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Polling domains when attached to the network like this doesnt suprise me in the least. Apple's ecosystem has often been praised for its tight integration, and t
by SimianSci 1y ago
Polling domains when attached to the network like this doesnt suprise me in the least.
Apple's ecosystem has often been praised for its tight integration, and this consistent network connectivity is the result.
Anybody who has worked with large scale services that rely on messaging services to ensure people get timely notifications and data, knows that you need services which are continuously polling endpoints to check and see if they have new information.
Organizations like Apple who service billions of devices cannot rely on a "push data to system only when something has updated" type of system, as such a system doesnt operate at their scale. They have to operate a system where individual clients are assumed to have an unreliable connection to the service, and where the client does the legwork of checking for new data stored in a centralized system.
This is what you are seeing in the article.
Domains like [gdmf.apple.com] which govern device management, are where the declarative device management system is checking Apple's various databases to see if they need to update their configuration.
- brookst 1y agoThe article’s author would apparently be happier if everything were on a single domain with just ports or paths to separate services. Thinking about the number of DNS names seems kind of silly.
- lapcat 1y agoThis is an extremely uncharitable interpretation of the article. The number was just intended to illustrate the amount of communication that occurs.
- yaris 1y agoThe amount of communications would be better illustrated by the number of connections made in a period of time, maybe complemented with the amount of data transferred up/down. Making a 1000 connections towards one domain name with different URLs does not fundamentally differ from making 1000 connections each towards a separate domain name (which names can be the same server, just with a bunch of IPs).
- lapcat 1y agoYou seem to be assuming that the author set out from the beginning to measure scientifically the amount of communication that occurs. What is much more likely is that the author's DNS provider, NextDNS, provided this information, and the author simply noticed it.
- yencabulator 1y agoThat's just the amount. The DNS names "leaking" the service in question is extra information, and interesting.
- mzi 1y ago> Polling domains when attached to the network Apple devices do communicate over BT even when you explicitly turn it off and put your device in flight mode.
- DrBenCarson 1y agoOnly if you use Apple Watch and or Contact Tracing features