Princeton University Details iPad Wireless Networking Issues

[WestonHarvey1]

Calm down, everyone. Everything is going to be ok. It's called a "bug". It's one of software's most common maladies.

There's nothing to worry about. They will soon fix it with something called a "patch".

 

[RedReplicant]

It's not a bug, it's a feature.

 

[kernkraft]

Magic?

No, it's creepy!

 

[gnasher729]

Did you type this with a straight face? Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that Apple's QA is superior to the military & car manufacturers, just to name a couple. And you implied that it COULD be superior to NASA's QA. My God.

When was the last time Apple products killed seven people?

 

[RedReplicant]

When was the last time Apple products killed seven people?

When is the last time an Apple product flew to space or operated 25 times longer than it's original design life unassisted on another planet?

Opportunity Rover
Planned: 90 sols
Current: 2277 days since landing

edit: To even try to imply something like that... well, that is a huge insult to NASA.

 

[mingoglia]

I seem to recall something similar happening with the iphone back when the original was introduced? It also caused havoc at a university. I don't recall the details though.

 

[kernkraft]

OH WHAT KINDA BS IS THAT???!!!! you all are so full of ****. "apple's qa is horrible".. are you kidding???? apple's qa is second only to maybe nasa. everything needs public vetting, every system has unforseen snafu's.

what a bunch of know-not losers there are on this board.

LOL!! that's right. i'm flaming. can't help it. you guys bring it out of me. such a bunch of hot air deserves a fart.

Wow, that is some personal insult! It seems that Macrumors' rules are not always upheld, but let me tell you that this kind of attitude and language is not fit for this forum, regardless of what you think of its users.


"You all are so full of ****." - Just because you cannot type the word, it remains something that describes you more than whom you aimed it at.

"what a bunch of know-not losers there are on this board." - would you consider yourself an educated person? An intelligent person? Sophisticated? A person 'in the know'? A person, who's opinion matters? I don't. I shouldn't reply to people like you, but stop this unacceptable manner or keep it to yourself!

"such a bunch of hot air deserves a fart." - Do it! I hope that you are better with that than with comments. Sniff it and be happy in that low level of yours. Do one for you in my name!

 

[apixel]

You get used to it ...

It wasn't easy for me either, specially because I'm very fast on a physical keyboard, but after 2 weeks with the device, I can type pretty darn fast and accurately. Maybe go back to the apple store a few more times. The key for me is to remember not to lean my hands on the screen when I type.

I'm really curious to see how students use the ipad. To me, it sounded like a dream machine for solving my lifelong pain around note taking. Finally, I would be able to take notes, without being rude (clack, clack, clack with a screen between my and others) and not only be able to read them later, but search them.

Sadly, when I tried typing on the ipad at an Apple Store, I found it extremely difficult. I know people will improve with practice, but is it realistic to think that a student could write a paper on an ipad or a business user could write a substantive memo?

 

[Rodimus Prime]

OH WHAT KINDA BS IS THAT???!!!! you all are so full of ****. "apple's qa is horrible".. are you kidding???? apple's qa is second only to maybe nasa. everything needs public vetting, every system has unforseen snafu's.

what a bunch of know-not losers there are on this board.

LOL!! that's right. i'm flaming. can't help it. you guys bring it out of me. such a bunch of hot air deserves a fart.

Apple and good QA do not belong in the same sentaince. It is pretty well known you never buy first edition of any apple products. They are known for some pretty bad bugs.

Apple software X.X.0 release are known to be kind of poor though of as best as a beta.

 

[BaldiMac]

Apple and good QA do not belong in the same sentaince.

Except when compared to the rest of the industry.

 

[RedReplicant]

Except when compared to the rest of the industry.

Do you have any numbers to back this up? I've never had an issue with any of my PCs over 20 years... but I've had a hard drive replaced in my 27", as well as getting a new one because the screen was yellow. My MBP got a new fan because it started buzzing after a month, backlight failed after 4 months, and the trackpad failed after 5.

 

[kernkraft]

Apple and good QA do not belong in the same sentaince. It is pretty well known you never buy first edition of any apple products. They are known for some pretty bad bugs.

Apple software X.X.0 release are known to be kind of poor though of as best as a beta.

I've had the upgrade discs, yet it took me 10.6.3 to upgrade from Leopard. Still, I saw more beach ball than I could handle, so in the end I upgraded the RAM and all the HDDs. 4GB and 320GB+ at 7200rpm all-round in this household. It's all thanks to bugs! It's lucky that I sold my MacBook Air.

 

[BaldiMac]

Do you have any numbers to back this up? I've never had an issue with any of my PCs over 20 years... but I've had a hard drive replaced in my 27", as well as getting a new one because the screen was yellow. My MBP got a new fan because it started buzzing after a month, backlight failed after 4 months, and the trackpad failed after 5.

