In short i'm trying to build an App that will grant/block wifi access to my son's wifi for his Ipad and his PS4 remotely using an App. I researched the topic and can't figure out how this can be done. Ideally i'd like to be able to grant/block wifi access independently Ie. block wifi to the Ipad and allow PS4.
How can this be done, no need for the full code ( well if you insist i'll take it ) but just point me in the right direction.
Depending on the router you're using you're going to need to write something that interacts with the router's API, if it has one. If it doesn't, you will need to replace the firmware on your router with something like ddwrt that can be scripted. From there, you might be able to create an app that talks to the router's API.
TLDR: You're probably better off simply bookmarking the management page for the router and enabling/disabling access for the devices.
Edit:
It occurred to me that some mainstream consumer router/access point manufacturers (Linksys, Asus, etc) have companion apps for managing their devices from the LAN side. You should see if such an app exists for your router, and if not, perhaps consider getting a different router that supports such an app.
Related
I am working on a NetworkExtension which uses the NEPacketTunnelProvider to provide VPN-like tunnel so I can modify the traffic.
This works great for basically all the apps I tried so far, but Facebook Messenger seems to be able to ignore it. I first see that the traffic goes through the tunnel, should be blocked (for testing), but then the messages are successfully sent anyway.
To me this suggests that Messenger first goes through the tunnel and when that does not work, it has some kind of fallback. This happens whether I am on Wifi or cellular data. At first I thought that it may somehow fallback to cellular when WiFi does not work, but even when I disable cellular on the iOS level, Messenger still works when the tunnel is active.
I tried getting all the system routes (meaning the IPs and masks) and manually setting them to includedRoutes on the NEIPv4Settings but this has no effect.
Does this look like the Messenger is indeed bypassing the VPN tunnel? Or maybe something else is at play?
So far I have tried basically all configuration combinations and nothing seems to affect Messenger in any way. Apps like Signal, Instagram, YouTube and other can be successfully cut off the network with the tunnel.
EDIT: Found this on the official Apple forums: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/122330
Actually Facebook Messanger sends traffic to all active interfaces in iOS. It even sends tarffic out trough Cellular, when mobile data is disabled from settings.
EDIT 2: I tried the new iOS 14 configuration option includeAllNetworks which seems to work for Messenger but somehow messes up other apps like Signal or WhatsApp.
When I don't have this flag on, Signal work with my VPN on and I can see its traffic, but when I enable this flag Signal does not send messages nor receives them.
Apps can use low level API and force traffic via some interface (using bind for example), and go outside your VPN.
The way to enforce using the VPN is to enable the flag includeAllNetworks on your VPN configuration -
manager.protocolConfiguration!.includeAllNetworks = true
I have couple of URLs that has to be called(programatically) through wifi not with mobile data.
As WIFI ASSIST is on , whenever the wifi is weak ,packets get transferred through Mobile data.
I would like to stop this from happening.
As far as I have researched, there is no API to toggle wifi assist switch on and off programatically
I can find if the user has mobile data and wifi on with the help of Reachability Class I believe and I can alert the user to keep wifi assist off but this is a very bad user experience.
so I decided to look if its possible to be done with the help of iOS mobile configuration file.
But I couldn't find any keys related with wifi-assist in Apple configuration profile reference.
so I am wondering , is it possible to force wifi to be used for certain URLs.
I remember this is possible with VPN ON DEMAND we can have certain domains to be accessed via VPN.
I am wondering if same is possible for wifi as well through configuration profile
Any suggestions are welcome.
As others have mentioned, there is no way to do manipulate this setting programmatically in iOS. This is not really what you are asking, as you seem to already know the answer to this is "No".
You are asking about the configuration profile, so I am assuming these are managed devices. Unfortunately, there is no configuration profile payload I am aware of that forces the managed devices to disable Wi-Fi Assist.
