Does Apple allow the use sockets (TCP or UDP) in iOS apps and allow them on the AppStore?
If yes, please provide the official confirmation from Apple or some apps examples.
Yes. Start with this landing page for iOS Networking topics. If you want to use UDP/TCP look at the CFNetwork Programming Guide; in particular streams.
Typically you would integrate bonjour in to your application so that you have the information needed to establish TCP/UDP communication via streams (BSD sockets):
Bonjour is the powerful zero configuration protocol from Apple that makes it easy to find systems and services on a local network automatically. Many services and applications on Mac OS X that have networking capabilities use Bonjour, from printer discovery, to chatting in iChat, to music sharing in iTunes. Bonjour includes a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use, programming interface that is accessible from Cocoa Touch or low-level C language.
Related
I have WebRTC framework for my iOS app.
But Apple iTune app store review team, rejected my app (even though it was working in my local hardware's, cost me 6 months of work). After waiting so long, they rejected, because its IPv4, has to be IPv6?
I cant simply change the whole WebRTC Framework that i have used in my app.
My target clients are only IPv4 (not IPv6, i am not even interested to use IPv6), is there no way to solve it? I am using this framework: https://cocoapods.org/pods/libjingle_peerconnection
Any advise/suggestion, has anyone tried the libjingle_peerconnection library to make compatible for IPv6?
EDIT: at 3.56AM
You need to add more details in your question to get an appropriate and correct answer.
My reason for putting an answer is not to answer your question as we need further information. My goal to answer is to make everyone aware how IPv6 functionality can be enabled when developing an Webrtc app.
Server side
Generally speaking primarily there are two main backend components the Webrtc clients connect to:
Signaling server : This is used to carry signaling information such as your sdp between Webrtc endpoints. Can be implemented using web sockets or http or other mechanisms
Stun and a relay/turn server: for obvious Udp hole punching through NAT traversal and if p2p not possible, to act as a relay between endpoints.
For IPv6 both of these servers should support IPv6 connections to it.
Client side
When apple tests IPv6, it must be disabling IPv4 network interface so that the iOS networking stack is forced to use IPv6. Hence you need to enable Webrtc stack to use IPv6 interface. This can be done by adding the constraint googIPv6 : true in the createpeerconnection constraints.
Other than this if you are using any other app servers in your code, you will have to make sure they accept v6 connections.
I am working on data share over same wifi two/more iOS devices.I have successfully implemented it using multipeer networking and explored it from videos documents.I am just looking on apple Dev for difference between Bonjour vs Multipeer Networking. Is there some one in group who have worked on both and can share me his experience with what to choose.
My requirement:
Connect two/more iOS device in Same Wifi Network
Automatic Discovering and Connectivity.
Data Size Can be 1 KB to 1 GB.(working on it with MC).
Resume data share when disconnect and connect(looking for it with MC).
Which is more reliable?
What will YOU choose?
I am also looking at GCDAsyncSocket(Don't know i m on right direction).
So please share your experience.
Thanks.
As per documentation says:
The Multipeer Connectivity Framework provides a layer on top of Bonjour that lets you communicate with apps running on nearby devices (over infrastructure Wi-Fi, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, and either Bluetooth (for iOS) or Ethernet (for OS X) without having to write lots of networking code specific to your app.
I created an iOS app in objective-c, and this app first browse the local networks.
After the app found a bonjour service I would like to read/write data to that computer.
I think I should use the CFNetwork framework but which part?
What is the simplies way to read/write data from a computer in the same network?
The Bonjour service's main function is to discover other Bonjour enabled device on LAN, it does nothing about read/write the data from a computer. To read/write the data on a computer, you will have to leverage some other network protocols, HTTP is one of them and commonly used.
Let's say you implement some API interface on HTTP, then you can use the Bonjour to locate the device and establish the communication. For example, if the computer's Bonjour name is mypc._tcp.local., then write data could be done with http://mypc._tcp.local./write/data (depends on your API implementation).
Apple documentation about Bonjour, Bonjour Overview
I want to make an app that interfaces with a sony radio that has an app to control the unit. It uses external accessory framework from iPhone so how can i get all the protocols from the radio or is there anyway to read the protocols coming from the sony app that would communicate with the radio. In short can i get the protocols from the sony radio using external accessory framework?