One example:
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/05/04/apple-sweeps-consumer-reports-laptop-recommendations/

Your personal experience aside, do you have any numbers to back up an the opposite claim?

 

[Eidorian]

They'll fix it, eventually. Though this isn't unexpected from Apple. Getting Macs and iDevices to agree with certain networks can be a hassle.

 

[RedReplicant]

One example:
https://www.macrumors.com/2009/05/04/apple-sweeps-consumer-reports-laptop-recommendations/

Your personal experience aside, do you have any numbers to back up an the opposite claim?

Yes.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/03/report-apple-lo/
Old but at least it's numbers.

As for your article,

Consumer Reports rates laptop computers on performance, ergonomics, versatility, display, speakers, battery life and weight and provides an aggregate score.

I don't see anything about reliability in there.

 

[marksman]

Freaking Princeton know-it-alls figuring it out...

 

[macUser2007]

From tablet-new.com:

"Cornell, George Washington and Princeton University are restricting access of the Apple device.

These institutions mention issues like “wireless Internet security reasons”, with Princeton having reached 20% blocked iPads in its network. Apparently, some engineers claim that malfunctions could take down the school’s computer system, if everything goes wrong. Meanwhile, George Washington University has permanently blocked the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad from its wireless networks."

 

[Mattie Num Nums]

You have a very narrow view about how people should interact with and approach technology.

Kettle I don't believe you've met Pot...

 

[akadmon]

i'm shocked Apple QA didn't see this in their super secret locked down lab with only one person authorized to touch the iPad

What did you expect? It was either let a few hundred developers beta-test the device prior to public release (probably having given them free iPads), or delay the public release, delaying the start of the revenue stream. Simple economics. Apple wins. Early adopters get screwed...unless, like me, they own a few hundred shares of AAPL stock

 

[macuserx86]

No, it's creepy!

no, it's MAGIC!

 

[jzuena]

this depends on the lease time. if the lease is 5 days or so than it's not a big deal. a lot of organizations like a short lease of 1 day. makes it easy to prepare for downtime. we used to change it to 4 hours if we had to do something that would result in IP conflicts when we were donw

In their writeup of the problem, Princeton admits that their regular DHCP lease times are set between 1-3 hours (way at the bottom in the "Why Haven't Other Sites Reported This Particular Issue?" section). I'd love to run Wireshark on the iPad's DHCP lease packets (as if Apple would ever approve that app ) and see if the iPad is requesting a longer lease and getting handed these really short ones from Princeton. I bet that test case never came up in QA testing.

I didn't tune my home AEBS and it grants 1 day leases. That's probably what Apple tested with and found everything worked fine.

 

[jzuena]

I seem to recall something similar happening with the iphone back when the original was introduced? It also caused havoc at a university. I don't recall the details though.

I was going to post the same thing, but couldn't remember if it was the iPhone or some other handheld device. Looks like some bad code got resurrected from the SVN graveyard!

 

[bigwig]

Why aren't they seeing this problem with Macbooks? It seems odd that the ARM version of OSX would have different DHCP logic than the Intel/PPC version. Spurious code changes like that tend to piss off management. For that matter, what about iPhones? Since they presumably share code with the iPad they should have this problem too.

 

[Donald V]

Sites that monitor for these problems closely are less likely to encounter the issue if they assign DHCP leases with long expiration times. Princeton's wireless services rely on DHCP leases in the 1-3 hour range. (Shorter leases allow us to recover unused IP addresses rapidly, in turn permitting us to assign globally-routable IP addresses to clients without requiring Princeton to impose a NAT between wireless clients and the Internet.)

In the article it explains why they have a short lease time and it would also explain why they don't keep re-assigning then same ip. They have a limited number of globally-routable IP address.

Donald

 

[wovel]

This is obviously a bug in the TCP/IP stack in the iPad. However, not renewing the DHCP and continuing to use the same IP address after the DHCP lease has expired should not result in any problem for others as long as the DHCP server is implemented correctly. Any DHCP server must first attempt to ping the IP address that it is about to lease to a device requesting an IP address. If the IP address is alive, the DHCP server must not lease it to another device. From the problem description posted on the Princeton web site, the iPad continues to respond to pings even after the DHCP lease expires and it fails to renew its DHCP lease. Therefore, the Princeton DHCP servers must skip over that IP address and not use it in the DHCP leases to other devices. If they are not doing this, their DHCP servers are not functioning correctly. Only in that case, would there be an IP conflict.

However, Apple should definitely fix this issue.

They are creating a lot of pain for essentially no benefit to the users.

Matt

In the article it explains why they have a short lease time and it would also explain why they don't keep re-assigning then same ip. They have a limited number of globally-routable IP address.

Donald