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Could have been titled: How do Apple devices wreak havoc on home networks. When my kid comes home with his iPhone there is a better than even chance that my ho

Could have been titled: How do Apple devices wreak havoc on home networks. When my kid comes home with his iPhone there is a better than even chance that my home network will go out to lunch. Router reboot time. Never happens with Windows or Android devices coming and going.

ryanlol 9y ago
Buy a new router?
kalleboo 9y ago
If it's "router reboot time" something is seriously messed up with your network. If that's an exaggeration and the iPhone is just booting other random stuff off the network, have you tried just increasing the DHCP lease time? On a home network that just sees the same devices day in and out you could safely set it to several days long.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Standard Netgear wifi router with standard config. As I said, it's fine except when Apple devices come onto the network.
  - csydas 9y ago
    I'd suggest that it warrants more investigation than just writing it off as Apple trashes networks. Hybrid Apple/Windows households have been common for the larger part of 2 decades now and certainly others do not experience the same issues guaranteed. So rather, the title would be Apple devices cause issues on your home network. Or more accurately, something on your home network works in an unintended fashion when your son's iPhone connects.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      It's not just his iPhone. It's iPads, any Apple device that has been "away" for a while and then comes back. TFA describes how Apple is taking shortcuts in the DHCP negotiation. I blame them for assuming that the previous IP address assigned to the device will still be available.
      - csydas 9y ago
        Well, while this may be the case, I'm not quite sure how Apple device assuming same IP as before somehow triggers the disconnect from the rest. It may be part of the steps required to reproduce, but hundreds of other consumer routers with standard configuration handle such a scenario without booting the rest of the attached clients, which is why I woudl rephrase it as unexpected behavior from the router. And Apple isn't taking a shortcut or a hack here, it's a known scheme: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4436.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4436.txt It's not so much doing anything special as crafting a special call to the network it tries to connect to. It's more of a shortcut to know if the Mac should go to the DHCP phase rather than cheating its way on to the network.
    - subway 9y ago
      Odds are high that GP's router is configured to give out addresses sequentially, with a fairly short lease and the wireless ap is configured to disallow communication between wireless hosts. I'm thinking the odds they'll change the configuration vs yell about apple devices aren't so high.
  - zlynx 9y ago
    Still weird. My Netgear R7000 doesn't have a problem with Apple devices. It used to have an open root exploit (patched), but it never had an Apple problem. :-)
- wtallis 9y ago
  Really, if your router's uptime isn't measured in months, you're doing it wrong. Probably by running the software it came with, instead of replacing it with an actually-maintained Linux distribution like OpenWRT or LEDE. There are really very few routers out there anymore that have so little memory they can't be robust and run modern software. Flaky hardware is quite a bit more rare than some users seem to think. The problem is mostly that the hardware vendors have very little incentive to continue polishing the software after the device is shipping, because by the time you get fed up with the consequences of their crap software there will be a new model to sell you. They love that "buy a new router" is such a common troubleshooting step.
iiilllililiiiiI 9y ago
If you have a linux device on the network you could have that be the dhcp server and control lease times there, dhcp and dns on a linux machine(even an old laptop) are way better than all but the top tier netgear routers. If your windows machine is always on you could even run it in a vm. https://askubuntu.com/questions/248355/can-i-run-a-dhcp-server-on-an-ubuntu-vm-under-vmware-and-serve-the-host https://askubuntu.com/questions/248355/can-i-run-a-dhcp-serv... Hope that helps. You'll still be behind the NAT of the netgear router but you'll have better control over QoS. Here's how you can do it on a debian box https://wiki.debian.org/DHCP_Server https://wiki.debian.org/DHCP_Server
tristanj 9y ago
This is a known issue on iOS 8.0-8.1. Lookup 'WiFried'.
- 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
  This is very interesting! I just replied to another commentator mentioning issues apple had with 10.10.1 - 10.10.4 when they updated some aspect of the network stack. both the macOS and iOS issues were apparently caused by the same change. More info here: https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/apple-discoveryd-replaced-with-mdnsresponder/ https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/apple-discoveryd-replac...
mdekkers 9y ago
My SO unfortunately has 2 ipones, an ipad and a MBP. There is a confluence of DHCP activity from all these devices that is guaranteed to take my network down.
- pilif 9y ago
  DHCP activity from 4 devices will not slow your network, much less take it down. A DHCP negotiation to get an IP address takes 4 UDP packets, all of them usually below 500 bytes in size. Not even when you have set the lease time to the theoretical minimum of 1s, this traffic will be at all significant in your network.
  - mdekkers 9y ago
    It will kill my fiber to the home network box that my telco installed, and provides DHCP. It isn't a load issue, it is a "the DHCP server died" issue
    - 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
      "It" won't. Bugs in DHCP / your router/modem/telco's software will.
    - brokenmachine 9y ago
      I would be talking to my telco in this instance.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  Our home network has 6+ Apple devices and a pile of other stuff (Smart TVs, DVRs, game consoles, media converters, etc) and it has zero problems whatsoever. Our router is some generic thing by NEC that I bought off the shelf at a big-box retailer because it had the biggest numbers on the box.
- acdha 9y ago
  Unless your DHCP server is an old Commodore 64, that's not the right diagnosis. The ISC DHCP server was rock solid with negligible CPU load with many thousands of clients even 10-15 years ago. If your network is really having problems, either dig deeper if you want to learn more about networking or buy something like a Google WiFi device if you just want something known to handle much greater loads without issue.
matthewmacleod 9y ago
Let’s be clear: this is an issue with your home network. If it’s not able to cope with a known and documented by RFC scheme for detecting network reattachment, then it’s broken. Unfortunately, most domestic networking equipment is in my experience awful.