Your intent, however, is a bit different than what is being asked, I believe. I think you basically have an app that communicates with a resource that is only accessible via the Wi-Fi network (likely a corporate Wi-Fi network). If the app tries to connect to the resource while on cellular, it will not be able to connect. In some cases, when the Wi-Fi signal is weak, the device tries to be helpful and switches to cellular, causing issues with the app. If we could figure out a way to force iOS to not take advantage of Wi-Fi Assist when your app is running, you would be in good shape.
If you can install this app as a managed app, there is a way to identify that the app should only be allowed to run on a Wi-Fi connection. Setting the network usage rules AllowCellularData to false should do this (see this for more details). The thing I am not sure of with this solution, is whether this simply causes the connections to fail when Wi-Fi Assist is on and active, or if it makes iOS prefer to not use Wi-Fi assist when the app is running because it cannot connect over cellular. So I think you can tell an app to only connect over WiFi, but it doesn't really give you a better solution to your user experience problem. The only think it really buys you is that your app connection won't ever try to connect when connected to cellular. There is a chance, however, if you change this value to false for your app bundle ID, it will prevent Wi-Fi Assist from enabling when your app is running. I don't have access to MDM to try it out, but you could test and see.
Ultimately, given that this is probably a corporate device situation, I think you are going to have to address this through user training. The good news is that this is a one-time step. Sure, users may have slight degradation of network performance when Wi-Fi signal is weak but cell signal is strong. This does not matter as much if these are corporate devices where the corporate apps will mostly work only on the company's Wi-Fi network.
Another solution is what you mentioned, basically using on-demand VPN to provide a connection to the internal resources. This is additional infrastructure work, and you already mentioned it, so I'm not sure if it is even an option.
Obviously, the other solution would be to expose the network resources through your firewall, which could allow you to access it over cellular. I'm suspecting this is not possible due to security constraints.
Unfortunately, there are not a lot of good options in this space. However, have hope that there is some way to do it, as Sonos appears to have done something to
allow their app to avoid switching to WiFi Assist while streaming to a local network resource: https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4257/~/wi-fi-assist-and-sonos
I wonder if you could have your app open a streaming audio connection to a fixed local network resource, which would cause it to use Wi-Fi. It's a pretty crazy hack, but with a low enough bitrate audio file streaming, it might do what you need while not eating up too much of the network throughput.
Per Apple's notes on Wi-Fi Assist:
Wi-Fi Assist won't automatically switch to cellular if you're data
roaming.
Wi-Fi Assist only works when you have apps running in the
foreground and doesn't activate with background downloading of
content.
Wi-Fi Assist doesn’t activate with some third-party apps
that stream audio or video, or download attachments, like an email
app, as they might use large amounts of data.
Of course the other possible solution that you could consider is improving your Wi-Fi coverage to that the signal doesn't get bad enough for Wi-Fi Assist to be needed. I know this may not be feasible, but wanted to put it out there.
Good luck with this!
There is no public API that allows you to enable/disable "Wi-Fi Assist", and even if you find a way to do it your app will be rejected.
No you can not enable or disable WiFi by programmatically and there is no API for this.
Apologies in advance for the general-ness of the question.
I'm writing a multiple client iOS app for viewing the video feed from a single camera. Can the QX10 api support two (or 3) iPad's discovering/viewing the same QX10 at the same time?
I've been looking QX10 sample code, the camera api docs, StackOverflow, and of course the dev website and haven't seen an answer. I'd just buy the bloody thing to test with, but there are none nearby and I was hoping to avoid having to mail order/return it if it didn't work.
....And we're not locked into HW. If there's a better option, I'm open....
I don't believe it does. For ios, the camera creates a network that the ios connects to. (In ios settings/wireless) Any further attempts to connect to the camera from another device fail. Since the API only works after a network connection is established, I don't see how the API could possibly allow 2 devices could connect at once.
(No extraneous words in this post b/c that will get edited which auto down votes the question.....ahhh internet)
I did not try it, but you could use a computer with nat. For example an openrwt router to open up multiple wifi interfaces, one to connect to the camera, using the 10.0.0.0 network the camera uses and then an other network to connect your clients with NAT.
