iPad Wi-Fi Issues to be Blamed on Bad DHCP Handling?
By Nikki Patel
Suggested Bad DHCP Handling
(TCP/IP World) It has been suggested that some of the Wi-Fi issues the iPad has been facing are a result of bad handing of DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol).
Any device must obtain an IP address from a DHCP server in order to make use of the Wi-Fi connection. These obtained IP addresses expire after a certain period of time and must be renewed in advance for the Wi-Fi feature to be used again.
Although the iPad keeps an active Wi-Fi connection while it is asleep, it does not renew its IP address during this time and due to this the same IP is used again once the device is restarted. This can create a conflict causing both devices such as and iPhone and iPad to be kicked off because they will both try to use the same IP address once they restart.
This flaw is being blamed for Princeton University’s recent connection problems which has caused it to declare a temporary advisory against iPads at the institution. Out of 41 iPads examined at the university, 22 have been detected to be causing problems. Of the 22, 8 have been so problematic to the network system that they have been banned from the schools network.
The suggested solution for this problem has been to turn off iPads for a few seconds, reconfigure DHCP to get duplicates and to give the iPad a fixed address that is beyond the DHCP’s range. Also, the DHCP lease time can be extended to at least get rid of some difficulties.