WM5 compliance report: the bandwidth reduction service OnSpeed works pretty good; additional Toonel information

Today, I've continued playing with Toonel, the great, free, Java- and proxy-based bandwidth reduction service, a must for GPRS users (please see this article (alternatives:iPAQ HQ, AximSite, PPC Magazine, FirstLoox, BrightHand) about why these services may be important) to find out what causes version 0.0.50.45 of Toonel to fail with Yahoo Mail in both Opera 8.5beta and Netfront 3.3 TP 1.03.

Unfortunately, even this version has turned out to be having severe problems:

1. Opera isn't able to download large(r) pages. Pages over 30-40 kbytes are likely to arrive without their last part. An example screenshot of the Multiplayer Games Roundup article can be seen here. As can clearly be seen, the second half of the 120-kilobyte HTML file just didn't arrive at Opera. Netfront, on the other hand, was able to render correctly this article.
2. Unfortunately, Netfront has a big problem, which renders it useless: it won't retrieve any referenced resource. That is, if the page you want to load doesn't have image/CSS/JavaScript references (just like the above one), it will load just great; on the other hand, when you visit a page that references resources, none of these references will work. This is why Netfront fails so awfully at, say, rendering Yahoo Mail.

This both means version 0.0.50.45 of Toonel isn't suited for real use under WM5 either, unless you only plan to visit small (say, under 20 kbytes) Web pages and only with Opera (not with Netfront / PIE).

Incidentally, I've also tested older versions (for example, version 0.0.50.30); none of them worked any better. I've tested this all in all the (currently) working, WM5-compliant Java Virtual Machines; the results have been exactly the same.

Having failed at trying to make Toonel work really well under WM5, I've started scrutinizing Onspeed, the alternative bandwidth usage reduction client. I had much better results.

Opera works just great via Onspeed, as can be seen in, for example, this screenshot

Incidentally, note that the client (which, in this case, is a simple "return all HTTP request headers" application written by me) receives both the originator IP (X-Forwarded-For) and the OnSpeed username (X-SlipStream-Username). This is certainly not what you want when you want to hide your identity. In these cases, you may be better off with abandoning Onspeed entirely and switching to a non-compressing, but completely anonymous proxy server. (Note that Toonel hides your identity too. I wish it worked flawlessly on WM5.)

... so does Yahoo Mail

a screenshot of a big article in Opera

The two, latter Web pages have both caused problems to Opera using the Toonel service with both Jeode and IBM J9 Java Virtual Machines.

NetFront 3.3 TP 1.03 works great too, except for the HTTPS annoyance, which will be explained later.

Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE), on the other hand, is unable to access the Net via Onspeed. This is certainly different from PIE in previous OS versions.

Beware: lack of HTTPS support in OnSpeed

Note that, as opposed to Toonel, the OnSpeed client doesn't support Secure HTTP (HTTPS). This means the following in practice:

1. You shouldn't include the HTTPS-related two rows in \Application Data\Opera\opera.ini when setting up the HTTP server in Opera. That is, you should only include three rows, which should read like this:

   [Proxy]
   Use HTTP=1
   HTTP server=127.0.0.1:5400

   (Note that the port number is 5400, not that of Toonel, that is, 8080!)

2. As, in NetFront, you can't separately set up HTTP and HTTPS proxy connections, you won't be able to visit secured pages when using OnSpeed. You'll get error messages like this. That is, when you encounter problems like this, either (temporaily) disable the proxy setting in your Netfront until you exit the page. Unfortunately, using, say, the excellent, free Web compression service MobileLeap won't help in this case either. No matter what (either the "CONTINUE OVER PROXIED SSL" or the link at the bottom) you click, Netfront will still try to use Onspeed as a HTTPS proxy and will, therefore, fail.

Finally, some usage statistics so that you can see that it was indeed via OnSpeed that I've accessed the Web.

Verdict: Onspeed works together with Opera just fine on WM5. So does Netfront – if you don't access secure Web pages. If you don't mind the annual subscription fee of Onspeed (which is still much smaller than that of the Thunderhawk service – Thunderhawk is an alternative, WM5-compliant browser for the Pocket PC) and every saved byte counts (because you use an expensive GPRS service to access the Web from your PDA) then, OnSpeed may be a good choice right now. Until, of course, Toonel is made entirely WM5-compliant...

Note: if you plan to give a try to Onspeed, please read this blog entry on how the application should be installed on your WM5 Pocket PC.

ADDITION (Feb 17, 2006): Please check out this blog entry on disabling OnSpeed's automatic proxy setting.