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Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

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41–50 of 64 posts

Re: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

#42
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't really go into much more detail than the first responder did without getting into trouble :) Let's just say it's magic.

If that’s how it works it means that all my data is going through your proxy server. Is that correct? Is the connection encrypted?

Yes we have proxy servers. And yes the connection is encrypted

Re: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

#43
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

chrome for android supports websockets.

Only on 4.0: it represents less than 1.5% of all Androids now. iOS had Websockets since 4.1, for over 1.5 years. Unless Chrome gets back-ported to Android 2.2 and 2.3 it will take a very long time.

yes, but i was addressing your claim that android has no plan to support websockets. obviously they can't make all the old versions websocket compatible, but they do have a clear path forward to supporting them.

Re: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

#44
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only on 4.0: it represents less than 1.5% of all Androids now. iOS had Websockets since 4.1, for over 1.5 years. Unless Chrome gets back-ported to Android 2.2 and 2.3 it will take a very long time.

I thought 4.0 was supposed to stop that? iOS 5.1 runs on every iOS device released in the last 3 years. When can we expect all Android devices released in the past 2-3 years running the latest OS?

when the carriers and handset manufacturers pull their collective thumbs out of their asses.

Re: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

#46
post #36

This is based on speculation and guesswork ... but this is what I think they were doing with their original iTether application: On the client (the Mac) they have a IOKit ethernet driver that shows up in Network Settings. This becomes your default route (after some fake DHCP magic) and then captures packets and relays them to their application that runs in userland. Their userland application contains a lightweight T…

Maybe it is just my warped perspective, but when I looked at the technology this all came to mind immediately, but I just as immediately dismissed it because of the "hosted proxy service": the fee was seemingly "too low".

So, I feel like you've left out the key non-obvious part: it turns out that even if you do the brain-dead un-optimized "let's use Amazon EC2" for your proxies, $30/yr at $0.05c/GB (down: up is free) buys 50GB/mo.

Given that the user is then going to be filing this data over their 3G connections, 50GB/mo is (based on reports of users tethering that complain about rate limiting and caps) at the very high-end of usage.

So, with that aside, the rest of this actually boils down to: "the webpage just makes two outgoing websocket connections; one to a proxy, and the other to an app on the PC, itself providing a custom network driver".

Re: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

#47
post #36

This is based on speculation and guesswork ... but this is what I think they were doing with their original iTether application: On the client (the Mac) they have a IOKit ethernet driver that shows up in Network Settings. This becomes your default route (after some fake DHCP magic) and then captures packets and relays them to their application that runs in userland. Their userland application contains a lightweight T…

Not really but good guess. We didn't make TetherMe. Maybe you mean iTether?

Re: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

#48
post #10

The way they do it is elegant, and could be used in many other places than just the iPhone. All you need is a browser that supports websockets. I'm not really aware of that stuff, but I'm a bit curious. Do websockets really work over mobile networks (which are, at least in my experience, transparent proxied, and where anything outside of HTTP-on-port-80/HTTPS-on-port-443 is blacklisted into oblivion) ?

My experience is the exact opposite: all networks I've used in the US (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile; in essence, all of the major ones) and the few I've used in the UK (while roaming) have all had sufficiently few outgoing ports blocked that I've never run into one (and I use my iPhone as if it were a computer ;P). That said, WebSockets is just an upgrade extension to HTTP, so it is going to go over 80/443 anyway.

Re: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

#49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought 4.0 was supposed to stop that? iOS 5.1 runs on every iOS device released in the last 3 years. When can we expect all Android devices released in the past 2-3 years running the latest OS?

when the carriers and handset manufacturers pull their collective thumbs out of their asses.

Is that what had to happen for Apple to do it? I thought Android was on the same carriers?

Re: Tether Launches HTML5-Based iPhone Tethering Solution

#50

I don't understand how this works. It seems like when you're connected to the ad-hoc wifi network, all web requests would go through there. How do they get around this?

I'm assuming they're making use of the fact that the iPhone is multihomed when wifi and cellular connections are both enabled. This means that any outboard traffic from iOS could take two routes, but the ad-hoc wifi network is only advertising routes to IP addresses in a (predetermined) private address space. So when the websockets app talks to a private IP address it choses the wifi route and when it talks to a public IP address it choses the cellular route.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multihoming

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