HTTP Streaming Problems over M1 3G/GPRS Network
Recently, I have upgraded my SIM cards from the 2G ones to the latest 3G SIMs. I have noticed that under the 3G SIMs, all the WAP pages when viewed on my phones (Nokia N82 and 6230) will include a set of “navigation toolbars” at the top and bottom of the WAP pages. I believe this is an extra feature on the WAP gateway which has intercepted the HTTP traffic to provide some ease of navigation functions for web pages on M1’s subscriber phones.
This feature somehow causes me a big headache when I’m coding a MIDlet to receive data updates through HTTP streaming. The remote server is a Meteord service which “pushes” data updates asynchronously to all the remote receivers via HTTP connections; this technique is collectively known as comet now. I already have coded an existing AJAX client for the PC browsers which works without much hassle. However, for the MIDlet, M1’s interception of the HTTP traffic causes the streaming to fail since the gateway needs to wait for the complete HTTP contents to be sent over in order to do its magical “toolbars” insertion.
Below are my attempts to resolve this issue:
- Using another port other than port 80
Doesn’t work. The gateway seems to be a layer 7 application-proxy firewall which can operate on your traffic contents. Most probably, it recognizes that the traffic is of HTTP request/response nature and intercepts it. - Using HTTP/SSL (port 443)
Unknown. My MIDlet refuses to communicate over HTTPS with server using self-signed certificates. Using a free 90-days SSL certificate from comodo does not work as well. The phone’s JVM didn’t recognize the certificate authority signing the free certificate.
I will continue to pursue the HTTP/SSL solution by trying to get certificate recognized as valid by the phone JVM, or paying some good $ for a proper SSL certificate.
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