Menneisyys
06-24-2006, 11:04 AM
Using the Free Bandwidth Usage Saver, Toonel, on the Pocket PC
Ever wanted to reduce bandwidth usage to reduce, for example, mobile communication (GPRS, EDGE, UMTS etc.) costs? Yes, you CAN do this, even on a Pocket PC and using free services!
There're two main types of bandwidth reduction services: Web-based and proxy-based ones. Web-based online services like Skweezer, Google Mobile or MobileLeap are well-known, referenced and documented. (Please see the article linked from this blog entry (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=how_do_i_reduce_my_internet_bandwidth_us&more=1) on them.) To-run-on-the-PDA, proxy-based services, which are far superior to the previous online service, bandwidth usage- and easiness-of-usage-wise, on the other hand, are very scarcely known in the Pocket PC community. Except for the articles and posts by me, there are almost no mentions of them, let alone any tutorials on setting them up.
The Toonel service (http://www.toonel.net/) is probably the best of the very few services that Pocket PC users can use. The client for the latest version, (0.0.)50.54, has just been released. As opposed to the previous version(s) (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/menneisyys/ConfigureToonel45.asp), it’s no longer Java-based but has a native .NET Pocket PC client. This means it’s much-much easier to configure and use.
Note that there is another (commercial) alternative to Toonel: OnSpeed (http://www.onspeed.com/us/index.php). It, however, has a very bad bug of the need to handshaking (which takes some 40-50 seconds and, during which, no data is flowing) at startup and after some minutes of inactivity. Furthermore, it doesn’t have any support for compressing e-mail traffic.
Getting and installing
You can download the current, 50.54 version of the installer here (http://www.toonel.net/wm/005054/toonelPPC.ARM.CAB). It relies on Compact Framework 1, which is already built-in in all WM2003+ devices. If you, on the other hand, you plan to use it on a Pocket PC 2002 device, you’ll need to download and install CF1. I’ve provided the CAB file for this here (http://www.winmobiletech.com/sekalaiset/CF1SP3/netcf.core.ppc3.ARM.rar). Just download and install it.
(If I don’t update this tutorial when new versions come, you can always check out the ‘Toonel for Windows Mobile (.NET)’ section in the official homepage (http://toonel.net/downloads.html) for new versions.)
If you already have Compact Framework on your Pocket PC (again, it’ll be already present on all contemporary Pocket PC’s), you will only need to install the Toonel CAB installer file (just tap it from inside File Explorer on your Pocket PC after having transferred it there).
It’ll add its icon (“toonel”) to Start Menu/Programs. You can start it right away. Without making any changes, it will allow for compressing Web traffic at once. To make use of it, however, you will need to configure your browser and/or the Connectivity framework built into the operating system to use the new proxy. To do this, do the following, depending on your Web browser:
Configuring your Pocket PC Web browsers to use Toonel
Pocket Internet Explorer
If you use Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) (its new name is Internet Explorer Mobile under WM5; however, I use ‘PIE’ to refer to it to make this tutorial as short as possible) in any post-Pocket PC 2000 operating system, then, you must do the following:
go to Start/Settings/Connections/Connections/Advanced/Select Networks. You will see something like this:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-1.gif.png)
Note that you may see something else than Bluetooth Settings there. If anything else than 'My ISP' is visible in the upper drop-down list, go on. If 'My ISP' is chosen in the upper drop-down list, then, try moving your active connection(s) off My ISP to another connection group because you can't define proxies in the My ISP group. This will be almost never the case, however – for example, if you add a Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking connection in Bluetooth Manager, it'll be placed in the above-shown Bluetooth Settings group and not in My ISP. Similarly, if you use specialized GPRS set-up applications like Running Voice GSM (RVGSM) 3.2, the case will be exactly the same. Please see this article (http://pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17837) for more information on connection groups if interested.
click the Edit button at the top (in the above screenshot, it's the currently highlighted one) and, on the next screen, tap the Proxy Settings tab (please, again, note that it will be missing from the My ISP connection group):
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-2.gif.png)
check in the "This network uses a proxy server to connect to the Internet" checkbox and, now that it's clickable, click the Advanced button :
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-3.gif.png)
enter 127.0.0.1 in the Server and 8080 in the Port field in the HTTP record:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-4.gif.png)
Please note that, as can be seen, it takes quite a lot of screen taps to set up a PIE proxy. You may want to read this article (http://www.firstloox.org//forums/showthread.php?p=28878) (alternative here (http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?t=214101)) on making this much easier if you want to switch it off/on on a regular basis. If you don't want to do so, you don't need to read the linked tutorial.
