Why does my iPhone connect to 17.171.232.81

[matthijst]

My iPhone 4S keeps connecting to 17.171.232.81 even though I turned of all iCloud settings, facetime, find my iPhone and notifications...

Anyone know what IP this is?

 

[Gav2k]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

It's defiantly apple!

 

[bradl]

My iPhone 4S keeps connecting to 17.171.232.81 even though I turned of all iCloud settings, facetime, find my iPhone and notifications...

Anyone know what IP this is?

bradl@bellicha:~> dig -x 17.171.232.81

; <<>> DiG 9.7.4 <<>> -x 17.171.232.81
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 14612
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;81.232.171.17.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
17.in-addr.arpa. 900 IN SOA gridmaster-ib.apple.com. hostmaster.apple.com. 2010075772 1800 900 2592000 900

;; Query time: 1084 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.1.254#53(192.168.1.254)
;; WHEN: Thu Nov 10 23:38:06 2011
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 114


There you go.

BL.

 

[matthijst]

Yeah, but WHY does it connect to it?

 

[hakr100]

"iPhone phone home..."

 

[dotme]

And youre settings for Diagnostics and Usage are?....

 

[PacketPaul]

Yeah, but WHY does it connect to it?

Think of it as a test to validate the network connection. By checking for network connectivity the phone will know if you have access to the internet.

Another reason is some WiFi hot spots contain a captive portal. Apple is "calling home" simply to give you the opportunity to authenticate with the captive portal.

A captive portal is simply a splash screen used at some public WiFi spots which allow you to authenticate or simply agree to the terms and conditions. If you do not authenticate with the captive portal, the phone will be unable to access the internet.