The iPhone Wi-Fi Puzzle at Duke University this week triggered a cyber tidal wave of commentary, complaint, confusion and even some comic relief at NetworkWorld.com and other Web technology sites.

The problem is that a few iPhones on the Blue Devils' campus-wide wireless LAN (WLAN) sometimes trigger a flood of Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) requests, as many as 18,000 per second. The flood overwhelms groups of Cisco WLAN access points, anywhere from a dozen to 30 at a time, taking them offline for 10 to 15 minutes.

As of end of day Tuesday 17 July, Duke recorded 9 iPhone ARP events. The university did not reply to an e-mail requesting an update on the number of incidents since then

By midweek, Network World readers logged about 90 posts on the problem, and scores of readers at dozens of other tech sites did the same. One anonymous reader suggested a simple explanation: "Everybody loves a good mystery."

But plenty of posters thought they sorted it out quickly. It was the fault of Apple. Or Cisco. Or Duke IT. Or Applehaters. Someone even suggested that Michael Nifong, the North Carolina county district attorney who was found guilty of numerous ethical violations in his handling of the notorious Duke lacrosse team case, was behind the problem.

"My take? Apple knows the problem but is afraid to own up to it since they are riding the glory train of success with the runaway whoop-dee-doo of the jesus-phone...I mean the iPhone," wrote Ed web/gadget guru. on the Network World comments thread.

Pure jealously, according to one Apple fan. "Come on guys, it's the network, not the iPhones. Otherwise this result would be worldwide," wrote ajhill at AppleInsider.com [registration required]. "Just another fruitless attack on the iPhone. Oh, they can be so jealous, can't they?

"Duke's IT staff should send a delegation to the nearest Starbucks or Panera Bread outlet and ask the girl behind the espresso machine how to configure a wireless router," wrote zanely, at CNet's forum.

Comments such as these prompted a Duke faculty member, John Madden, to reply on the Network World thread. "The good news is, from the perspective of us Duke users, our network is behaving just fine, thank you very much," he wrote. "The bad news is, I'm mortified by the amount of hostility evident in certain posts here from Network Administrators towards both network users and device manufacturers."