[loswilloz]

Hello all,

Does anyone know of a Blackberry application which connects to the interent through direct TCP/IP. So, even when the Blackberry device is BIS/BES enabled, this application should ignore the BIS/BES internet gateway when connecting to the internet, instead use direct TCP/IP.

Hope someone can help me out here. Thanks in advance

[Ivanov]

not sure what you mean...
My application can connect either using BES or TCP/IP... There are many other applications that do it and use BIS-B as well. So what application do you mean?

If you mean browsing, use opera mini and select TCP/IP in its settings...

[simon.hain]

take a look at this video: dev media library

[loswilloz]

Thank you both for your answers.

Ivanov, I installed opera mini, and played around with the settings. The network protocol can be set to either 'socket' and 'http'. i do not see any forcing direct tcp/ip option, do you know of a version of opera mini that implemented this?

Thanks for your pointers so far, it really helps me out

[Dan East]

Sockets is another name for tcp/ip (or it could just be udp).

[loswilloz]

Thank you Dan for that info, I must say it confuses me.

I understood that to open a socket connection over direct TCP, you must append "deviceside=true" to the end of the URL, as well as specify the APN info. So far I can still follow your statement.

But I also thought that it is possible to open a socket connection via MDS, by appending "deviceside=false" to the end of the URL.

Actually, I thought the above two ways would also hold true when replacing 'socket' with 'http'.

So if I am correct, then a socket connection does not equal a direct TCP\IP connection (since a direct TCP\IP connection can not connect to the internet via MDS, and a socket connection can in the mentioned special case).

I understand that this must be basic stuff for most of you out here, but the info on the internet and forums at least can seem contradictive for a noob at network connections as I am. Is there a very simple way to explain what is the right way to look at the terms 'socket', 'http' and 'direct tcp/ip', or does anyone know of an effective online document that explains this simply and clearly?

Thanks again...

[Dan East]

Originally Posted by loswilloz

Thank you Dan for that info, I must say it confuses me.

I understood that to open a socket connection over direct TCP, you must append "deviceside=true" to the end of the URL, as well as specify the APN info. So far I can still follow your statement.

But I also thought that it is possible to open a socket connection via MDS, by appending "deviceside=false" to the end of the URL.

Actually, I thought the above two ways would also hold true when replacing 'socket' with 'http'.

So if I am correct, then a socket connection does not equal a direct TCP\IP connection (since a direct TCP\IP connection can not connect to the internet via MDS, and a socket connection can in the mentioned special case).

I understand that this must be basic stuff for most of you out here, but the info on the internet and forums at least can seem contradictive for a noob at network connections as I am. Is there a very simple way to explain what is the right way to look at the terms 'socket', 'http' and 'direct tcp/ip', or does anyone know of an effective online document that explains this simply and clearly?

Thanks again...

I have no direct experience with this, but I think I can explain the difference. Socket and TCP/IP are basically synonymous (at least in this case). HTTP is a higher level protocol that runs on top of TCP/IP (using socket port 80). HTTP is used to POST and GET data from websites.

Now, the Blackberry normally uses Mobile Data Service, which is basically a proxy server (it also converts HTML into a simplified format that the Blackberry browser can render very quickly). A proxy server is something between you and the end server you are trying to connect to. So the Blackberry establishes a TCP/IP connection to the proxy server (MDS) which then opens up a TCP/IP connection with the server you want. It then relays the data back and forth to your phone. When deviceside=true is specified your BB will open the TCP/IP connection directly to the end server, bypassing MDS. So it's all still TCP/IP, and if you are pulling up web pages, then it is specifically HTTP via TCP/IP. It's just a matter of whether or not your phone is connecting directly to the server on the internet or not.

[Dan East]

On another note. Opera Mini always uses yet another proprietary proxy server (having nothing to do with RIM / Blackberry at all), hosted by Opera. It is the same scheme as the Blackberry browser - the proxy server loads the HTML, does the heavy processing required to parse it and strip it down to something manageable, and sends that pseudo-html-whatever-it-is proprietary data to Opera Mini, which can then render the simplified data very fast.

See this wikipedia article for more info

In fact, I don't know that Opera Mini can display a normal HTML web page at all unless it has been converted by their server first.

[loswilloz]

Thank you once again Dan for the clear description and links, it starts to make some sense now.