Vodafone APNs and gzip compressed web pages?

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Tom_Rush

208 posts

Master Geek

Topic # 26172 14-Sep-2008 16:33

I'm looking at gzip compression through Vodafone New Zealand APNs.

In the past I used direct.vodafone.net.nz which _did_ pass compressed data to my phone.
This does not appear to be the case any more.
Vodafone suggests that direct.vodafone.net.nz is no longer a widely used APN.

In the past I did a test on compressed HTML web pages and found I could compress a page by 50% as seen on my Mobile phone..
The mobile phone would then decompress the zgip data and display the web page.

I verified this using the data counter on the mobile phone.

In testing today I have tried:

www.vodafone.com
www.vodafone.net.nz
Internet
direct.vodafone.net.nz
opt.vodafone.net.nz
web.vodafone.net.nz

I did ring Vodafone and they were very helpful and suggested Internet or web.vodafone.net.nz would be the APN I was looking for however it didn't work for me.
They'll also text me if they find another that could work.

I won't spell it out but there are advantages to having gzip compressed data sent directly to the mobile phone over 3G.

Now... considering all the above. I still have a nagging feeling I might have missed something and it could be a configuration error on my behalf.
If someone else uses compressed data direct to a mobile device via 3G/GSM I'd be interested to know if it's work for you and which Vodafone APN you're using.

Thank you for any info or help.

Vulpine Mobile
Mobile phone specifications, accessed from a mobile phone

johnr

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Reply # 164351 14-Sep-2008 16:38

Internet is the APN that is not optimized

slartibartfast

61 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 164392 14-Sep-2008 20:41

As long as you avoid the Optimiser, which does who knows what to gzipped traffic, no other component will really care about what you chuck down the pipe.

Indeed I suspect the Optimiser might actually gzip traffic that isn't gzipped if your handset indicates it can support it (If I were designing an "optimiser" then I'd do that as it seems like sensible optimisation).

So, I think something might be flawed in your testing as gzipping shouldn't vary.

Regarding APN's

The following do not get optimised:

internet
direct.vodafone.net.nz

The following only gets optimised if you're on 2G:

www.vodafone.net.nz
web.vodafone.net.nz (I think web is the same as www)
www.vodafone.com (does this exist? if it does it must resolve to www)

The following always get optimised:

opt.vodafone.net.nz

live.vodafone.com (this gets explicity proxied, so not necessarily optimised but could be altered unexpectedly)

sbiddle

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Reply # 164399 14-Sep-2008 21:16

Does Vodafone's optimiser software still exist/work? This was available a few years ago and used to connect to the proxy allowing you to configure the level of optimisation.

Tom_Rush

208 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 164413 14-Sep-2008 23:43

Compression works on browsers like IE, Opera, Firefox etc..

But I'll workshop it a bit and see what happens.
Odd that it did work on my mobile using direct.vodafone.net.nz a month ago and now it doesn't.

However I hear what you're saying and I'd say the same.. it's just odd.
Guess I could link my laptop via my mobile using one of the APN and thus verify it on a browser which has more diag. tools than a mobile browser.

Thanks for the replies.

Tom_Rush

208 posts

Master Geek

Reply # 164482 15-Sep-2008 11:42

Quick update.

I've created a whole sub-domain dedicated to compression.
This excludes any complications from other code.

Initially it appears that compression _DOES_ work through the Internet APN using a mobile phone with NetFront 3.3

I'm going to work through this whole compression thing and create a dynamic XHTML-MP web page that will display the findings on a mobile phone.

If I get it competed in time I'll update this post with the finding and a URL that will allow you to check if your mobile phone supports compression.

Vulpine Mobile
Mobile phone specifications, accessed from a mobile phone