Also note that if you define a HTTP PIE proxy in the just-discussed way, there're some other things to keep in mind:
MSN Messenger also gets its SOCKS proxy information from the same place. As Toonel isn't a SOCKS proxy, you won't be able to use MSN Messenger when the operating system is configured to use the proxy. There're several ways of combatting this (none of them is particularly easy):
switch off the proxy every time you want to use MSN Messenger
create an alternative but non-proxied connection for MSN Messenger. That is, every time you want to fire up Messenger, you will need to use this, non-proxied connection.
set up a private (on your, say, desktop computer at work; see for example this tutorial (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=343&more=1) on WinGate, one of the best proxy + firewall + port forwarder applications) or subscribe to a public SOCKS proxy. (Or, if you don't mind constantly switching and testing public, free proxies, check out this page (http://www.atomintersoft.com/products/alive-proxy/proxy-list/) for some free ones.)
by default, Pocket Inbox / Messaging (from now on: Messaging) won't work either after setting up a proxy in the above way. This can be, however, very easily fixed. Start Messaging, go to Accounts/ Accounts... and click (one of) the account(s) you've defined. Click Next three times until you get to the last ("E-mail Setup (4/4)") page. There, press Options and choose the connection that has a "cryptic" name (and not the pre-defined My Work Network/My ISP/Work/The Internet), assuming your connection is defined in a new connection group. For example, on my Pocket PC where the GPRS connection set up in the Bluetooth Manager is put in the "Bluetooth Settings" connection group, a new entry, "{8831E4CC-C397-4337-B08D-0C66A6347D2F}", will be shown here. Just choose it instead of the default "The Internet":
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/MessagingChooseConnection.gif.png)
Do the same for all your POP3/IMAP accounts.
NetFront
If you use NetFront, you can safely rely on the setting above: if the "Auto-retrieve" checkbox in (Menu/)Tools/Browser Setting/Network is enabled (as is by default), NetFront will retrieve the proxy information set in Connectivity as outlined in the previous, PIE-related section:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-NF-AR.gif.png)
If you, however, would like to define a local proxy instead of the above (to avoid it being used anything else or the MSN Messenger problems outlined above), go to Tools/Browser Setting/Network, uncheck "Auto-retrieve" and enter the above-mentioned 127.0.0.1 in the Address and 8080 in the Port fields:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-NF-AR-2.gif.png)
Opera Mobile
Go to Menu/ Tools/ Settings/ Network, enable the HTTP (and, if you need, the HTTPS) checkbox and enter 127.0.0.1:8080 in the text input field:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/OpMobileProxyToonel.bmp.png)
Then, just click OK.
Minimo
Finally, if you use Minimo, go to Preferences and click the globe. Then, check in the "Use Proxy" checkbox and enter the above-listed two values in the URL and Port fields:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-Minimo.gif.png)
Configure Your E-mailer Application to Use Toonel
Unfortunately, configuring your E-mailer application is a bit more complicated. The reason for this is that, unlike the HTTP protocol behind accessing the Web, the POP3/SMTP/IMAP protocols used in accessing mail don't allow for using proxies by default – that is, on the protocol level, a request message doesn’t contain its target address header, unlike in the case of proxied HTTP requests. This means you will need to configure Toonel itself so that it knows what the addressee of a particular IMAP/POP3/SMTP request is.
To do this, first, you’ll need to the server address of the mail server, independent of whether it’s a IMAP, POP3 or an SMTP server. Let’s say it’s a POP3 server with the address pop3.myisp.com.
Configure Toonel
To configure Toonel to forward requests to it, do the following. In Toonel, go to the “Mapping” tab and make sure you’re on the default “-- new port mapping --“ list element on the top. In the ‘hostname’ field, enter the server address; that is, pop3.myisp.com. In the ‘local port’, enter 110; do the same with ‘remote port’:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/Toon54Pop3Config.bmp.png)
Now, click ‘Apply’; the status will change to ‘running’ and the new record will be added to the list at the top:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/Toon54Pop3Config-2.bmp.png)
If you have an SMTP server to add, do the same except for the local/remote ports: they must stay at 25.
