iPhones causing network chaos?

Network administrators at an American university report having encountered problems, such as fluctuating signals, with the introduction of iPhones onto the campus.

According to Network World, Apple's heavily hyped handset has been playing havoc with the wireless infrastructure at Duke University in North Carolina by flooding access points (APs) with as many as 18,000 MAC address requests per second.

Assistant IT director Kevin Miller said: "It's a pretty big annoyance right now, with 20 to 30 access points signalling they're down and then coming back up a few minutes later." He expressed concerns over an increase in such incidents when students return to the campus next month. The current problems are based on just 150 registered iPhones on campus.

According to the reports, the periodical surge in address requests forces put APs out of service for 10 to 15 minutes. Initial investigation has shown the requests to be for invalid router addresses, suggesting that the iPhone's Wi-Fi software stack is repeatedly trying to connect to its user's home network.

Although Duke University's wireless LAN is based on Cisco thin APs and controllers, Miller maintained that he did "not believe it's a Cisco problem in any way, shape or form". He also stated that he had, as of Monday, heard nothing back from Apple regarding the problem.

David Meyer writes for ZDNet UK