Mobile Apache Web Server

Nokia Research has come up with a port of the Apache web server for their smartphones (should work on any S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 2 based device and upward). Developing any kind of server on a mobile phone does not represent any technical issue (e.g. providing BT services, used to bring GSM footprints to a MIDlet level, …). However, the biggest achievement I see in Nokia’s work is on making the device reachable from the Internet:

Providing access to a mobile phone from the Internet is not straightforward, as operators typically employ firewalls that prevent access from the Internet to phones inside that firewall. By implementing a custom gateway we could circumvent that limitation and we are now able to provide a webserver on a mobile phone with a global URL than can be accessed from any browser. In a sense, the mobile phone has now finally become a full member of the Internet.

I am not sure how they do the trick with heir custom gateway. They built a “connector” that together with a gateway provides a mobile phone with a global name in the operator networks of today. Currently I only see it to be of dynamic IP mapping services used back in the dial-up days. This can be done via a the PushRegistry in J2ME and publishing the inbound connection.

Relation to my thesis: Putting Internet accessible servers (web or others) on mobile devices changes the mobile information flow and is a clear step forward an Internet of things. Location information could be both push and pulled. Pull, allows custom remote interaction with the device as well as accessing some elements of the device’s context (network data (e.g. cellid), usage, and access to core data. I surely should prepare a prototype for the upcoming Blogjetct “hands-on” workshop.