[afuchs]

It is difficult to make a p2p app on a mobile device work even between devices on the same LAN.

A simplified explanation: Mobile devices will often ignore almost all incoming network traffic to reduce battery usage. The only way to reliably communicate with the device is through a centralized push notification service (e.g. APN and GCM).

[lukedoolittle]

I tried to make a demo app to perform very simple HTTP p2p and found this difficult on iOS. When an app is backgrounded you have ~17 seconds to stop execution or the OS will kill any active threads UNLESS the activity is among the Apple permitted exceptions. (Note that there is no iOS SyncThing app). In Android it is possible to use IntentService as a single threaded background HTTP server. It works for the most part but can be a little flakey. I'm not 100% sure how the OpenGarden SDK accomplishes this but I'm interested. My guess is that it makes heavy use of Bluetooth, which is one of the Apple permitted exceptions to the backgrounding rule.

[zimpenfish]

> there is no iOS SyncThing app

There’s fsync() but it only syncs when you launch the app - what I think you meant is “there’s no continuously syncing iOS SyncThing app”.

[lukedoolittle]

Yes, thanks for the clarification. Continuous/background syncing is the difficult task.

[princekolt]

Why not perform the invoking and setup of the call via a server, but then perform the actual call on p2p once the device is awake and the app on the foreground?

[gsich]

I am not sure why maintaining a TCP connection to Google or Apple is somewhat more battery friendly then maintaining it to your own server, or providing a TCP-server to provide some service for someone else. (UDP is different here)

I am using CSipSimple to my own server, battery usage is the same. Yes this is anecdotal evidence, but one can always check.

[tomaskafka]

I guess this changes the moment you have 100 apps, each doing 'just a quick ping to my server time to time'.

Unfortunate result is hundred of apps waking up the phone ever 20 seconds and transmitting data nonstop. Sigh.

[qznc]

SyncThing seems to do fine on my smartphone in my home LAN.

[Whitestrake]

One thing that might explain this is that your phone could be pulling data from your computer, rather than your computer trying to connect to your phone to push data to it.

[huhtenberg]

Quit the b/s, will you. It's not difficult at all.

You use a central server to do the discovery and bootstrap the connection between two devices. For each device it looks like they are connecting out. This works for UDP and this works for TCP. It works both for NAT'ed and LAN peers. For the latter it works 100% of time. This is a 10 year old tech. It worked back then and it works now.

[dang]

> Quit the b/s, will you.

We ban accounts that are uncivil like this, and you've done it a lot in the past, though happily not in the recent past, so please just don't do it at all.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[huhtenberg]

I disagree with your assessment of my remark as "uncivil".

If I read you correctly, you seem to have significantly lowered the plank for what you ban people for. What the OP said was a complete factual garbage showing an utter lack of understanding of the subject he is so confidently commenting on. So this was, by any conventional definition of the term, a bullshit. How can this conceivably be a cause for a ban?

[dang]

The bar hasn't changed. "Quit the b/s will you" was obviously an uncivil slap. If you don't think it is, please adjust your standard to the one that applies here, when commenting here, if you want to keep commenting here.

It's easy to point out that a statement is wrong without being disrespectful, if you want to, and so neither damage the community nor discredit the truth with personal bad behavior. That way we all can learn something.

Perceptions of what's uncivil can vary for legitimate reasons, e.g. differing cultural standards—HN is a highly international community. But for that very reason, we need people to err on the side of being respectful. The alternative leads to wars and ultimately the death of the forum.

[huhtenberg]

I've been on HN for over 10 years. I also spoke with you over email under my real name more than once and I have a very high opinion of how you handle things in moderator's capacity. Which is why I must say that I find these ban threats very surprising, misplaced and disconcerting.

> differing cultural standards

Well, that's exactly the problem, isn't it?

What passes for normal "civil" behavior in countries like States and Canada looks like a completely fake way to express sentiments in other parts of the world. If someone asks "how are you?", they, more often than not, actually want to know how you are, not soliciting the "I'm fine" response.

What I said in the comment you killed I would absolutely not hesitate to say in person. I did not want to point out that his statement was wrong. I had an issue with the fact that he was commenting on things he doesn't appear to understand well in the first place. This was a personal remark, but I'm not sure which format you expect it to be distilled in to be acceptable as "civil".

If we are to reverse the situation, i.e. if it was me who blurted out something equally majestic, I would expect and prefer to be told just that instead of a wishy-washy pretense polite way. To me, coming from one of them "different cultural standards", the latter is a strange and alien way to communicate with others... which brings us right back to your remark about being respectful. Sometimes I'd be blunt when responding to comments I find particularly inane, but I also expect others to be blunt to me if the situation warrants it. Being blunt is not the same as being disrespectful, leave alone "uncivil".

> Then we all can learn something, which is the intended use of the site.

I've always viewed HN as a place for discussion with people of similar interests. Some may indeed learn a thing or two here, just like on any other forum, but stating that it's the intended use of the site is really quite strange.