I have developed an application for iPhone, which is continuously interacting with database ... I have observed that it is running fine in 3G environment but in wifi its performance is not good.
Can someone suggest what can be the reason for it? or can I do anything to resolve it?
I'd rather expect the contrary, given that 3G cellular signal may fluctuate wildly, while WIFI signal should stay almost the same even if you move within the room served by the access point.
The reason may be the particular wireless connection you are using for testing purposes. Try using a different WIFI network and see if the behavior you are experiencing changes.
Related
I am developing an app that needs to be debugged under a slow connection. My issue is that I only own an iPhone 5 that uses LTE. I can disable LTE in my Settings for a 4G connection but this 4G connection is still to fast for my testing purposes. I would like to know if there is a way to programmatically force the testing iPhone into 3G or EDGE.
You'll want to test flaky in addition to just going slow - you can simulate this with apple's network link conditioner and running your iPhone through your mac's internet connection (or run simulator). See Installing Apple's Network Link Conditioner Tool .
If you really want some good testing, the best way to do it is look up your cell provider's coverage map and find some crappy locations. Test in those areas while driving in and out of range should weed out any broken network code you have. :)
Network Link Conditioner also exists on the device in recent iOS builds, i'm not positive of when they added it.
But its present in Settings, under the Developer menu.
I can disable LTE in my Settings for a 4G connection but this 4G connection is still to fast for my testing purposes
LTE is (a kind of) 4G.
If you disable it, it will fall back to EDGE. Alternatively, you may switch to a Wi-Fi connection and slow it down (if your router has such a feature).
I am new to iPhone/iPad development and I am close to finishing up my first app and I am looking for some general advice.
I know it is important to test on actual devices and not just the simulator. What are the types of things people generally encounter when testing on a deal device that they don't see in the simulator?
The app itself is mainly a way to track online deals and that type of thing. It doesn't need anything special in term of using things like the camera or GPS.
It's just general usage testing. The device performs in an entirely different environment than your computer, and it's the best way to make sure if you push your app out to devices, that nothing unexpected will happen. For example, the phone/pad may have limited data coverage, low memory situations, incoming calls etc.. These situations are a lot more common on devices, then when people emulate it though the simulator.
On a hardware point of view, the device uses a different processor architecture than your Mac, which also needs to be accounted for (not as much as other cases, but you need to cover your bases). The Mac also cannot reliably emulate RAM, Disc Space, Processor Speed etc...hence testing on the device is useful here also.
Obviously there are some features you can only test on devices, such as Camera, GPS (and not so obviously iPod library usage), and if your app uses them it'd be careless not to test on a device.
Overall if you're intending to release your application to the App Store, or to devices at least, it's worth testing on the device itself. Only then can you be sure that it will act and perform as expected on the platform you intend to target. The simulator is only a simulator after all, not the real thing!
First of all: the user experience is very different.
The mouse based interaction is very different from a touch interaction. focusing at a monitor feels very different then looking on a device on the palm of your hand.
Also the experience of animations running on the simulator and the real device can be very different.
And the usage in the simulator won't tell you anything about the battery consumptions to be witnessed on the real device.
My opinion: every app that will be shipped to the App Store or customer for testing should be tested several different real devices. No excuses.
Simulator runs a lot slower than the real device.
Real device could run out of memory when Simulator doesn't or vice versa.
In app purchases, if you have included them
Orientations (not that
they are unavailable on simulator, but it is easy to forget it
there!)
App life cycle testing - bringing your app to foreground and
background.
Network access - can matter when you access the network from device through wireless or cellular network vs LAN/wifi on your mac. There is a huge testing to be done under the umbrella called Reachability if your app uses any of the resources across the net. You are bound to provide an alert if network is unreachable before using any such resources, as per app store requirements.
There are free projects/examples of wol (wake on LAN) for iOS?
I've found this one [openwol][1] but it's old and has no signs of recents updates.
Also I've been digging on it and it's not working as expected, the main purpose of it is wake a computer but it's not working. I've spent some time on it and still no work.
Maybe there are other examples or someone else may join on me and solve/update this code to work?
Wake-on-LAN generally doesn't work for machines on wireless networks, as the wireless hardware is typically powered down when the machine is off or asleep -- it's usually only supported for wired Ethernet. As such, wake-on-LAN is unlikely to give acceptable results on an iOS device, as it'll only work for some specific network configurations (i.e, networks where the wireless segment is bridged to a wired segment that the target system is connected to).
