use 3g for internet when connected to adhoc wifi (using private API's) - iphone

First and foremost,
I am looking for a resource to use Private API's.
this is an enterprise application and will never go to the app store
I need to take as much configuration out of the users hands as possible.
That being said, I have a device that an ipad will be connected to and communicate with via an adhoc wifi network supplied by the device. the ipad connects to this device and sends raw data to it via socket connections. I also need to connect to the internet for data syncing.
80% of the time, the ipad will be connected to this adhoc wifi device. Management software on the ipad does not allow the user to adjust wifi settings so I am trying to make sure I am connected to my device without limiting my server syncing. I know I can determine the connection using apples Reachability class, this is not what i am looking for. I need to use BOTH 3g AND wifi.
Is there a way to enforce this in code? Or is there a resource for the private API's that I can look at to find a way?
This will be in iOS 5 and the most preferable method would be to just route my http requests via some private api method to use 3G and let the socket requests use wifi to the adhoc device.
code samples would be awesome, links / class names to research would be very much appreciated.
and once again this is not going into the app store, it is an enterprise app

the resolution i found was to assign an ip in the privately assigned ip range the ipad uses (169.254.x.x) to the adhoc device then let the ipad determine an ip. Then see if i can open a socket connection to the device (to determine if its available) and then issue a print.
Going this route, i am still able to use 3g data as well as communicate with the device via wifi.

Related

Share iPhone's internet connection with a non apple device. Tethering

I have a non Apple device used to process some data. It has bluetooth support.
It can be paired with the iPhone via bluetooth.
The device must use iPhone's internet connection to access a remote server.
See the flow:
I pair the device with the iPhone in Settings->Bluetooth.
I use ExternalAccessory framework to send data to the paired device.
The device processes the data and uses iPhone's internet connection to send the data to a remote server.
There is no problem in pairing the device to iPhone ( no jailbreak, by the way ).
Also, the firmware of the device is to be modelled in order to sent https requests via a valid internet connection.
The problem is the tethering, that will allow the iPhone to share it's WIFI or 3G connection with the device.
All I have found so far is tethering the iPhone with a computer, but no word about other non apple devices.
Any idea/link?
Take into account:
The device has bluetooth hardware and can be legally paired with the iPhone, no jailbreak needed.
The data processed by the device MUST avoid the application, and go directly to the remote server: I am not allowed to get the data from the device and use NSURLConnection to pass it to the remote server.
Please suggest a way to share iPhone's internet connection with non apple device.

Communication between iOS app in one Wi-Fi network w/o server

I need to communicate my app with 2 devices. A restriction is that I can't use a server but all iOS devices will be in one Wi-Fi network. What options do I have? How I can send a message to another copy of my app running on another device?
I dont know whether its a correct approach or not but as you cannot use server,so the approach i can think of is we can create a socket connection using TCP/IP or UDP(based on reliability) for data exchange.
I dont think you can communicate between 2 devices running the same application without having some kind of server application in-between.
Even if you could find the other device over the WIFI I dont think you can tell if the other device is running the app or not.
I think you may be referring to MultipeerConnectivity
The Multipeer Connectivity framework provides support for discovering
services provided by nearby iOS devices using infrastructure Wi-Fi
networks, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth personal area networks and
subsequently communicating with those services by sending
message-based data, streaming data, and resources (such as files).
Source: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/MultipeerConnectivity/Reference/MultipeerConnectivityFramework/
Apple Sample:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/MultipeerGroupChat/Introduction/Intro.html

iPhone as proxy for data upload

I want to create an iPhone application that can call web services on a computer, and then upload those files over the iPhone 3g connection. Is there an elegant way to do this?
I tried connecting the phone to local Wifi, but connecting to Wifi disables 3g, even though the Wifi is local network only.
I assume the same problem would arise if I could network the phone with the computer via bluetooth.
Any other ideas? The purpose is to go up to a special demo PC we created, pull some data off, then upload to the Internet, all within proximity of the machine. Unfortunately, it appears that I can't use one connection for pulling data, and another for pushing.
Your assumption is correct. When connecting to both 3G and Wifi, the Wifi connection will be used. Sounds like your local network has no route to the Internet. Perhaps that could be fixed.
Apple does not prefer its iPhones to be used as routers.
If you're working on something that will not be distributed through the App Store, you may have some success looking at "tethering" applications and their source code, which can be found by some clever Googling.

