How to establish Socket Connection between Mobile device and Server

Now a day the cloud and mobile applications become trendiest topic in the venture. To accomplish the connections between a mobile app and the cloud people must have a thorough knowledge on both. Below we will discuss more about it.

Outmoded client- and server-side software technologies have traditionally been written a software solution called a socket. After the change of the trade from static, thick clients to mobile, thin clients, the use of sockets has not changed. However, sockets have transformed over the years and thus have grown in complexity. As an outcome, most struggle to understand the technology, let alone possess a thorough understanding of how sockets are used in the enterprise or how they are used when coupled with mobile and cloud technologies. This article provides an understanding of what sockets are, what types of sockets are available for your application, the pros and cons of using sockets in mobile and cloud solutions, and how cloud service providers support sockets.

A Socket Primer

Sockets connect client-side software to server-side software using a combination of an Internet protocol (IP) address or a Domain Name System (DNS) address and port number. A best example of this coupling is in web mail, where the colon (:) is the delimiter between the DNS address and the port number. Sockets allow a session-level connection for data transfer or executing transactions.

Types of Sockets

Sockets are used to form sessions between the client and server to execute transactions or data transfer. When enterprises deploy or consume sockets, they may use different types of sockets and different protocols based on the application type, security requirements, and the skill set of the development team.

Socket types describe the communication properties noticeable to a user. It contains Internet, Datagram, stream, raw, and domain sockets. Internet and stream sockets are the most popular since their ease of use, their architecture, and the prevalence of web and application servers in contemporary data centers. As far as Internet sockets go, HTTP–based sockets are the initial pick for thin client or web based systems, particularly for those applications that do not need enhanced security through encryption. Remind that HTML version 5 (HTML5) declares Web Sockets to the equation, which is analogous to Internet sockets on steroids. While further security is required, the enterprise would select a stream socket. It lets to connect using TCP, brings bidirectional, reliable, sequenced, and unduplicated flow of data with no record boundaries. Data can be read from and written to these sockets as a byte stream when the connection has been started.

When additional security is essential for socket networks, a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)/Transport Layer Security (TLS)–based solution set is also obtainable. SSL/ TLS is used in conjunction with HTTP over SSL (that is, HTTPS) via public key infrastructure (PKI) for securing data in motion. Note that SSL/TLS is often required while dealing with sensitive data, such as personally recognizable information, secured health information, cardholder data or payment, banking, or brokerage data. Those establishments that need more flexibility in their client– server connections must think through raw sockets. Raw sockets do not rely on an exact transport mechanism; hence, packets sent over a connection using raw sockets include a header as well as the "raw" packet itself. These sockets are often used by network appliances — specifically, firewalls and routers — that leverage both the Internet Control Message Protocol and the Internet Group Management Protocol. Internal systems are rarely coded while using raw sockets because of their changeability; therefore, these sockets can be used in the context of a private, internal cloud. Those enterprises that use UNIX® systems have additional selection for socket use: domain sockets. Domain sockets contain Inter Process Communication (IPC) protocols. IPC is a socket often used for legacy platforms like UNIX, and while some may consider the necessity to attach mainframe systems to mobile or cloud environments unimportant, the need may rise and so needs a mention. Nevertheless, of the socket used, all sockets have a basic structure to their development and use, those will be covered in next chapter.

The Structure of a Socket

The system architecture or platform, security requirements, and programming languages you used for that base help drive what type of socket you could use. Additionally, the choice of using application programming interfaces (APIs) against internally developed sockets also pushes the structure of the socket. In case, if an industry were to use a cloud-based Linux®, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (LAMP) stack for server-side processing on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) platform, it would most likely employ Internet-based sockets. In difference, if the developer wanted to find a socket–based API to use with mobile client-side sessions from an Apple iPad running Apple iOS 5, a logical choice would be the twisted framework, which uses stream–based sockets.

