RE: Network Information Use Cases

-----Original Message-----
From: Josh Soref [mailto:jsoref@rim.com] 
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2012 3:58 PM
To: Core Mobile
Subject: RE: Network Information Use Cases

> Dan wrote: 
>> Network Interface API is required for switching networks and checking 
>> signal strength.

> This isn't a use case, nor is it supported by the API.

Please refer to SysApps WG Charter [1] about Network Interface API or do I misunderstand it?

>> But Network Information API is also useful to enable the use cases 
>> like video adaptive streaming (e.g. SD on 3G, SD or HD on WiFi), and

> This isn't correct. Adaptive streaming involves responding to *actual* conditions, and the way to do that is to have feedback from the video 
> consumer about whether it's able to go fast enough. If it isn't getting enough data, then your stream has too much data and you should reduce the 
> stream. If it's playing each frame on time, then you can try a more aggressive stream. There's absolutely *nothing* you need from a network layer, > and anything you get will be *incredibly* misleading. If you manage to get extra data over the network, but the video player can't play it, you've > just wasted bandwidth, that's bad. 

> APIs for this part of Video are coming, because people have articulated an actual need for that information. It won't come from DAP though, it's a > Media thing.

Forget the Adaptive Video Streaming, I was a little hesitate to use that term in the use case too ... The point is Network Information API can enable or improve certain implementations. In above use cases, it improves user experience before the real Adaptive streaming API is available. 

>> warning user to turn on WiFi before a big download or video streaming 
>> to save the purchased data quota.

> You don't need a browser API for this.

> At worst, you just need a database that maps IP addresses to ISPs. I alluded to this earlier [1].

Why not expose this simple API to do so? Native apps have relied on such API. 

[1] http://www.w3.org/2012/05/sysapps-wg-charter.html

Thanks,
Dan

Received on Thursday, 5 July 2012 20:42:28 UTC