Our Aileron email client (www.corsoft.net) uses iNetLib as the transport.
The IP modification for content-dev.palm.net on Wednesday caused
difficulties that you may be interested in.

(Note: we have, with Palm's permission, renamed iNetLib to AiComm and
distribute it with our email client. This allows any user to establish
wireless or wireline connections regardless of their palm device. Keep that
in mind for the following. That is, it works for everything that runs OS 3.2
or better. We have to do something else for all the 3.1, i.e. Visor,
folks...)

INetLib uses the following IP addresses for the proxy servers at palm.net
 Wireless (p7) 10.1.134.165
 Wireline    207.240.80.136
These are hard coded in the prc.

(Note - the wireline IP had the DNS of content-dev.palm.net and is the
address
the emulator of a palm 7 was intended to address. On the P7, there is a
wireless prefs panel to modify the IP, but no other model has this
capability.)

On Wednesday, Palm.net dropped the Wireline proxy and reconfigured their
system to use 209.247.202.106

They notified all developers of the address change but it was not immedietly
clear to me what effect this would have on Aileron.

Effect: NO wireline connection could be made to 207.240.80.136 after 7am on
Wednesday using AiComm!

------------
First Fix: modified AiComm by patching the hardcoded IP to the new one. This
worked on everything but the P7. On the P7, an external modem could not be
used, since the iNetLib is in ROM and could not be modified. Consequently,
this first effort had to be aborted for a better solution.


------
Second Fix: modified the client to modify the IP of the socket connection
unless the current IP is 10.1.134.165 (i.e. the P7 internal modem
destination IP). The IP is now configurable through a string resource in the
client. This means that if we have to, it can be modified by the conduit, a
small patch app, or a replacement prc for aileron. But let's hope that
Palm.net stops moving around!

Note - the iNetLib documentation does not cover changing the ProxyName
parameter of the iNetLibSettingsSet() function. It doesn't even mention the
proxy port or address at ALL! But the headers indicated that there were
additional enumerations before the documented values, and some of them could
be modified to suit our needs.

------
What I think I've learned:
The 10.1.134.165 IP hits palm.net from the bellsouth port and then on to the
proxy. The 207.240.80.136 / 209.247.202.106 content-dev.palm.net IP comes in
on a different port and must be routed to the real proxy. Consequently, the
routed path internal to palm.net for wireless and wireline connections are
different. Either one, or both, may be down independently from the other.
So, our cell phone users and our P7 wireless users may get different results
depending on the internal state of routers at palm.net.

You can use iNetLib to make a wireline modem connection to the proxy at
palm.net, but you might get different system responses than a wireless (that
is to say, a Palm VII) user may get.

I wish Palm.net would dedicate an IP and port for iNetLib applications over
the wireline interface OTHER than the IP they hand out to the content
developers. And if they do, DON'T CHANGE IT!

--
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
www.slothware.net
Carl Lippitt
DOC/WTG/CTO





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