Re: Multipeer connectivity with arbitrary devices?
Re: Multipeer connectivity with arbitrary devices?
- Subject: Re: Multipeer connectivity with arbitrary devices?
- From: Rick Mann <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 14:13:53 -0700
On Jun 5, 2014, at 14:08 , Jens Alfke <email@hidden> wrote:
> I don’t think that’s going to happen. I asked a lot about cross-platform support, or at least documenting the protocols, and it sounds like it just ain’t going to happen, for a combination of technical and political reasons. Reading between the lines, I think that there are highly-placed people at Apple who believe these technologies are competitive advantages and don’t want to see them adopted on other platforms like Android. That’s 1990s-Apple thinking at its worst. :(
The platform-advantage aspects can be solved by requiring an MFi auth co-proc in the accessory.
> Actually, to be precise there are at least four layers of stuff involved —
>
> 1. P2P WiFi without a base station. Totally Apple-proprietary. There’s an open equivalent called “WiFi Direct” but Apple’s not supporting it.
Too bad. Apple should support the open standard. Again, safe to do with the auth co-proc (or equivalent OS-embedded capability).
> 2. Routing over P2P WiFi or Bluetooth or regular WiFi as appropriate. I don’t think there’s any rocket science here. Apparently there’s a standard protocol for IPv6-through-Bluetooth tunneling.
BT is a non-starter for us. Just too slow.
> 3. Bonjour. This is and has always been open, and there are compatible libraries for other platforms, like Avahi.
Also probably not necessary for P2P. Bonjour only works over an already-established network.
> 4. MultiPeer Connectivity. The discovery part is simply based on Bonjour, but the TCP connections use an Apple proprietary protocol that’s not going to be opened up. I’ll bet it wouldn’t be terribly hard to reverse engineer, but I don’t know of anyone who’s tried.
I don't know anything about this part.
Apple could go part of the way to allowing us to vastly improve our user experience by allowing our app to get and set the iOS device's WiFi settings. They could do this with a permission scheme like is used for location or microphone or photos, etc.
--
Rick
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