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Bug Forces Android Devices Off Princeton Campus Network

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-computer-is-broadcasting-an-ip-address dept.

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."

2 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. WTF? by killmenow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why in the name of all that is GNU would Android re-implement a DHCP client when every Linux system since forever has had good DHCP client support already there?

    Did Google decide to implement their own IP layer entirely?

  2. and it will never be fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    oh, google will fix it. But there will be carriers who will never roll those fixes out to their users.