Any iPhone SDK API available to promote 3G/GPRS over WiFi in an iPhone application

I have a requirement to promote 3G/GPRS over WiFi connectivity in the iPhone application I am developing. Please let me know if this is possible and if yes, how?
The problem is when I have a WiFi network which is available and connected but not logged in using Captive Portal, I cannot use that WiFi network to perform the tasks which require internet connection. What i have noticed is Reachability API detects the available WiFi but I cannot use it as I am not logged in and so I am not connected to internet using this WiFi hotspot until I login. So I want to use 3G/GPRS to perform the tasks requiring internet connectivity.
iPhone's default behavior is it uses WiFi when its available and if not then only 3G/GPRS.
So please let me know if both 3G/GPRS and WiFi are available but I am connected to internet not using WiFi but 3G/GPRS how to use 3G/GRPS to perform the tasks requiring internet connectivity.
Regards,
Third-party applications don't get control of where their data comes from. About all you're going to be able to do is ask your users to turn wifi off while your application does its thing. If you need to get back onto wifi after doing the initial data transfer, you could make some clever use of the iOS 4 multitasking and local-notification APIs: when your application enters the background, it could start a background-task handler (using -beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler: in your app delegate's -applicationDidEnterBackground:) to wait for the wifi connection to become unavailable, do its thing with the cell network, then create a UILocalNotification to tell the user it's okay to turn wifi back on again. That way, the user could get the benefits of whatever your app does and still keep the connection they started out on.
If you are creating an app which needs to access certain network resource(s) to function, then you should just ping, or try to connect to those resources directly instead of just depending on reachability for the decision. If you can't ping your server, then have the app do the same thing it would if reachability reported zero connectivity (even though it may not be).
For security reasons, Apple doesn't allow developer to do such settings pro grammatically, despite you GPRS network connection to achieve some purposes.

Iphone SDK Sending Data using Carrier Data Network?

Could someone suggest a tutorial/sample on how an Iphone application can send data to a remote server using Carrier Data Network only? In other words is there a way an application can programmatically force to enable Carrier Data Network communication, use it to send its request to the remote server and switch it back to user specific communication settings.
I am taking this approach because my application needs to send user's personal info to my server and sending it over public WiFi does not sound right. Please let me know if there is better approach to it....
Thanks
Since no one's writing a full answer ...
I don't know if it's possible to detect CDN vs Wi-Fi, although at some level it must be because the App Store is capable of determining such to prevent large CDN downloads. Of course, the App Store app has access to the private APIs; this functionality may not be exposed publicly. (I don't know if that is the case or not, but be sure you do not use private APIs for your app; the store won't accept it.)
That said, think about the use case of your app, and the marketplace. The iPhone OS and the iPhone App Store are more than just the phones themselves -- they're the iPhone and iPod Touch devices. iPod Touches do not have a CDN; they're Wi-Fi only for connectivity.
As Marc W said in a comment, not all Wi-Fi is public, not all public Wi-Fi is free, and you will likely upset a significant portion of your audience -- people (presumably and hopefully) giving you money.
A better solution would be to use SSL to provide encryption of the private data during transport. This is widely available, works over CDN or Wi-Fi, and provides all the security you should need.
If you look at the Apple Reachability example code, you can test for how you would access a host - however I agree with the other posters that you should consider encrypting your data and let your user's determine how they want to connect to the Internet, and not force one form of connection.
-t