This question is not language-aware.
I wanna know how can I recognize a returning user on my website (Java, PHP, Coldfusion...) if he's using a dynamic IP.
Why? A lot of users of my web application use iPhone (with 3G networking) for accessing. IP changes each time, so I always see them as "new" users.
I know it's unlikely to track MAC address in web pages but.... what solutions are there for such a common problem?
Maybe a suitable iPhone app? ;-)
It's not quite possible to find original requesting machine's MAC address. You should use Cookies to track users.
You can find more info about MAC Addresses here.
A Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier
assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical
network segment. MAC addresses are used for numerous network
technologies and most IEEE 802 network technologies, including
Ethernet. Logically, MAC addresses are used in the Media Access
Control protocol sub-layer of the OSI reference model.
Why not do what everybody else does and use cookies?
As other said, you could easier get what you want with cookies...
and, reading your question and purpose, i'm not really sure that if a user uses it's iPhone via wifi and browse to your website and than it come back again via 3G the MAC address doesn't change... i thought that MAC address is unique not for a device, but for a single hardware component in it: this mean that an iPhone could have a MAC for wifi hardware and a MAC for 3g hardware... if it works as on my powerMac... i can see my computer has a mac address for my ethernet and one other for my wifi...
but i'm not an hardware expert, so (all readers), please consider this answer as a question too, and if there is any net expert on line...
Related
My router can apply MAC-address based restrictions, e.g. to limit access hours for a specific device on the network. (Not to be confused with IP address restrictions to block facebook, youtube etc..) This seems to be a common feature in routers found in DSL modems.
If a rogue user on my LAN uses a VPN app to access the internet, is it correct that the desired access restrictions still apply? In other words, VPN cannot be used to circumvent these kind of restrictions? Although the answer seems almost self-evident from the question itself, I am not sure what is all possible with port-forwarding, MAC-address spoofing etc...
UPDATE: To prevent third parties from using the MAC address to track devices, Android, Linux, iOS, and Windows[5] have implemented MAC address randomization. In June 2014, Apple announced that future versions of their iOS platform would randomize MAC addresses for all WiFi connections. The Linux kernel has supported MAC address randomization during network scans since March 2015,[6] but drivers need to be updated to use this feature.[7] Windows has supported it since the release of Windows 10[5] in July 2015 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAC_spoofing#MAC_Address_Randomization_in_WiFi
So, based on the answers below, so far, the VPN would usually not be able to spoof the MAC address, but LAN access control based on MAC address is made difficult or impossible by the intentional address randomization within the device.
A VPN is nothing else than another TCP IP connection. So the best approach would always be to block the dst address of the VPN. However, since this is normally not easy (there are tons of vpn dst ips). The connection, should be dropped if the source host MAC address is not allowed. In other words, you should treat the VPN as a Webpage. Just as you would block yahoo, you should block the vpn provider. Once the vpn is established, the mac would be allowed to do whatever it wish .
As far as I am aware, there are no VPNs that do this. Theoretically spoofing a MAC address could work, but it isn't what a VPN is designed to do. Even then there aren't really any simple options for spoofing MAC addresses on Windows.
So the desired access restrictions will still apply.
As per OSI-Layer Model, the VPN Connection is just an Application with (hopefully) encrypted communication (OpenVPN, SSL/TLS-VPN, IPSec) on Layer 4 (e.g. TCP/UDP) the packages themself are handled by the PHY (e.g. Network card, WiFi Modul, etc.). Therefore your MAC filter will detect these packages as packages from this MAC even if it can't read the content. The only bypasses for the MAC filter are MAC spoofing or using another PC on the network as a proxy or NAT device than your Router with the MAC filter will see this PC as the sending device.
I am looking for a way to get both the MAC Adress and the SSID of the currently connected WiFi Network in my project. I have used Tony Million's Reachability to decide when the user is on a WiFi network or not and was testing Kenial's NICInfo only to find out that it only provides the iPhone's WiFi MAC Address. Although both projects helped greatly in there own way, they do not get the job done.
I am wondering if there is a public API (for certain Apple App Approval) or some back door to achieve this.
This involves a few different things:
Getting SSID - This is independent of the MAC address issue. For this, check this SO answer: iPhone get SSID without private library. I don't know what the etiquette is regarding re-posting code from other answers so I'll just link.
Getting MAC address - since the majority of networking operates at Layer 3 (which is called, who would have guessed, the Network Layer - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model) and the MAC address is at Layer 2 (the Data Link layer) you'll first need to get the IP address of the gateway of the WiFi interface. Just a side note - the question should be phrased as 'How do I get the SSID of the currently connected WiFi network and the MAC address of the WiFi router/gateway'. Anywho, to get the gateway address, see this SO answer: How to get the WIFI gateway address on the iPhone?
Once you have that, you need to convert it to a MAC address using ARP (Address Resolution Protocol, which is the protocol that all networks use to convert IP addresses to MAC addresses). Network interfaces don't communicate via IP, they communicate via MAC, so this actually happens everywhere, all the time. It's actually pretty easy to access the ARP table on a PC/Mac. For iOS, I found this SO answer to convert an IP address to a MAC address: Getting ARP table on iPhone/iPad
Does anybody suggest a mobile printer able to print receipt with a good SDK to interface wireless an iOS application adhoc developed ? The printer should be small and should use rechargeable batteries for field use.
I cannot use wifi because not always a trusted access point (customer premises) is available, so I think to use Bluetooth, but of course any suggestion is welcome !
