Duke: iPhone may be disrupting network
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Apple Inc.'s flashy new iPhones may be jamming parts of the wireless network at Duke University, where technology officials worked with the company Wednesday to fix problems before classes begin next month.
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Despite the positive hoopla about the launch of the Apple Inc. iPhone, the  EDGE network it uses may not thrill users for speed -- and the upgrade to a faster version could be costly.
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BlackBerry mobile data services were disrupted Monday afternoon due to a problem with Research In Motion&#39;s infrastructure, apparently affecting customers of all major North American mobile operators, an AT&amp;T Wireless spokesman said.RIM told AT&amp;T the problem began at about 3:30 p.m. Eastern Time and that the Waterloo, Ontario, company was working to identify and solve the problem, said AT&amp;T spokesman Mark Siegel. RIM officials were not immediately available for comment.After 6 p.m. Eastern, users on a BlackBerry Internet message board began reporting that service had returned to normal.The popular smart phones rely on both a cellular network for transport and RIM&#39;s own network for pushing e-mail to end-users. Last month, problems with AT&amp;T&#39;s network disrupted service to some of its subscribers with BlackBerrys, as well as iPhone users.Several users on various mobile networks reported connection problems on Monday afternoon on the message board.BlackBerry users may not be able to send or receive messages, browse the Internet, or use the BlackBerry Internet Service Web site, according to a message from RIM that some users on the board posted. In addition, BlackBerry Enterprise Servers may not be able to connect to RIM&#39;s infrastructure, and carriers and resellers may not be able to create accounts or provision services, the notice said. The outage happened because &quot;a component of the network infrastructure is experiencing a service interruption.&quot;Zenprise, a maker of service management software that monitors BlackBerry service and notifies administrators of problems, detected the outage and notified customers at 3:23 p.m. Eastern, according to Ahmed Datoo, Zenprise&#39;s vice president of marketing. After running a series of tests, Zenprise determined that the root of the problem was in RIM&#39;s infrastructure. The Fremont, California, company, which counts about 100 enterprises and SMBs among its customers, has not determined the total scope of the outage. BlackBerry service for Zenprise&#39;s own customers has been going up and down during the outage, Datoo said.
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On the eve of the iPhone's June 29 arrival, wireless-industry insiders are scrambling to understand their customers before Apple takes them away. The trouble is, they can't seem to agree on the problem, let alone the solution.
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InfoWorld - AT&T's wireless data networks in the Southeast and Midwest U.S. are down, causing BlackBerry and iPhone users to be without data services.
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A problem with Duke University's wireless network caused outages at the school, officials said Friday, exonerating the initial suspect, Apple Inc.'s new iPhone.
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(InfoWorld) - The Wi-Fi connection on Apple's recently releasedÂ iPhoneÂ seems to be the source of a big headache for network administrators at Duke University. The built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the Durham, N.C. school's pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests, temporarily knocking out anywhere from a dozen to 30 wireless access points at a time. Campus network staff are talking with Cisco, the main WLAN provider, and have opened a help desk ticket with Apple. But so far, the precise cause of the problem remains unknown. "Because of the time of year for us, it's not a severe problem," says Kevin Miller, assistant director, communications infrastructure, with Duke's Office of Information Technology. "But from late August through May, our wireless net is critical. My concern is how many students will be coming back in August with iPhones? It's a pretty big annoyance, right now, with 20-30 access points signaling they're down, and then coming back up a few minutes later. But in late August, this would be devastating." That's because the misbehaving iPhones flood the access points with up to 18,000 address requests per second, nearly 10Mbps of bandwidth, and monopolizing the AP's airtime. The access points show up as "out of service." For 10-15 minutes, there's no way to communicate with them, Miller says. "When the problem occurs, we see dozens of access points in that condition," Miller says. The network team began capturing wireless traffic for analysis and that's when they discovered that the offending devices were iPhones. Right now, Miller says, there are about 150 of the Apple devices registered on the campus WLAN. The requests are for what is, at least for Duke's network, an invalid router address. Devices use the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) to request the MAC address of the destination node, for which it already has the IP address. When it doesn't get an answer, the iPhone just keeps asking. "I'm not exactly sure where the 'bad' router address is coming from," Miller says. One possibility: each offending iPhone may have been first connected to a home wireless router or gateway, and it may automatically and repeatedly be trying to reconnect to it again when something happens to the iPhone's initial connection on the Duke WLAN. They're still sorting out what that "something" is. On two occasions, one last Friday and one today, Monday 16 July, both users seemed to be behaving completely normally, yet both iPhones started flooding the net with ARP requests. In both cases, the user first successfully connected to the WLAN at one location, and then moved to another building, where the ARP flood began. "It may have something to do with the iPhone losing connectivity and then trying to reconnect in a new location," Miller says. Most of the W LAN is comprised of Cisco thin access points and controllers. Some older autonomous Cisco Aironet access points tend to uncover the flooding first, since they try to resolve the ARP request themselves. But Miller's team has seen the CPU utilization on the WLAN controllers spiking as they try to process the request flood passed on to them in control traffic from the thin access points. "I don't believe it's a Cisco problem in any way, shape, or form," he says firmly. So far, the communication with Apple has been "one-way," Miller says, with the Duke team filing the problem ticket. He says Apple has told him the problem is being "escalated" but as of mid-afternoon Monday, nothing substantive had been heard Apple.
