Hacker News Reader

Comment by christoph | Hacker News Reader

As I said, I understand the reasoning.

I just don't understand how it completely destroys wifi when inaccessible. Windows 7 does a similar thing, but when the page is inaccessible, it doesn't completely kill the internet connection.

Basically, if Apples servers dissapear... Am I to believe that wifi becomes a useless feature on my iDevice, or am I missing a piece of the puzzle?

View on HN

An iOS device is typically multi-homed. Think about what routing options the typical iPhone has and how it likely picks a default route.

I'd be willing to bet more than 40% of iOS devices are not multi-homed - iPod Touches and wifi-only iPads.

From http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/08/apple-lifts-curtain-on-... :

> Apple has sold 46.5 million iPod touch units in the US between the device's introduction in 2007 and the second quarter of 2012. (That's in addition to the nearly 86 million iPhones and 34 million iPads sold during that time.)

iPod Touches alone are 28% of total iOS sales. If wifi-only iPads make up 60% of iPad sales (and I think they're probably higher), then that's 40%. Consider also that the turnover rate on phones is probably higher than the more focused devices.

Ok, yes, I was a little cavalier in my phrasing, and didn't communicate what I meant (which was roughly "iOS devices with a cellular radio"). iPhones and iPads with cellular radios are typically multi-homed. Edit: And "typically" does not mean "exclusively."

My iPad has one route to the internet and it's wifi. If apple.com is inaccessible (i.e. I block the domain on a router) is should not render the entire internet inaccessible.

Is it possible that someone at Apple was a little stupid one day and said to themselves, "Oh, an iPad is just like an iPhone, so I'll just use the same routing config script for both. And since I'm such an efficient employee, I'll go ahead and commit this obviously-trivial change without further tests"?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com