The question would be when the API would start to get confused.
So depending on what you want, maybe some mapper on that helper-computer could
do some proxying of information.
So in theory with an external box, maybe, but as Oldmicah said, it seems that only
one device can connect at the time (at least my QX100 also behaves like that). :(
I have a situation where I would like to communicate between 2-4 devices over the 3G network (it should also work over WLAN, but 3G solution is critical).
Every device (except one) asks for a GPS-location every ~5 seconds, but when this process is cancelled by the user of that device, one device needs to be informed of this event.
I was thinking that one device could act as a server, and the rest as clients that should connect to the server. Is this possible over the 3G network?
I've also read about push-notifications, is this relevant here? Can you receive notifications without disturbing the user with a popups etc?
Are there other ways?
Basically I would like to use apple "standard" solutions (if there are any) before diving into eventual socket-programming or anything similar...
What I would like to avoid is to have a webserver or some similar "3rd-party" solution, because I don't want many users to simultaniously connect and "pull" from the same external server in a final solution...
UPDATE:
Basically my application will have thousands of users that will need to be informed if an even occurs. Also this happens simultanously ~5 second, what would be the best solution to reduce load and avoid spamming?
I was thinking that one device could act as a server, and the rest as
clients that should connect to the server. Is this possible over the
3G network?
It could work, but having a dedicated server would be a better choice
I've also read about push-notifications, is this relevant here? Can
you receive notifications without disturbing the user with a popups
etc?
In your case no, since you will need a server to communicate with apple
Basically I would like to use apple "standard" solutions (if there are
any) before diving into eventual socket-programming or anything
similar...
There are no standard solution, other than you should probably rethink about using a dedicated remote server for this
iPhones can't communicate directly with each other using 3G. You can access the internet through the 3G, but you can't do peer-to-peer as you are suggesting. If you were close enough, you could use bluetooth, but I expect you are too far away.
You would have no way of detecting the one device that acts as a server from the other devices. The IP address could (and probably would) change every time the device connects to a mobile data network. You would need a central server to co-ordinate all of the clients.
You have multiple questions, but I'll try to address as many of them as I can:
I was thinking that one device could act as a server, and the rest as
clients that should connect to the server. Is this possible over the
3G network?
No, you cannot run a server on a iPhone/iPad that is accessible over 3G without an external website acting as an intermediary. (You can run one that is accessible over Wi-Fi, but this does not solve your problem as stated.)
I've also read about push-notifications, is this relevant here? Can
you receive notifications without disturbing the user with a popups
etc?
Push requires you (or a third party contracted by you) to have a web server, so if you want a server-free solution it is not relevant here.
Are there other ways?
Over 3G you will, under the current Apple restrictions, always need an external server.
Basically I would like to use apple "standard" solutions (if there are any) before diving into eventual socket-programming or anything similar...
Diving won't help you here. Even using low-level socket programming you will not be able to run a server on an iPhone accessible over 3G without an external website to aid in establishing a connection.
You can try using GameCenter. The mechanism of network games in Game Center allows connect up to four players with no third-party solutions.
I want to get to know how I can transfer data easily between 2 iPhones, over wifi. I would like to know if I could do that without having a server or database, but within an app (so without using email).
Game Kit has support for Peer-to-Peer-Connectivity and is, despite the name, not only usable for games:
The GKSession class allows your application to create and manage an
ad-hoc Bluetooth or local wireless network, as shown in Figure 1.
Copies of your application running on multiple devices can discover
each other and exchange information, providing a simple and powerful
way to create multiplayer games on iOS. Further, sessions offer all
applications an exciting mechanism to allow users to collaborate with
each other.
You can also check out Bonjour API from Apple. I am not sure if you need a static IP for it to work or it can just work over wifi. Just trying to give a pointer.
Based on your exact usecase, it can work well.
Check it out here, Game center is also there.
http://developer.apple.com/technologies/ios/networking.html