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More than a quarter of people who  bought Apple Inc's  iPhone are using them on wireless  networks other than AT&T's, the exclusive iPhone carrier in the  U.S., a "stunning" number that will pressure the company's  business model, an analyst said on Monday.
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Unlocking iPhones to use with another operator could result in the mobile becoming "permanently inoperable".
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Data tracking and management policies lag behind the risk involved with mobile devices.
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Hackers could take control of an iPhone if its owner visits a doctored Web site or Internet hotspot, security researchers reported Monday.
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Apple Inc said on Monday that  programs available on the Internet that allow the iPhone to be  used with other service providers besides AT&T's Cingular  network can irreparably damage the device.
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(InfoWorld) - The number of iPhones manufactured by Apple may not be enough to meet customer demand when the smart phone goes on sale later Friday, CEO Steve Jobs said in an interview published the same day. "We had to make our best guess as to what the demand was going to be and what supply we were going to put in place many, many months ago. We built factories to build these things and everything. We've taken our best guess but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it ain't enough," Jobs told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. The iPhone, which combines the functions of an iPod with a smart phone, goes on sale in the U.S. at 6 p.m. and is one of the most anticipated gadgets in recent years. Two models will offered, the 4GB model costs $499 and the 8GB model is priced at $599. Users also have toÂ sign a two-year contractÂ with carrier AT&T. The cost of those plans range from $59.99 per month to $99.99 per month. Some prospective buyers have beenÂ camping outside storesÂ in hope of being among the first to own one of the new smart phones. A surge in demand for the iPhones could mean the devices are hard to come by at first, depending on the number that Apple and AT&T have in stock. A shortage of iPhones would not be unusual. Vendors often have a limited number of units to sell when a new product hits the market. In the case of products where demand is particularly high, such as for new game consoles, limited product availability -- whether intentional or not -- andÂ long lines outside storesÂ help build buzz and generate media coverage. Jobs also downplayed concerns over the iPhone's dependence on AT&T's EDGE network, which is slower than 3G (third-generation) networks. "You know every (AT&T) Blackberry gets its mail over EDGE. It turns out EDGE is great for mail, and it works well for maps and a whole bunch of other stuff. Where you wish you had faster speed isâ¦on a Web browser. It's good enough, but you wish it was a little faster. That's where sandwiching EDGE with Wi-Fi really makes sense because Wi-Fi is much faster than any 3G network," Jobs told the Wall Street Journal. He said the iPhone had been designed to switch to Wi-Fi when such networks are detected. Â
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Looks like the time has come when mobile users would have to seriously consider getting some protection for their devices. Mobile viruses are coming out pretty regularly now and trend seems to be pointing towards a frantic future.
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Blog: What's absent from the iPhone now may be added in the near future.
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A few big brains in Palo Alto want to ease the corporate stranglehold on mobile communication. By Robert Strohmeyer from Wired magazine.
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Don't expect this gadget to turn attention away from the iPhone.