Faster mobile data on your iPhone - Onavo beta open to Geekzone users

Forums › Apple iOS and devices › Faster mobile data on your iPhone - Onavo beta open to Geekzone users

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LennonNZ

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#440761 17-Feb-2011 15:21

freitasm: Since I don't have an iPhone, and I don't know the background on Onavo, could someone enlighten me...

- Is the software setting up a proxy on your handset?
- Is the proxy doing what ByteMobile carrier hosted software used to do (for example the APN optimised.vodafone.co.nz) or more than that?
- Is any authentication required?

- it simply uses a mobileconfig file (same method as www.unlockit.co.nz and sets a proxy on the APN so all data goes via the proxy (www.iphone-vodafone.net.nz APN)
- no authentication at all is used to the proxy!!!!!!!
- If you can find out what the proxy is (very easy) you can just set it on your desktop computer and proxy everything thru it (tested and works)

The system can be easily replicated by via installing squid on a local NZ box.. setting a proxy the same way and actually using some authentication!!. then running some program on squid to optimise the images.

A VERY similiar system was used on the http://www.iph.net.nz/ (Iphones). THere was some software running which did optimising of the images (reduced images to B&W and size) and text compression etc and then sent to the screen on the phone.

Thanks
Craig

SteveON

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#440767 17-Feb-2011 15:26

simple solution... reduce the costs of mobile data...

nzbullet

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#440768 17-Feb-2011 15:28

freitasm: Since I don't have an iPhone, and I don't know the background on Onavo, could someone enlighten me...

- Is the software setting up a proxy on your handset?
- Is the proxy doing what ByteMobile carrier hosted software used to do (for example the APN optimised.vodafone.co.nz) or more than that?
- Is any authentication required?

Apparently Onavo "acts as a proxy server for your iPhone".

You install a provisioning profile which includes your standard APN (so for XT it's just internet.telecom.co.nz), a webclip which takes you to the 'Onavo app' (for your settings and to switch it on and off) and a signing certificate.

As you can't see the settings for the proxy I assume it does set one via this config file and I assume it works based on monitoring what you send and receive via your APN and then when you request a page or email it intercepts it and retrieves it via the proxy server. According to the notes it is always running in the background, even if you haven't 'started a trip' and instead of shrinking the date it just reports on what you have done and what you might have saved.

The only authentication happens when you install the provisioning profile (which is a signed one) by way of asking if you are sure you want to install it. But there is no further authentication from the user.

Cheers
nzbullet
Note: My thoughts and comments are my own and not of anyone else including my employer

freitasm

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#440771 17-Feb-2011 15:33

See LennonNZ reply above yours...

LennonNZ

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#440773 17-Feb-2011 15:35

Signing a mobileconfig profile doesn't really prove anything. It just makes it look official only. The SSL Cert I use cost me like $30 I think for 2 years and I could have made it say anything like saying it was from Biddle Corporation.

And then the iPhone trusts this and displays it :-)

Thanks

freitasm

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#440775 17-Feb-2011 15:38

nzbullet: The only authentication happens when you install the provisioning profile (which is a signed one) by way of asking if you are sure you want to install it. But there is no further authentication from the user.

This is not "authentication" but "certification". I was wondering (and LennonNZ responded already) about individual user authentication when accessing the proxy. If there's none then that proxy could easily be used from desktops, etc...

LennonNZ

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#440776 17-Feb-2011 15:38

I presume how it works.. if you click on start trip from the web browser and it records your IP Address and then looks in its own cache logs how much it is saving you.

There is NO way a webapp (or even a native iphone app) on an iPhone can talk to the iPhone and see how much data is coming via the Phone. The only way is doing it on the other end (the proxy)

So what happens when your ip address changes between the start and stop times? it can't count it correctly.

Thanks

Quic Broadband

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dvirreznik

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#440982 18-Feb-2011 04:51

All,
Thank you for the open discussion - we appreciate your feedback.

Now, as to your comments, will try to consolidate them into subjects and address them one at a time.

Performance
Our service is designed to shrink the amount of data your iPhone uses so that you pay less, particularly when taking it abroad and paying absurd data roaming rates. As a side-effect this may or may not improve the performance of your data connection. We are currently in a beta phase, and our servers are deployed in data centers run by Amazon Web Services (yeah, the same guys who sell books!) in North America. Our plan is to expand to other regions, including Europe and SE Asia. From our experience with other users in NZ so far, we haven't noticed any significant delays in response times. Would love to hear what you guys think. We’ll also be updating the app over the next week to let you more easily disable/enable the proxy, so please stay tuned!

Privacy
First of all, our users' privacy is our #1 priority for us, we have kept it in mind from design to implementation. The full privacy policy legalese is here - http://www.onavo.com/privacy_policy - but here are the highlights: although traffic is routed through our servers in order to be compressed, personally-identifiable information is not retained or stored in any way. We only give you aggregate statistics so that you can see how much data you’ve been saving. In addition, encrypted traffic passing through our servers is routed to its destination as is, without being processed, retained or stored. If you’d like to take advantage of our super-efficient Exchange email compression a certificate popup will ask you to approve that our servers access this data. If you are uncomfortable with this that’s OK, feel free to turn off the Mail add-on from the Settings button in the app.

Authentication
As LennonNZ noticed we don’t use a password to authenticate your connection to our servers (mostly because the iPhone can’t do that), so we employ a number of systems on our backend to prevent abuse. We’d love to tell you more but you understand that we can’t go into the details of how this works.

Carriers
Following your feedback yesterday, we have added support to 3 additional Kiwi carriers, and are now available for: Vodafone, XT, 2degrees, and TelstraClear.

We are excited to have you on board as beta users, looking forward to hearing your ideas, thoughts and feedback - towards making Onavo a better service. If you have any questions please feel free to write to us at: info at onavo.com.

Dvir.

Dvir Reznik
@onavo

ekud

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#441318 18-Feb-2011 21:07

How do we remove the app?

Sign here

LennonNZ

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#441380 19-Feb-2011 00:38

Go into Settings, General, Profiles and remove the profile. You may have to put in your APN Settings again if you are not with Vodafone.

You may have to remove the weblink as well (remove like a normal app)

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