I would like to make an application for iOS devices that would communicate with a special type of remote device using HTTP POST requests. The problem is that this device would actually act in the role of a client, while iOS device has to be the server accepting the requests. The next problem, host name and port has to be configured statically at the device sending the requests.
While I’m aware it’s possible to give it a try using Dynamic DNS services and UPnP/IGD or NAT-PMP to overcome the problem with iOS device being behind the NAT router, I was wondering whether using Bonjour could simplify the problem in some way. I’m quite a newbie in networking so I’m looking for the direction and want to avoid research of Bonjour if it’s not going to bring me anything.
Any other idea of how to solve the problem is appreciated as well.
I had a think about this. IMHO you can’t guarantee you’ll always be able to expose an iOS based service over a WAN (although it’s possible) so this isn’t practical.
The best solution I suggest is using uPNP to open the device behind a router to the outside world, then have it send an iOS push notification to the iPhone with the details (hostname, ip, port, etc).
The iPhone would then would then have to set up some kind of persistent connection with the firewalled device to receive data.