitoring IT can see problems with devices that probably no one on earth sees.
Yes the iPhone and iPod both had the same issues, but Apple fix them eventually. I hope the Google will do the same.
iPrism (my company's nanny of choice), blocks the site as an annonymiser. And what the hell kinda URL *is* net.princeton.edu.nyud.net anyway?
Here's the link to Princeton's web site: http://www.net.princeton.edu/android/android-stops-renewing-lease-keeps-using-IP-address-11236.html
And it appears the iPad has a similar problem: http://www.lockergnome.com/blade/2010/04/16/princeton-explains-network-issues-for-ipad-users-and-has-banned-the-devices/
Odd that they're both doing something so similar. Wonder if they use the same base DHCP code.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.