Duke Resolves iPhone Wi-Fi Problems

[Rich Tate]

We had been told recently that the new cell phone was causing massive headaches at Duke University, causing outages all over the network. The problem has been rectified, and it actually had to do with a glitch in the Cisco equipment that they are using.

Initial reports of the problem placed the blame for the outages squarely on Apple's iPhones, which flooded the Cisco WAPs (Wireless Access Points) with thousands of address requests per second. However, in a statement released this afternoon, Cisco Systems admitted that the problem was caused by a Cisco glitch.

 

[HAF72]

haha wow, suprising, but will an iphone still work with the regular consumer cisco routers*linksys* or is the problem just on the cisco buisusness routers?

 

[srangara]

Didn't Cisco own the iPhone trademark until recently? Sour grapes, maybe?

 

[SnapperDragon]

Heh...the Duke IT/network folks were emphatic that it was caused by the iPhone and not their Cisco wireless network.

I have done quite a bit of network support and other IT stuff and if there is one thing I have learned very well is to NEVER be 100% certain of what the cause of a problem may be no matter what. You just don't know until you diagnose the problem and pin it. Quite a few times a problem seems OBVIOUSLY related to the NEW thing but it ends up coming back to what you least suspected.

Heh, but sniff, too. I feel for the Duke network support guys. Maybe they learned the same lesson I did a while back.

 

[SnapperDragon]

Heh...the Duke IT/network folks were emphatic that it was caused by the iPhone and not their Cisco wireless network.

I have done quite a bit of network support and other IT stuff and if there is one thing I have learned very well is to NEVER be 100% certain of what the cause of a problem may be no matter what. You just don't know until you diagnose the problem and pin it. Quite a few times a problem seems OBVIOUSLY related to the NEW thing but it ends up coming back to what you least suspected.

Heh, but sniff, too. I feel for the Duke network support guys. Maybe they learned the same lesson I did a while back.

"The celebrity status of the already iconic iPhone seemed to catalyze interest in the Duke disruptions. Early analysis of traffic trace data by Duke IT staff seemed to support the idea that the iPhone was, for some reason, and under certain conditions, triggering sporadic, temporary ARP floods, disabling groups of access points. Frank Miller, assistant director of communications infrastructure with Duke’s Office of Information Technology, was firmly convinced that the iPhone was the instigator. “I don’t believe it’s a Cisco problem in any way, shape, or form,” he said at the time."

 

[SnapperDragon]

 

[SnapperDragon]

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2007/072107-duke-iphone-statement.html?page=2[/url]
The celebrity status of the already iconic iPhone seemed to catalyze interest in the Duke disruptions. Early analysis of traffic trace data by Duke IT staff seemed to support the idea that the iPhone was, for some reason, and under certain conditions, triggering sporadic, temporary ARP floods, disabling groups of access points. Frank Miller, assistant director of communications infrastructure with Duke’s Office of Information Technology, was firmly convinced that the iPhone was the instigator. “I don’t believe it’s a Cisco problem in any way, shape, or form,” he said at the time.]

 

[SnapperDragon]

Where's the DELETE function. Dmanitall.