Note that you can reuse the already-provided sample IMAP/POP3/SMTP list entries. Then, you won't need to enter the port numbers, only the target server addresses.
Messaging
After this, you will need to configure Messaging in that it "thinks" the SMTP and the POP3 servers are both on the local PDA – that is, in the two fields you define the POP3/SMTP server, just enter 127.0.0.1 (that is, the address of the local machine):
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/MessagingPOP3AndSMTPAddresses-Localhost.gif.png)
FlexMail 2006
With FlexMail 2006 (http://www.pocketinformant.com/products_info.php?p_id=mail&dir=wm&), one of the major alternative PPC clients, you can configure Toonel to be used as follows:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/WebISMailConfigurablePort.gif.png)
Qmail
Finally, the, in my opinion, by far the best (and, what is more, free!) Pocket PC-based mailer (and news/RSS reader) client, Qmail (please see this mailer roundup (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=569&more=1) for more information on it), must enter the local POP3/SMTP server address in the General tab, in the two textfields (one for the incoming and the other for the outgoing mail) Host information group:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/Toon54QmailConfig.bmp.png)
A quick note
Note that, this way, you can only supply one POP3/SMTP/IMAP server to be compressed. Let me know if you want to add more than one and I elaborate on this question more. I've left out (unlike with the previous tutorial) of discussing this question in this document in order to be as easy as possible.
Making Use of Image Downsampling
Note that, as with more decent compression tools, Toonel also lets for image downsampling (that is, lowering the quality and, consequently, the size of images). By default, no compression is made. To allow for downsampling, go to the Web tab in Toonel, set ‘GIF quality’ to some other value and enter, say, 30 (that is, thirty percent) in the ‘JPEG quality, %’ field as can be seen in here:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/Toon54ImageQ.bmp.png)
Then, just click Apply.
A quick note: lately, the central Toonel server has seemed to be pretty overloaded. If you encounter missing, not downloaded images because of the enabled image downsampling, just disable it by resetting ‘GIF quality’ to ‘Original’ and ‘JPEG quality, %’ to 100.
Ever wanted to reduce bandwidth usage to reduce, for example, mobile communication (GPRS, EDGE, UMTS etc.) costs? Yes, you CAN do this, even on a Pocket PC and using free services!
There're two main types of bandwidth reduction services: Web-based and proxy-based ones. Web-based online services like Skweezer, Google Mobile or MobileLeap are well-known, referenced and documented. (Please see the article linked from this blog entry (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&title=how_do_i_reduce_my_internet_bandwidth_us&more=1) on them.) To-run-on-the-PDA, proxy-based services, which are far superior to the previous online service, bandwidth usage- and easiness-of-usage-wise, on the other hand, are very scarcely known in the Pocket PC community. Except for the articles and posts by me, there are almost no mentions of them, let alone any tutorials on setting them up.
The Toonel service (http://www.toonel.net/) is probably the best of the very few services that Pocket PC users can use. The client for the latest version, (0.0.)50.54, has just been released. As opposed to the previous version(s) (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/menneisyys/ConfigureToonel45.asp), it’s no longer Java-based but has a native .NET Pocket PC client. This means it’s much-much easier to configure and use.
Note that there is another (commercial) alternative to Toonel: OnSpeed (http://www.onspeed.com/us/index.php). It, however, has a very bad bug of the need to handshaking (which takes some 40-50 seconds and, during which, no data is flowing) at startup and after some minutes of inactivity. Furthermore, it doesn’t have any support for compressing e-mail traffic.
Getting and installing
You can download the current, 50.54 version of the installer here (http://www.toonel.net/wm/005054/toonelPPC.ARM.CAB). It relies on Compact Framework 1, which is already built-in in all WM2003+ devices. If you, on the other hand, you plan to use it on a Pocket PC 2002 device, you’ll need to download and install CF1. I’ve provided the CAB file for this here (http://www.winmobiletech.com/sekalaiset/CF1SP3/netcf.core.ppc3.ARM.rar). Just download and install it.
(If I don’t update this tutorial when new versions come, you can always check out the ‘Toonel for Windows Mobile (.NET)’ section in the official homepage (http://toonel.net/downloads.html) for new versions.)
If you already have Compact Framework on your Pocket PC (again, it’ll be already present on all contemporary Pocket PC’s), you will only need to install the Toonel CAB installer file (just tap it from inside File Explorer on your Pocket PC after having transferred it there).
