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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ Now.WAP Proxy Support ⬆ Archive through October 01, 2008 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Anonymous |
Just thought I would point out that almost everyone at Howardforums seems to stealing your software. [admin: parts deleted] I know this stuff happens but with so many people looking at that site everyday it is amazing anyone pays for your product like my company and other honest companies have. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Bryce Post Number: 4150 Registered: 10-2002 |
Thanks for letting us know about a potential problem. | |||
| Anonymous |
I would like to buy your software, but cannot find out how much it costs, nor is there a "buy now" button anywhere in the software or on your site. Probably the first step in curtailing the piracy would be to make it easy/possible to buy the software. When it's not easy to buy, and requests for pricing info on the forum and via e-mail go unanswered, the cheaters feel justified. | |||
| Anonymous |
I contacted them this week. 750 pounds for a FIVE user package. I'd be tempted to pirate this stuff, too... if I actually had a use for it. I'll stick with free gateways around the world. | |||
| Anonymous |
500 pounds for 5 users??? Makes my phone company seem cheap at $5/mo. It seems like they're missing out on a big audience - people who just want to use it for own use, and aren't running a commercial service. $25 is more like it, especially considering that the program still seems to need some work (systray icon, completed help, real-time connection info (who/where/what), discovery of userid, etc.) Oh well. Off to find something else. Suggestion: Have two products. A nice, friendly, 2-user version for $25, leaving out the RADIUS authentication and such, but ADD an audit trail so that you can see "who's on now". That would make it suitable for home use, and you'll get business from people trying to save $5/mo on their phone bill. You'll never do THAT when it costs as much as 40 years of WAP service from the phone company! Anyway, here's the design for what I'm talking about: User wants to "lock down" his gateway so that it isn't an open proxy for the world (as yours is, out of the box). He sees his password in his phone's WAP settings, but no userid. What to do? User turns off the authentication on Now.Wap. User activates wap on his phone. Now.Wap shows a connection from 2125551212 using password of vzwsux on ip: 123.456.001.128. NOW he presses a button for "allow this userid/pwd" or "allow all from this subnet". Then he can do the same for his wife's phone. Then he can turn the authentication back on, and he's sealed out the bad guys. There you go - free software design from a would-be customer. | |||
| Kent Williams Moderator Username: Kent Post Number: 125 Registered: 10-2003 |
Folks, I can appreciate your frustration. But the home user with a cable modem is not our market. The reason that a small system is priced as it is, is because the typical customer of such a small system is a facility that tests mobile phones ... and wants a basic system to facilitate testing, and not to facilitate thousands of users. We work with a lot of handset manufacturers, and independent testing labs. And quite frankly, being able to support these customers is expensive. The type of technical issues that can arise are quite complex. It still might be possible to develop a stripped down home user version. But, to be honest, it doesn't seem like that big of a market, and it would divert us from other priorities. In fact, we have found it extremely puzzling that home users would have any need or desire for their own WAP gateway. But this viewpoint may be shaped by our having more of a European viewpoint. As best as I have been able to determine, the people who want a "home user" version of the WAP gateway seem to be customers of Verizon Wireless in the US. Apparently, Verizon charges so much per month ($5/month?) for WAP connectivity. However, they don't charge anything for using your phone for general internet connectivity without using their WAP gateway. If this is the case, it is a truly bizarre loophole that seems out of sync with the rest of the world (and is probably an oversight on the part of Verizon). In most cases, what we have seen is that mobile operators charge more for general internet connectivity than for connectivity via their WAP gateway. So, in most cases, it COSTS MORE to run your own WAP gateway than to use the operators. (That said, some operator WAP gateways are so painfully slow that there may still be some limited demand from very advanced users.) And, if we did offer a cheap WAP gateway at $25 (which converts to less than £15 in the UK), we'd be hard pressed to support such a product. Especially when so many US home users trying to set this up keep asking us how to configure their home routers to allow the connections through (argh...). But that said ... I sympathise with the plight of users who are trying to save $5/month and feel like they are so close. I'd be willing to help setup an alternative WAP gateway on a public IP address, for Verizon users only. The only concern that I have is that I wouldn't want it to be a completely open proxy. I'd want to lock it down so that it only accepted connections from devices on the Verizon network ... so I'd need to know the public IP address ranges assigned to those devices. Because of other commitments, this is not a top priority for me. But I do believe it would be easier for us to work to get a public WAP proxy alternative for Verizon users setup ... then to try to craft a product offering for people who are simply trying to save $5/month through a loophole that Verizon could close at any time. -- Kent Williams Now Wireless Support | |||
| Chris Unregistered guest |
Hi Kent, Thanks for replying. I didn't realize that we VZ customers are unique in this regard, and I see how this would be hard to justify (offering a low-end solution). Perhaps the way to do it would be to have the home version be "peer supported" at howardforums? That's where most people find out about it in the first place, and that's where questions are usually answered anyway. i.e. offer a home version for $25, 5 accounts max, and direct all support to howardforums. I'd buy it, and would help others figure it out. -- Chris | |||
| Chris Unregistered guest |
Also, a tip on security/userids with LG VX7000 from Verizon Wireless: You need to set password protection to keep the bad guys out, and prevent your machine from being used as somebody's evil proxy. The password can be changed on the phone, but not the userid. The userid is "a" phone number, but not necessarily the phone number that you see. In my case, my phone number was something completely different. How to find out? Turn off the userid check in nowwap. Access it with your phone, bring up a page, log off. Now check the directory where nowwap is installed - there will be log files. You will see the userid as a 10-digit phone number on each "GET" request. Now you can lock it down. -- Chris | |||
| Tony Unregistered guest |
I am one of those unfortunate VZW customers and have been trying to find a good gateway for a while. I think all VZW ip addresses start with 66.174 so maybe you could run a server with address 66.174.1.1 and mask 225.225.1.1? I don't know much about this, but that seems like a good solution to me | |||
| Anonymous |
I live in Canada and deal with the same problem here. As long as you don't use their proxy you can have free internet surfing but can't access their content like ring tones, wallpapers etc. So I set up my own proxy and direct my cell phone to it... free WAP. FYI.. With my phone any proxy software works for this task, you dont need any special software like this. | |||
| Anonymous |
To add to the above post I use Telus as my provider not verizon. | |||
| ottawa1 Unregistered guest |
Anonymous: Would you mind giving me some offline info on what you set up to use your own proxy and what kind of phone you have on telus? I am on motorola v710 and still trying to get it to work. | |||
| reader New member Username: Reader Post Number: 2 Registered: 04-2005 |
There isn't a good reason to try to use NowWap to get access to Verizon's internet service anymore. HoTTProxy will do it. It's free, opensource code for a gateway with some nice features. Download it here: http://www.hottproxy.org - Configure with a web browser - Easy install for Windows - phone number as user id and password protected - handle pesky firmware that wants to use "homepage" as the only homepage the phone will accept. The proxy server sees the number and sends it to the homepage of your choosing. Remember, the "free" internet service isn't really free...you still pay the minutes except on nights and weekends. | |||
