Question

I have try to make chat application with socket programing and I am using Chatty source code and its working perfect on same network. But not work for different network.

Is chatty work for different network iPhone?

I have tried chatty for different network in iPhone but no success.

Any idea about chatty for different network for iPhone?

Answer 1

From looking at the source code for Chatty, it seems that it just uses an IP and port number to connect to a different device, and that’s the reason why you can’t connect when users are in a different network. Being able to connect or not will depend a lot on the network configuration you both of your devices have.

For example: it works if you’re in the same wifi, because there’s no firewall between the devices, and the IP is reachable (192.168.x.x, for example). If you take one of the phones to a 3G network, it won’t be able to reach the other one in the wifi, but the one in the wifi might still be able to reach the one on the 3G, depending on your career and port number, and if the network stack is on in the phone. So, conclusion is: this will be highly unreliable.

Usually, for this kind of communication, apps rely on a third party, so both of your phones connect first to a webserver, that is always available on the internet, and the web server sends the messages to each of the apps. This also solves the problem of one app going off the network (when you take an elevator, for example).