ryanlol 9y ago

Buy a new router?

kalleboo 9y ago

If it's "router reboot time" something is seriously messed up with your network. If that's an exaggeration and the iPhone is just booting other random stuff off the network, have you tried just increasing the DHCP lease time? On a home network that just sees the same devices day in and out you could safely set it to several days long.

ams6110 9y ago
Standard Netgear wifi router with standard config. As I said, it's fine except when Apple devices come onto the network.
- csydas 9y ago
  I'd suggest that it warrants more investigation than just writing it off as Apple trashes networks. Hybrid Apple/Windows households have been common for the larger part of 2 decades now and certainly others do not experience the same issues guaranteed. So rather, the title would be Apple devices cause issues on your home network. Or more accurately, something on your home network works in an unintended fashion when your son's iPhone connects.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    It's not just his iPhone. It's iPads, any Apple device that has been "away" for a while and then comes back. TFA describes how Apple is taking shortcuts in the DHCP negotiation. I blame them for assuming that the previous IP address assigned to the device will still be available.
    - csydas 9y ago
      Well, while this may be the case, I'm not quite sure how Apple device assuming same IP as before somehow triggers the disconnect from the rest. It may be part of the steps required to reproduce, but hundreds of other consumer routers with standard configuration handle such a scenario without booting the rest of the attached clients, which is why I woudl rephrase it as unexpected behavior from the router. And Apple isn't taking a shortcut or a hack here, it's a known scheme: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4436.txt http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4436.txt It's not so much doing anything special as crafting a special call to the network it tries to connect to. It's more of a shortcut to know if the Mac should go to the DHCP phase rather than cheating its way on to the network.
  - subway 9y ago
    Odds are high that GP's router is configured to give out addresses sequentially, with a fairly short lease and the wireless ap is configured to disallow communication between wireless hosts. I'm thinking the odds they'll change the configuration vs yell about apple devices aren't so high.
- zlynx 9y ago
  Still weird. My Netgear R7000 doesn't have a problem with Apple devices. It used to have an open root exploit (patched), but it never had an Apple problem. :-)
wtallis 9y ago
Really, if your router's uptime isn't measured in months, you're doing it wrong. Probably by running the software it came with, instead of replacing it with an actually-maintained Linux distribution like OpenWRT or LEDE. There are really very few routers out there anymore that have so little memory they can't be robust and run modern software. Flaky hardware is quite a bit more rare than some users seem to think. The problem is mostly that the hardware vendors have very little incentive to continue polishing the software after the device is shipping, because by the time you get fed up with the consequences of their crap software there will be a new model to sell you. They love that "buy a new router" is such a common troubleshooting step.

iiilllililiiiiI 9y ago

If you have a linux device on the network you could have that be the dhcp server and control lease times there, dhcp and dns on a linux machine(even an old laptop) are way better than all but the top tier netgear routers. If your windows machine is always on you could even run it in a vm. https://askubuntu.com/questions/248355/can-i-run-a-dhcp-server-on-an-ubuntu-vm-under-vmware-and-serve-the-host https://askubuntu.com/questions/248355/can-i-run-a-dhcp-serv... Hope that helps. You'll still be behind the NAT of the netgear router but you'll have better control over QoS. Here's how you can do it on a debian box https://wiki.debian.org/DHCP_Server https://wiki.debian.org/DHCP_Server

tristanj 9y ago

This is a known issue on iOS 8.0-8.1. Lookup 'WiFried'.

9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
This is very interesting! I just replied to another commentator mentioning issues apple had with 10.10.1 - 10.10.4 when they updated some aspect of the network stack. both the macOS and iOS issues were apparently caused by the same change. More info here: https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/apple-discoveryd-replaced-with-mdnsresponder/ https://www.macrumors.com/2015/05/26/apple-discoveryd-replac...

mdekkers 9y ago

My SO unfortunately has 2 ipones, an ipad and a MBP. There is a confluence of DHCP activity from all these devices that is guaranteed to take my network down.

pilif 9y ago
DHCP activity from 4 devices will not slow your network, much less take it down. A DHCP negotiation to get an IP address takes 4 UDP packets, all of them usually below 500 bytes in size. Not even when you have set the lease time to the theoretical minimum of 1s, this traffic will be at all significant in your network.
- mdekkers 9y ago
  It will kill my fiber to the home network box that my telco installed, and provides DHCP. It isn't a load issue, it is a "the DHCP server died" issue
  - 9935c101ab17a66 9y ago
    "It" won't. Bugs in DHCP / your router/modem/telco's software will.
  - brokenmachine 9y ago
    I would be talking to my telco in this instance.
kalleboo 9y ago
Our home network has 6+ Apple devices and a pile of other stuff (Smart TVs, DVRs, game consoles, media converters, etc) and it has zero problems whatsoever. Our router is some generic thing by NEC that I bought off the shelf at a big-box retailer because it had the biggest numbers on the box.
acdha 9y ago
Unless your DHCP server is an old Commodore 64, that's not the right diagnosis. The ISC DHCP server was rock solid with negligible CPU load with many thousands of clients even 10-15 years ago. If your network is really having problems, either dig deeper if you want to learn more about networking or buy something like a Google WiFi device if you just want something known to handle much greater loads without issue.

matthewmacleod 9y ago

Let’s be clear: this is an issue with your home network. If it’s not able to cope with a known and documented by RFC scheme for detecting network reattachment, then it’s broken. Unfortunately, most domestic networking equipment is in my experience awful.