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Is it even a push notification if you have to fetch them from a server?

by jjmarr 1y ago

PinguTS 1y ago
How do you think push should work? Any push service works this way. The client contacts the server to be updated. The server gives a no data or a data response. The server cannot magically contact the client.
- j_w 1y ago
  Well, the server could contact the client. The client would just need to be listening on a port/address that the server knows. Which is completely infeasible for 99.99% of end user devices.
  - PinguTS 1y ago
    Well, then would work for less then 50%. The majority of end user devices are run from within private networks protected from the Internet. If you have connected to your cell provider, then in the majority the cell providers are running their own private networks. For one reason the IPv4 address space is limited as such, that there are no other possibilities. IPv4 is still the important protocol compared to IPv6. Second, it is that those providers, want to protect you. Some don't even allow cross communication. If you devices are connected with Wifi, then there is the very same situation. There is almost no campus, commercial, and home network, that gives you public route-able IP addresses. I only know a view deployments were you get public route-able IP addresses at conferences like C3, EMF, and alike. tl/dr: No, the end user devices is not easily to reach without additional infrastructure.
- juped 1y ago
  What do you think the word "push" means in the word "push"? It doesn't mean "pull", btw.
  - thesuitonym 1y ago
    You're arguing semantics over a phrase that was decided upon 20 years ago. It's too late.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    I think this is one of those many cases where how the technology works doesn't match the actual meaning of the English word, but for whatever reason the word has stuck. For better or worse, a lot of things on the Internet now assume that only "servers" can accept incoming connections, and therefore anything that needs to be "sent" to clients needs to be done by making the client poll a server over and over. True P2P apps (with no intermediary server) are pretty rare now, for a variety of reasons: some good reasons, some stupid reasons.
nothrabannosir 1y ago
Is there mobile push technology which is actually fundamentally push, all the way down to the transport layer? Like open socket, listening for incoming packets only, no notifications-> no traffic? I was under the impression it was all polling if you go down far enough, but at least because of central registration the phone only needs to poll one single pubsub service instead of a separate server per subscription. Could be wrong though?
- eadmund 1y ago
  > Is there mobile push technology which is actually fundamentally push, all the way down to the transport layer? Like open socket, listening for incoming packets only, no notifications-> no traffic? That’s the end-to-end principle. Each host on the Internet is fully capable of listening on a socket and doing whatever its owner wants it to do. The issue is when firewalls prevent incoming traffic, and when NAT prevents a host from even being on the internet. There’s not really a good reason for NAT with IPv6, but there are some good reasons for firewalls. They mostly boil down to human imperfection. The developers of one’s OS and software are imperfect, so the fact that a laptop sitting in Dallas can be probed by other computers in Frankfurt or Maseru thousands of times a second is an issue: a single bug will make one’s computer, and all its data, vulnerable. And users are imperfect, too. One might misconfigure one’s computer, and accidentally expose a service to the world. There could be some approaches to mitigate these issues, but we’re probably stuck with firewalls forever. Which is really kind of sad.
- baby_souffle 1y ago
  Yes, sms is "actually push" all the way down to the transport layer. As far as I know, this is still what push notifications are built upon for an idle/sleeping device. Carrier infrastructure knows which tower you last connected to, instructs that specific tower to broadcast a message telling your phone to wake up and fetch the remaining 80% of the notification content (the sms bit is usually just enough for your device to learn the UUIDs of the notifications)
  - nothrabannosir 1y ago
    iOS or Android push notifications (can) use SMS for notifying the client that a new message is available ? That’s lovely. Do you have any links or any keywords to find more ? All I can find online is that iOS uses TCP (XMPP in fact :o TIL. )

Is it even a push notification if you have to fetch them from a server?

by jjmarr 1y ago

Is it even a push notification if you have to fetch them from a server?

How do you think push should work? Any push service works this way. The client contacts the server to be updated. The server gives a no data or a data response. The server cannot magically contact the client.

j_w 1y ago
Well, the server could contact the client. The client would just need to be listening on a port/address that the server knows. Which is completely infeasible for 99.99% of end user devices.
- PinguTS 1y ago
  Well, then would work for less then 50%. The majority of end user devices are run from within private networks protected from the Internet. If you have connected to your cell provider, then in the majority the cell providers are running their own private networks. For one reason the IPv4 address space is limited as such, that there are no other possibilities. IPv4 is still the important protocol compared to IPv6. Second, it is that those providers, want to protect you. Some don't even allow cross communication. If you devices are connected with Wifi, then there is the very same situation. There is almost no campus, commercial, and home network, that gives you public route-able IP addresses. I only know a view deployments were you get public route-able IP addresses at conferences like C3, EMF, and alike. tl/dr: No, the end user devices is not easily to reach without additional infrastructure.
juped 1y ago
What do you think the word "push" means in the word "push"? It doesn't mean "pull", btw.
- thesuitonym 1y ago
  You're arguing semantics over a phrase that was decided upon 20 years ago. It's too late.
- ryandrake 1y ago
  I think this is one of those many cases where how the technology works doesn't match the actual meaning of the English word, but for whatever reason the word has stuck. For better or worse, a lot of things on the Internet now assume that only "servers" can accept incoming connections, and therefore anything that needs to be "sent" to clients needs to be done by making the client poll a server over and over. True P2P apps (with no intermediary server) are pretty rare now, for a variety of reasons: some good reasons, some stupid reasons.

nothrabannosir 1y ago

Is there mobile push technology which is actually fundamentally push, all the way down to the transport layer? Like open socket, listening for incoming packets only, no notifications-> no traffic? I was under the impression it was all polling if you go down far enough, but at least because of central registration the phone only needs to poll one single pubsub service instead of a separate server per subscription. Could be wrong though?

eadmund 1y ago
> Is there mobile push technology which is actually fundamentally push, all the way down to the transport layer? Like open socket, listening for incoming packets only, no notifications-> no traffic? That’s the end-to-end principle. Each host on the Internet is fully capable of listening on a socket and doing whatever its owner wants it to do. The issue is when firewalls prevent incoming traffic, and when NAT prevents a host from even being on the internet. There’s not really a good reason for NAT with IPv6, but there are some good reasons for firewalls. They mostly boil down to human imperfection. The developers of one’s OS and software are imperfect, so the fact that a laptop sitting in Dallas can be probed by other computers in Frankfurt or Maseru thousands of times a second is an issue: a single bug will make one’s computer, and all its data, vulnerable. And users are imperfect, too. One might misconfigure one’s computer, and accidentally expose a service to the world. There could be some approaches to mitigate these issues, but we’re probably stuck with firewalls forever. Which is really kind of sad.
baby_souffle 1y ago
Yes, sms is "actually push" all the way down to the transport layer. As far as I know, this is still what push notifications are built upon for an idle/sleeping device. Carrier infrastructure knows which tower you last connected to, instructs that specific tower to broadcast a message telling your phone to wake up and fetch the remaining 80% of the notification content (the sms bit is usually just enough for your device to learn the UUIDs of the notifications)
- nothrabannosir 1y ago
  iOS or Android push notifications (can) use SMS for notifying the client that a new message is available ? That’s lovely. Do you have any links or any keywords to find more ? All I can find online is that iOS uses TCP (XMPP in fact :o TIL. )