We are in the process of developing an method of caching so that our app can continue to operate in an area with very little/no signal.
Obviously users will try to continue to use functions that require data and we need to handle the inevitable failure of these requests appropriately.
Essentially we are sat in the office, switching airplane mode on and off to simulate entering/exiting signal then adjusting our app to fix any issues this may arise.
What I'd like to know is, is using airplane mode going to give us a reasonable simulation of entering/exiting an area with no data or are there other implications?
I've seen questions raising the issue that the 3G/EDGE connection may not always wake up after airplane mode is switched on - while I appreciate this method is no way as good as actually being out in the field testing, if we can get a reasonable simulation and account for the majority of the problems that arise then I think this is an acceptable tradeoff.
I apologise if this has been asked before, I did do a search on here & on google but couldn't find any appropriate results.
You should try the Network Link Conditioner
There is a WWDC 2012 session called Networking Best Practices that mentions it (but he does not explain how to use it there).
To get it, you have to go to XCode/Open Developer Tool/More Developer Tools.. and download the latest Hardware IO Tools for XCode.
Once you install it from the IO Tools pkg, "Network Link Conditioner" will appear in System Preferences
You can then do something like 100% packet loss to simulate one of those routers that pretends you are connected but actually doesn't work.
On iOS, the network link conditioner is under Settings / Developer (you must have enabled Developer mode in XCode first to see it)
The main problem is that in the Airplane Mode the networking operations fail fast, while spotty mobile signal will lead to timeouts and a-few-bytes-an-hour speeds. This is usually a significant difference from the UI viewpoint. (It might be worth a try to use some bandwidth throttle to starve the testing machine and see how it behaves when the network starts to break?)
A few years back, when testing remote devices which used the cell network to communicate with the 'home base', we did things like move them into a shielded room (make shift), place large shields on three of four sides to force them to connect to a certain tower (and therefore, network), etc. Brute force physical methods. Since this actually cuts off the signal, it may be a more realistic approach.
You may also want to try this through your wlan-router. First, disable data roaming on your iPhone. Then, let the iPhone be connected to the internet through your wlan network. Then, disconnect the gateway on your wlan router while your iPhone is still connected to the wlan network.
This depends on what failure modes you are trying to test.
I use Airplane mode as a first pass check to make sure an app submission isn't quickly rejected.
Other network failure handling checks might include:
3G only (no wifi).
WIFI only (in Airplane mode).
Pulling the power cord on the WIFI access point.
Pulling the network cable from the back of the WIFI access point after connecting to it (Reachability may falsely say yes).
Walking in and out of a basement
elevator (or other Faraday cage) in the middle of a transfer.
Driving between 2 cell towers during a data transfer.
Walking between 2 enabled WIFI access points between connection and data transfer.
Starting the app after more than 30 minutes of device inactivity (radios may be idle).
Running the app while another app (Safari, Mail) is downloading in the background.
etc.
I was wondering what amount of time is required to convey information regarding the tilt and position (not gps) of one particular iphone to another. Could 2 iphones send and receive this information simultaneously? What about 3 iphones? I'm interested in an application that is able to simultaneously send and receive and make conditional decisions based on this information received all within a half a second-ish.
Any shot this is possible? If so, is bluetooth or wifi better?
Thanks a ton,
Jake
This is currently not possible without an intermediate server. (Without a jailbreak, which would make it possible, but extremely difficult)
I'm assuming your purpose is gaming, in which case, the latency associated with a trip to a server and back over a cellular data network, is likely to take too long for any satisfactory gaming experience. I don't believe it would be within half a second.
This will be possible via Bluetooth in the upcoming 3.0 iPhone software, but that is still under NDA, so you are not likely to be able to get any reliable performance numbers until it is released. If I were guessing, I would certainly guess that the latency associated with a direct Bluetooth connection would be FAR under half a second.
All you've got as an option right now is Wi-Fi or the Cell Network. If you use Bonjour over Wi-Fi, you'd have latencies in the milliseconds, but all the phones would have to be connected to the same access point. Take a look at the WiTap example.
It is definitely possible, you'd want to connect your peers over WiFi for best performance and reliability, but Bluetooth would be ok as long as your data packets were constrained to small sizes (< 1k). Check out this documentation and sample code to see how to access UIAccelerometer:
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIAccelerometer_Class/Reference/UIAccelerometer.html
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/samplecode/AccelerometerGraph/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40007410
The trick is that the update frequency is controlled in part by the systems needs, so there may be a window (while the system is attempting to update device orientation) wherein your application receives no updates.