The Iphone can damage wi-fi - apparently

A FEATURE on Apple's much hyped iPhoney has been killing off the wi-fi network at Duke University, apparently.

According to Network World, the built-in 802.11b/g adapters on several iPhones periodically flood sections of the school’s pervasive wireless LAN with MAC address requests. This temporarily knocks out up to 30 wireless access points at a time.

Fortunately not many people were on the campus and there are only 150 Iphones around. But network administrators are a bit worried that more of the wi-fi killer devices will arrive on campus when the students return in August. For some bizarre reason the Iphones are all asking for an invalid router address to request the MAC address of the destination node.

When it doesn’t get an answer, the thing refuses to take no for an answer and just keeps asking at a rate of 18,000 address requests per second. What a nag!

Cisco, the main WLAN provider is chatting to Apple about the problem but no-one has a clue what's up, it seems. While everyone knows it is Apple who is at fault, the maker of entertainment gear does not seem to be exactly pulling finger out to fix the problem.

Duke said that Apple has told him the problem is being 'escalated' but nothing had been heard from the Cappuccino based outfit at press time.

Apple might take it a little bit more seriously if its Iphones start bringing down corporate and metropolitan wi-fi systems. If indeed, the pesky little device is to blame in the first case.