When is it going to be possible to host a website and install a domain name server on a cell phone?

Question

My question is about hosting small personal websites which doesn't have a heavy traffic.

The biggest reasons why we (standard PC users) are paying for web hosting services are (please correct me if I'm wrong):

1. We don't keep our PCs turned on all the time.
2. Some/most of us don't have static IP addresses.

However, the modern cell phones are nothing but small PCs which are kept open all the time. If they also can have static IP addresses, why couldn't we be able to install a web server on them?

Is this technology available currently?
If yes, how widely is it used at the moment? And, when is it going to win against classical remote paid web servers? If no, when and how is it going to be available? What hardware (cell-phone type) are we going to need to use it?

Answer 1

You can already get a web server which runs on your SIM card called the Smartcard Web Server (SCWS) if you have a GSM phone. It runs in a part called the SIM application Toolkit which is a really cool area of your SIM card for running services. The web server is part of the OMA (Open Mobile Alliance) specifications so most (if not all) latest SIM cards support it. The web server can serve static and dynamic web pages and you can also run some Java applets.

The problem is that this was designed for your mobile operator to serve web pages to your handset and not really for someone to remotely connect to your SIM to view content. For example here in the UK O2 use this technology to provide a nice interface to o2 extra features on my phone. I can select from a HTML menu of traffic, football etc and then once I drill down through the small site running on my SIM card I get to a link which takes me off to a deep-linked site on the main o2 site.

I think there is a way to enable the SCWS to be public facing as there was a press release by Axalto (now Gemalto) in 2005 where they stated they have a SIM card running a personal blog for the user and the user could take a picture on their phone, press a button to decide to publish it on his/her blog. Then his/her friends can have immediate access to it from a PC or a mobile phone.

If you work out how to remotely view the SCWS then the next problem is how to write the files to your SIM card. Traditionally you would need some sort of SIM card reader/writer which use the ADPU protocol to talk to the card. However the mobile network who issued your SIM have remote access to the SCWS files on your SIM by issuing commands over the air to your SIM. This means there's a way to remotely update the files and after a bit of digging I think the security is based on a pre-shared key. Once you have the pre-shared key you can SMS your own handset with a type of SMS called an Over The Air SMS which re-programs the SIM to store new files for your web server. I can let you know the way to get your pre-shared key if you send me a direct message.

So in summary:

Is this technology available currently? - Sort of. You can run a web server on your SIM card and if you can open this to your public IP then you can run a web server straight from the SIM to the public.

How widely is it used at the moment? The operators use this quite a lot all over the world to serve you a slightly better value added service on your phone. I have never heard of anyone except Gemalto using this to serve public pages.

When is it going to win against classical remote paid web servers? That's a tough question. If you can get SCWS to work for public access then the next stage is an easy way to publish to the SIM. Once there's an easy way to publish to the SIM how do you get some sort of DNS system running as your phone is issued a dynamic IP from your network.

What hardware (cell-phone type) are we going to need to use it? Because this runs on the SIM and not the phone it is fully handset hardware independent, however SCWS is only available on more recent SIM cards (and not CDMA handsets).

More info here: http://smartcardwebserver.com/ and a good overview of how it works from Gemalto. Probably a good idea to read through the Resources section of the SIMalliance SCWS Working Group

Answer 2

The web server already exists. I'm not even going to look up a DNS server because that's not really significant & the latency, combined with the extreme unlikelyhood of a cell provider giving you a static IP, the likelyhood of you jumping on and off wifi changing IPs & the high probability that there's NAT and/or firewalling on the network. Web servers seldom run their own DNS anyways.

You could probably set up a tunnel from the phone to a fixed end-point that proxies traffic back to you but that still leaves you reliant on a 3rd party providing some sort of hosting service.

Answer 3

as far as I know you can't directly connect to a cellphone web server given all the reasons that Sean listed above. There were a Nokia app that I used to use in my old N95 which provided access to SMS, photos music, camera, etc. Without caring for you being behind a router, firewall or using WiFi or cell signal. But you needed to set an account previously.

That app was called http://www.mymobilesite.net/, I remember it was open sourced and offered in sourceforge.net but I was unable to find it again.

Answer 4

I am currently working in the same field for my PhD. So I think I can give you useful tips, though it is quiet long time since you ask the question.

It is very easy and low cost to have a mobile web server which can receive HTTP request, and reply accordingly. You can use Paw, KSWEB, i-jetty and many more for iOS and Android. Bear in mind that you do not need to keep your browser running if you want your mobile device to become a web server. So the web server does not consume much energy. While it is in background it can listen to http port (usually 8080) and receive any request at any time. But, the problem for now is that managing a real website on the tiny mobile device is not pleasant practice, especially when data is huge. One more problem is the ability to respond to many concurrent requests, since mobile devices still are not fully mature

The static IP also is challenging but has remedy. You are always connected either to cellular or Wi-Fi and can access the outside world of computing. So, even if your IP is not static, you can send the IP address to a central server using Wi-Fi or cellular when your IP changes and people can find you. What needed is simulating a specific type of DHCP server that keeps track of your mobile. However researchers are working on mobile IP and in near future lots of mobile IP problems will be solved. Hope it helps. You can continue the discussion if it interests you all.