Enabling Push-based Mobile Web Services for Today's Cell Phone Provider Networks

Increased processing power and connectivity enable an integration of mobile devices into enterprise applications. The de facto standard for an enterprise integration is Web Service technology. Notifying devices of business events requires establishing an inbound connection to the devices. While establishing connections from mobile devices to enterprise systems is straight forward, the inverse way is restricted as cell phone provider networks are applying Network Address Translation assigning private IP addresses to connected devices. This paper introduces enabling technologies, which significantly simplify an enterprise integration of mobile devices facing issues like frequently changing IP addresses, Network Address Translation and limited device energy. To achieve that, a scalable Tunnel Proxy is introduced offering location transparency for mobile Web Services. Furthermore, the proposed solution is implemented based on a concrete application scenario. Finally, the implementation is evaluated with respect to energy consumption and scalability.