The Pros and Cons of Using Sockets

The sort of socket you select may affect the application's excellence of service (QoS) from a positive or negative position, as sockets preserve the session state from the client side and server side. Therefore, many sockets assist in maintaining the transactional integrity of applications. However, sockets also keep the confidentiality and integrity of a transaction when used in conjunction with PKI encryption. Encryption assists organizations in protecting data, but it also enhances overhead that can negatively affect the user experience over QoS. Sockets may also be difficult to develop or configure; therefore, the organization's development staff must have an improved skill set. Finally, diverse technologies command which sockets you can use, so the requirement to use sockets on a specific platform may limit your options.

There are advantages and disadvantages to using sockets, though each socket type brings exact strengths and weaknesses. Internet–based socket APIs are bundled within most of the popular application server stacks (for example, the Microsoft® .NET Framework, Apache Tomcat, IBM® WebSphere® Application Server), although these types of sockets bring limited security and transactional integrity to the equation. Session-based socket APIs introduce security and enhanced transactional integrity to the table, and they are included with most application servers. However, they are resource intensive and therefore may affect QoS. Raw sockets introduce flexibility in exchange for an enhanced level of complexity and a lower level of security. Lastly, domain– based socket APIs announce extensibility for UNIX environments, though they are limited to certain platforms and hence may see minimal support from service providers and API developers.

How Cloud Providers Support Sockets

Cloud computing is a rebranding, if you will, of the old application service provider (ASP) model. Yet, true cloud assistances have additional shades from ASPs — specifically, resource pooling, on demand utilization, multitenancy, and rapid elasticity. Cloud service providers propose services based on different cloud service and deployment models. Cloud service models are methods in which an organization can use the cloud based on business requirements, such as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), or Software as a Service (SaaS). Cloud consumers have the utmost flexibility with IaaS and the least with SaaS. Though, with the flexibility found in IaaS originates the cloud consumer's requirement to administer, monitor, and manage the environment. So, IaaS consumers build the (virtual) server opening at the operating system layer. For PaaS, the consumer figures the database, application, and business rules and loads the data. For SaaS, the consumer only has to load the data into the prebuilt application. Cloud deployment models include public, private, hybrid, and community clouds. One example of a public cloud model is Google App Engine, in which the application and data are stored in one of Google's data centers. In this model, the consumer in essence has a floor in the Google "high-rise" apartment. Most outsized organizations will influence the cloud internally as a private cloud. One instance of a private cloud is an organization that uses cloud nuances (for example, resource pooling, on demand, multitenancy, or rapid elasticity) within its own data center for information processing. Organizations can have a private cloud within a provider's facility, as well. Examples include Terre mark’s customers as well as those who use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). Examples of hybrid consumers contain pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, which uses a private model to store its research and development data, sends the data securely (via SSL/TLS) to a public cloud for computations, and then sends the data back to the private cloud. In essence, a hybrid model uses the best of both the public and private worlds. A community cloud leverages resource pooling to a large extent, one example being a number of schools in a school district that share server resources for information handling.

Based on the cloud service and deployment models selected, cloud consumers have different socket types available to them. In general, Internet and stream–based sockets are supported by all major providers as both PaaS and IaaS offerings. Consumers of SaaS solutions do not need to concern themselves with using sockets straight, even though they may need to have third parties interact with their SaaS– based providers via sockets. Though, providers do not support raw sockets organically, though by using and configuring an IaaS environment, an organization could theoretically accept and process raw sockets. Lastly, few enterprises have found a business case to move their mainframe environments to a virtualized or private cloud platform; hence, virtualization and private cloud technology providers such as OpenStack, Xen, Microsoft, and VMware have not explicitly mentioned their support for domain–based sockets. However, this may change over time as private cloud technologies are used with greater occurrence.

Conclusion

Sockets have been everywhere a long time, and they're here to stay. The outline of mobile and cloud technologies has meant that sockets have switched and scaled to react to these new markets. As more ventures and technologies emphasis on mobile and cloud solutions, sockets developers will too. Though, not all sockets are the identical, and ventures should sensibly consider their strengths and weaknesses before deciding which sockets an application must use which provider to choose for transactional processing. https://www.ceymplon.lk/service/it-service/mobile-applications.