How does the device connect to the radio? 30 pin/lightning? Bluetooth? or WiFi?
Only the manufacturer who has entered into the MFI license agreement with Apple will have the details on how to interface with their device via cable or Bluetooth, so it is unlikely that you will be able to discover the protocols without some fairly low-level electronic monitoring of the signals.
If it is a WiFi connection then you may be able decode the protocol using Wireshark or similar.
You can use this app to get the supported protocols: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/EADemo/Introduction/Intro.html
But you won't be able to do much without reverse engineering the protocol.
I'm trying to find out what AWDL is. On iOS, if you use Apple's peer-to-peer networking over BlueTooth, it seems Apple creates a new Network Interface "awdl0" to implement (I guess) IP-over-BT.
But I can't find any docs on this tech, or this interface, how it behaves, things we must / must not do with it, etc. Google comes up blank :(.
In particular, I believe it means "established a BT connection, and I'm running an IP bridge over the top, and you can use this to communicate peer-to-peer". Apple's own system libraries have bugs where this bridge isn't setup quickly enough, and if you send data too soon, it appears to get dropped by the OS. So ... if I can query this awdl0, I hope to check "are you ready yet?" and delay P2P messages until the OS is happy.
UPDATE
More info: I can get pairs of iOS devices to create awdl0 connections to each other - but they never get created to OS X machines, whether BT and Bonjour are on or not, whether the devices are paired or not.
Some background:
In iOS5, Apple permanently disabled the Bluetooth parts of Bonjour/Peer-to-peer networking, and published a technote instructing everyone to use DNS-SD if they wanted to keep using Bluetooth as a transport between iOS devices. This is fine, but it means you must use DNS-SD if you want high-performance BT, and you want it reliable.
(GameKit sometimes works fine, but we often see terrible performance in real-world scenarios, e.g. crowded public places - which goes away if you use DNS-SD)
DNS-SD protocol doesn't include info to tell you what the hardware is using. But it does tell you the Network Interfaces (which is how I know we're running on awdl0)
DNS-SD is awesome, and we have high-speed, low latency connections peer-to-peer between iOS devices - all the stuff that GameKit promises but often fails to deliver whenever there's more than a few wifi/BT devices in range.
AWDL recently caught a lot of attention when it caused Wi-Fi issues in iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite devices.
What is AWDL?
AWDL (Apple Wireless Direct Link) is a low latency/high speed WiFi peer-to peer-connection Apple uses for everywhere you’d expect: AirDrop, GameKit (which also uses Bluetooth), AirPlay, and perhaps elsewhere. It works using its own dedicated network interface, typically “awdl0".
While some services, like Instant HotSpot, Bluetooth Tethering (of course), and GameKit advertise their services over Bluetooth SDP, Apple decided to advertise AirDrop over WiFi and inadvertently destroyed WiFi performance for millions of Yosemite and iOS 8 users.
How does AWDL work?
Since the iPhone 4, the iOS kernels have had multiple WiFi interfaces to 1 WiFi Broadcom hardware chip.
en0 — primary WiFi interface
ap1 — access point interface used for WiFi tethering
awdl0 — Apple Wireless Direct Link interface (since iOS 7?)
By having multiple interfaces, Apple is able to have your standard WiFi connection on en0, while still broadcasting, browsing, and resolving peer to peer connections on awdl0 (just not well).
You can find more info here and here.
I'd like to provide a more precise answer as to how the protocol works internally. I quote part of the abstract of this paper.
In short, each AWDL node announces a sequence of Availability Windows
(AWs) indicating its readiness to communicate with other AWDL nodes.
An elected master node synchronizes these sequences. Outside the AWs,
nodes can tune their Wi-Fi radio to a different channel to communicate
with an access point, or could turn it off to save energy.
From a user perspective, AWDL allows a device remain connected to an infrastructure-based Wi-Fi network and communicate with AWDL peers "at the same time" by quickly hopping between the channels of the two networks (AWDL uses fixed social channels 6, 44, and 149). In contrast to the previous answer, we found that current versions of AWDL work fairly well and channel hopping only induces a small overhead.
Disclaimer: I'm co-author of this paper and we retrieved this information by means of reverse engineering. If you are interested in the details, please read the paper and have a look at the Wireshark dissector (published soon).