It’ll add its icon (“toonel”) to Start Menu/Programs. You can start it right away. Without making any changes, it will allow for compressing Web traffic at once. To make use of it, however, you will need to configure your browser and/or the Connectivity framework built into the operating system to use the new proxy. To do this, do the following, depending on your Web browser:
Configuring your Pocket PC Web browsers to use Toonel
Pocket Internet Explorer
If you use Pocket Internet Explorer (PIE) (its new name is Internet Explorer Mobile under WM5; however, I use ‘PIE’ to refer to it to make this tutorial as short as possible) in any post-Pocket PC 2000 operating system, then, you must do the following:
go to Start/Settings/Connections/Connections/Advanced/Select Networks. You will see something like this:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-1.gif.png)
Note that you may see something else than Bluetooth Settings there. If anything else than 'My ISP' is visible in the upper drop-down list, go on. If 'My ISP' is chosen in the upper drop-down list, then, try moving your active connection(s) off My ISP to another connection group because you can't define proxies in the My ISP group. This will be almost never the case, however – for example, if you add a Bluetooth Dial-Up Networking connection in Bluetooth Manager, it'll be placed in the above-shown Bluetooth Settings group and not in My ISP. Similarly, if you use specialized GPRS set-up applications like Running Voice GSM (RVGSM) 3.2, the case will be exactly the same. Please see this article (http://pocketpcmag.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17837) for more information on connection groups if interested.
click the Edit button at the top (in the above screenshot, it's the currently highlighted one) and, on the next screen, tap the Proxy Settings tab (please, again, note that it will be missing from the My ISP connection group):
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-2.gif.png)
check in the "This network uses a proxy server to connect to the Internet" checkbox and, now that it's clickable, click the Advanced button :
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-3.gif.png)
enter 127.0.0.1 in the Server and 8080 in the Port field in the HTTP record:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-4.gif.png)
Please note that, as can be seen, it takes quite a lot of screen taps to set up a PIE proxy. You may want to read this article (http://www.firstloox.org//forums/showthread.php?p=28878) (alternative here (http://discussion.brighthand.com/showthread.php?t=214101)) on making this much easier if you want to switch it off/on on a regular basis. If you don't want to do so, you don't need to read the linked tutorial.
Also note that if you define a HTTP PIE proxy in the just-discussed way, there're some other things to keep in mind:
MSN Messenger also gets its SOCKS proxy information from the same place. As Toonel isn't a SOCKS proxy, you won't be able to use MSN Messenger when the operating system is configured to use the proxy. There're several ways of combatting this (none of them is particularly easy):
switch off the proxy every time you want to use MSN Messenger
create an alternative but non-proxied connection for MSN Messenger. That is, every time you want to fire up Messenger, you will need to use this, non-proxied connection.
set up a private (on your, say, desktop computer at work; see for example this tutorial (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=343&more=1) on WinGate, one of the best proxy + firewall + port forwarder applications) or subscribe to a public SOCKS proxy. (Or, if you don't mind constantly switching and testing public, free proxies, check out this page (http://www.atomintersoft.com/products/alive-proxy/proxy-list/) for some free ones.)
by default, Pocket Inbox / Messaging (from now on: Messaging) won't work either after setting up a proxy in the above way. This can be, however, very easily fixed. Start Messaging, go to Accounts/ Accounts... and click (one of) the account(s) you've defined. Click Next three times until you get to the last ("E-mail Setup (4/4)") page. There, press Options and choose the connection that has a "cryptic" name (and not the pre-defined My Work Network/My ISP/Work/The Internet), assuming your connection is defined in a new connection group. For example, on my Pocket PC where the GPRS connection set up in the Bluetooth Manager is put in the "Bluetooth Settings" connection group, a new entry, "{8831E4CC-C397-4337-B08D-0C66A6347D2F}", will be shown here. Just choose it instead of the default "The Internet":
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/MessagingChooseConnection.gif.png)
Do the same for all your POP3/IMAP accounts.
