

Universities Ban iPads - edw519
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100419/sc_livescience/universitiesbanipads

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ggchappell
I've seen several articles on this phenomenon, but none of them seem to
address the real issue.

I understand that banning the iPad from a network may be necessary in the
short term. But over the longer term, if single device can wreck your network
just by using an address for a bit too long, then _there is something wrong
with your network_.

I'm still waiting for the headline that says, "Security hole found in DHCP[1];
iPad accidentally exploits it". Hasn't happened yet. Why not?

[1] Or wherever the root problem turns out to be.

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hga
It doesn't "wreck your network", rather, when it keeps its DHCP lease beyond
the allowed time (due to being in "screen off" mode during the expiration) it
wrecks things for itself and whomever is unlucky enough to have gotten
reassigned the same IP address.

Not a security hole, just a "doesn't play well with others", and I can't think
of a way to avoid this without going outside of DHCP (e.g. assuming bad
behavior and therefore using a big enough pool and not reassigning IP
addresses for a _long_ time).

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Confusion
The article isn't very good. Things like

    
    
      Princeton said the iPad causes DHCP client malfunctions
    

are nonsensical. There is not a clue in the article as to the real problem. I
suppose the iPad could be very agressive in its attempts to obtain a DHCP
address and cause DHCP _server_ problems, but other than that...?

~~~
fhars
The problem is that it keeps using an IP address after the lease has run out
and the address may have been given out to another device. The difference
between universities that see this problem and those that don't is probably
that the latter assign the addresses for WLAN clients from a large pool (try
10.0.0.0/8) that allows them to keep the association between mac address and
IP address for the whole term or even longer.

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ugh
This is about the WiFi issues, not any other reason (like “Students really
shouldn’t use closed toys like that” or something :)

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iamwil
Hey, you're back submitting articles.

