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Duke's iPhone mystery reportedly resolved

By John Cox , Network World , 07/20/2007
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The Duke University wireless problem involving a few Apple iPhones has been resolved, according to Apple. But so far, neither Apple nor Duke has released any details about the cause of, or solution to, a problem that ignited a tidal wave of interest among IT professionals and bloggers on the Internet.

See also:

* Duke CIO issues statement
* UPDATE: Cisco confirms its network caused Duke's iPhone flooding
* Duke's iPhone wireless mystery sparks debate, rants, ponderings and Osmond Brothers nostalgia

A Duke spokesperson, via e-mail, says “We are still trying to get details about this ourselves.” Whether the “we” referred to Duke’s IT staff or the PR staff was not clear. E-mails to Duke’s CIO and deputy CIO had not yet received a reply. Confirmation of the resolution came via a short e-mail from an Apple spokesperson.

The wireless problem crystallized exactly a week ago, on Friday, July 13, as it happens, when Duke’s IT staff identified the source of intermittent floods of Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests as at least two Apple iPhones connecting via the phone’s built in wireless LAN adapter to Duke’s campus-wide net. The ARP floods, up to 30,000 requests per second, knocked offline sometimes as many as 30 access points, for 10 to 15 minutes.

As of last Tuesday, the last day Duke provided any details of the ongoing problem, nine such events had been recorded. The IT staff have been working with both Cisco, the school’s WLAN vendor, and Apple to puzzle out the problem.

They had plenty of help, from amateurs, experts and would-be experts who debated the possible causes, and assigned blame, in online forums at NetworkWorld.com and dozens of other Web sites.

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iPhone horsepower (! ,?)By steverose on July 28, 2007, 4:50 pmI'm glad it's resolved, and iPhone wasn't to blame, but I was most impressed that the network experts figured a tiny iPhone could send 10 megabits of small packets...

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I upgraded the entireBy Anonymous on July 26, 2007, 4:26 pmI upgraded the entire wireless network at a Major League Baseball Stadium with (30) 1242 APs and (1) 4402 WLC and I’m receiving a flood of ARP packets from what...

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RFC 4436 is a Proposed StandardBy Anonymous on July 26, 2007, 3:20 pmAs noted on the second line of the RFC. Also, while Apple made a contribution they did not invent it since early versions of the draft had no Apple contributors....

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Perhaps you should read theBy Anonymous on July 26, 2007, 11:41 amPerhaps you should read the first ten lines of the RFC. It is something Apple invented, they wrote the RFC with Microsoft and Sun. Three client software companies...

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Time to practice better journalismBy khoyt2 on July 25, 2007, 5:16 pmI think you and nearly every other IT, business and general news journalists have been too quick to "pull the trigger" when reporting on the iPhone. As a result...

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