FYI I already checked Zebra printers SDK for iOS but it seems able to print only using a TCP/IP address, it means (for as I know) I should use wifi. In my case the application should be used in the field from an iPad connected with cellular network. In iPad there is no hot-spot and not always there is an available wifi access point tho connect the iPad and the printer the the same network to use TCP/IP addresses. That is the reason I'm guessing the last chance should be bluetooth.
Unfortunately iOS5 does not support Bluetooth printing.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3647
Have you considered VPN via WEP to a network printer?
Alternatively some printers can be set up with their own email address. PDF attachments can be sent via this address to be printed. These emails can be sent encrypted.
I know that this isn't the IDEAL answer, but it is likely to work for the time being until iOS is properly updated.
Yes, I have Bluetooth printer for IOS device, it is Apple MFI approved
see details from this URL http://www.bluebamboo.com/other_file/P25i%20Datasheet%20%28EN%29%20v1.0%2009-Oct-2011.pdf
I know you already accepted an answer, but here's another one: have the technician bring their own wireless base station (AirPort Express perhaps) and create his own wireless network (that won't have internet access, but that's not needed) with appropriate security. Then you can use any HP wireless capable printer and have the iOS device and the printer connect to the wifi network created by the wireless access point (which should be set with DHCP to vend IP addresses in a non-routable range like 192.168.x.x, obviously).
We also have a Bluetooth printer that is MFI certified along with an easy to understand iOS SDK. Please take a look at the EZPay App on the Appstore. The app's currently in Japanese (fir one of our clients) but the description explain a little about the printer. I'm currently traveling at the moment, but if you shoot me an email from the contact info on the App Store. I can get a few other things out to you. Cheers... B
No need to develop a full blown SDK, check out Mobi Print. it has the Zebra sdk already implemented and connects to any webservice or ODBC database. It also has stored label/receipt formats in there app so just upload your format and should be good to go.
here is link for Mobi Print
I'd love to be able to mod the iPhone tcp/ip stack to route packets over the accessory port either serial or better yet USB or Firewire...
The applications I'm researching wouldn't be able to use WiFi, 3G or bluetooth...
Custom apps could be written to use the serial port available via the accessory port, but it would be nice to support generic apps that need network access.
I haven't tracked down much info relating to this, anyone have thoughts??
About the only way this could work would be to Jailbreak the device, and do some quite low level hacking. OS X supports NKEs (Network Kernel Extensions) that would allow you to introduce a new network interface. I don't know if the iPhone OS has these (as there's obviously not much information on it - it's supposed to be a black box). Even if it did, you'd have to make your KE lie and claim to be e.g. the Wifi device, as many applications will probe for network availability by searching for the Wifi interface.
Basically, I think this is an untenable idea. You can use the External Accessory APIs to allow your custom apps to use your dongle as a network service provider, but you can't use it to provide a new network interface. If you want this kind of open, extensible platform, then the iPhone is not really the right platform.
Is it possible to connect a socket between two mobile devices (iPhones) over the internet?
I am trying to discover the IP of each device and connect directly. I know it can be done with Bonjour but that only works on local networks. I need a high speed connection between two devices over the internet.
Thanks.
If you had both the IP's and they were both routable, it should be possible. I'm not sure though if the IP's given out by the 3G network are routable. If you are using WIFI, the IP you get is almost certainly not routable. Assuming you have a routable IP though, it should be possible.
The trick is just discovering the IP of the other device. The best way to do that would probably be to have each device register its IP with a web service when your app starts up, then query that service to find the IPs of other devices.
It might get a bit tricky managing "unregistering" IPs when the app is closed or when an IP changes though, but it should be doable.
ETA:
If you have a server that they can both connect to, you should be able to implement a solution using that server (i.e. without the phones actually directly connecting to each other). This would avoid the issue of having routable IPs for the phones.
As for how to bridge the sockets together - your server program would basicly work like an old-school phone switchboard operator. You'd have some kind of registration & discovery protocol built into the server software that would allow a phone to register itself with the server, query a list of the other phones currently connected to the server, indicate which phone it wants to talk to, and accept connections from other phones.
Once it knows who wants to talk to whom, your server software would connect the two together by reading from one phone's socket and writing that data to the other phone's socket.
Only a suggestion, but if you can get each of them to connect to a third site, you'll then know the address of each. Send the address of phone A to phone B (and/or phone B to phone A) and then have them connect as you see fit.
Have you looked through all the 3.0 features? Specifically peer networking (the existence of which is public).
WiFi routers often have a feature called "Port Triggering" which allows internal hosts (in this case an iPhone) to inform the router that they would like to have a connections on particular port forwarded to them. I have no idea if the iPhone supports this protocol.
For IP lookup you may consider using DynamicDNS if the two hosts are known ahead of time OR as stated above a custom web service if they are not (i.e. friends exchanging hostnames vs. strangers discovering each other)
This is an old thread, but I just came across it. You could use a STUN server (or NAT-PMP) to get the public IP address/port combo and then SMS it over to the other phone. So long as you open a listening port on the first device, then your second device can just connect directly using the publi IP address/port you sent to it in the SMS (SMS push registry can automatically wake up your app on the second device to do this)
I have run into this issue with an app I was developing. I was trying to connect to a PC cell card from an iPhone. The problem is that AT&T doesn't enable mobile termination for iPhones so it is physically impossible for two phones on an AT&T network to connect to one another. This is straight from an AT&T antenna engineer.
I was able to get this to work by having the iPhone VPN into a server and then connect to the PC cell card but other than that, it wouldn't work.
I have a very strong feeling (but no evidence) that the iPhone address is going to be non-routable. Of course it actually depends on the operator but AT&T give out 10.x.x.x addresses.
Apple have sample (desktop) code that uses Bonjour to implement portmapping on a WiFi router that supports UnPnP.