NetFront
If you use NetFront, you can safely rely on the setting above: if the "Auto-retrieve" checkbox in (Menu/)Tools/Browser Setting/Network is enabled (as is by default), NetFront will retrieve the proxy information set in Connectivity as outlined in the previous, PIE-related section:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-NF-AR.gif.png)
If you, however, would like to define a local proxy instead of the above (to avoid it being used anything else or the MSN Messenger problems outlined above), go to Tools/Browser Setting/Network, uncheck "Auto-retrieve" and enter the above-mentioned 127.0.0.1 in the Address and 8080 in the Port fields:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-NF-AR-2.gif.png)
Opera Mobile
Go to Menu/ Tools/ Settings/ Network, enable the HTTP (and, if you need, the HTTPS) checkbox and enter 127.0.0.1:8080 in the text input field:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/OpMobileProxyToonel.bmp.png)
Then, just click OK.
Minimo
Finally, if you use Minimo, go to Preferences and click the globe. Then, check in the "Use Proxy" checkbox and enter the above-listed two values in the URL and Port fields:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/Connectivity-Minimo.gif.png)
Configure Your E-mailer Application to Use Toonel
Unfortunately, configuring your E-mailer application is a bit more complicated. The reason for this is that, unlike the HTTP protocol behind accessing the Web, the POP3/SMTP/IMAP protocols used in accessing mail don't allow for using proxies by default – that is, on the protocol level, a request message doesn’t contain its target address header, unlike in the case of proxied HTTP requests. This means you will need to configure Toonel itself so that it knows what the addressee of a particular IMAP/POP3/SMTP request is.
To do this, first, you’ll need to the server address of the mail server, independent of whether it’s a IMAP, POP3 or an SMTP server. Let’s say it’s a POP3 server with the address pop3.myisp.com.
Configure Toonel
To configure Toonel to forward requests to it, do the following. In Toonel, go to the “Mapping” tab and make sure you’re on the default “-- new port mapping --“ list element on the top. In the ‘hostname’ field, enter the server address; that is, pop3.myisp.com. In the ‘local port’, enter 110; do the same with ‘remote port’:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/Toon54Pop3Config.bmp.png)
Now, click ‘Apply’; the status will change to ‘running’ and the new record will be added to the list at the top:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/Toon54Pop3Config-2.bmp.png)
If you have an SMTP server to add, do the same except for the local/remote ports: they must stay at 25.
Note that you can reuse the already-provided sample IMAP/POP3/SMTP list entries. Then, you won't need to enter the port numbers, only the target server addresses.
Messaging
After this, you will need to configure Messaging in that it "thinks" the SMTP and the POP3 servers are both on the local PDA – that is, in the two fields you define the POP3/SMTP server, just enter 127.0.0.1 (that is, the address of the local machine):
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/MessagingPOP3AndSMTPAddresses-Localhost.gif.png)
FlexMail 2006
With FlexMail 2006 (http://www.pocketinformant.com/products_info.php?p_id=mail&dir=wm&), one of the major alternative PPC clients, you can configure Toonel to be used as follows:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/122005NewToonelVersion/WebISMailConfigurablePort.gif.png)
Qmail
Finally, the, in my opinion, by far the best (and, what is more, free!) Pocket PC-based mailer (and news/RSS reader) client, Qmail (please see this mailer roundup (http://www.pocketpcmag.com/blogs/index.php?blog=3&p=569&more=1) for more information on it), must enter the local POP3/SMTP server address in the General tab, in the two textfields (one for the incoming and the other for the outgoing mail) Host information group:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/Toon54QmailConfig.bmp.png)
A quick note
Note that, this way, you can only supply one POP3/SMTP/IMAP server to be compressed. Let me know if you want to add more than one and I elaborate on this question more. I've left out (unlike with the previous tutorial) of discussing this question in this document in order to be as easy as possible.
Making Use of Image Downsampling
Note that, as with more decent compression tools, Toonel also lets for image downsampling (that is, lowering the quality and, consequently, the size of images). By default, no compression is made. To allow for downsampling, go to the Web tab in Toonel, set ‘GIF quality’ to some other value and enter, say, 30 (that is, thirty percent) in the ‘JPEG quality, %’ field as can be seen in here:
Click for screenshot (http://www.winmobiletech.com/062006Toonel64/Toon54ImageQ.bmp.png)
Then, just click Apply.
A quick note: lately, the central Toonel server has seemed to be pretty overloaded. If you encounter missing, not downloaded images because of the enabled image downsampling, just disable it by resetting ‘GIF quality’ to ‘Original’ and ‘JPEG quality, %’ to 100.