Wednesday, August 15, 2007

BlackBerry Service Books - BES only

Here is a comprehensive list of the BES related service books available on a BlackBerry device:

Desktop [CMIME]: Send/Receive Email and Wireless Reconciliation
Desktop [SYNC]: Wireless Address Book
Desktop [CICAL]: Wireless Calendar
Desktop [ALP]: Address Lookup
Desktop [IPPP]: MDS Info for web browsing
Desktop [BrowserConfig]: MDS Info for web browser
Desktop [OTASL]: Over the Air Software Loading (4.2 device OS or later)
Provisioning [Provisioning]: Enterprise Activation


Note:

If you got something broke, then you may be able to quickly resolve it by deleting / undeleting a service book from the Blackberry device itself. This process regenerates / reconnects with the BES server in a magical way, requiring no server side intervention. Here are two common issues you can maybe resolve this way:

Wireless reconciliation such as read/unread marks, deletions not working, even though it says enabled from both server and device: Kill and Resurrect the Desktop [CMIME]

Address Book is not syncing, even though it says it is enabled from both server and device: Kill and Resurrect the Desktop [SYNC]

Friday, August 10, 2007

Comcast Blocking Lotus Notes Attachments over 2MB

This is not related to Domino BES in any way, but thought I would share. It appears that Comcast (at least in the Chicago area) has recently installed a blocking system in order to combat P2P traffic, which has the inadvertent effect of blocking Lotus Notes attachment uploads over 2MB.

Using Lotus Notes with the internet passthrough, via a home Comcast cable IP connection, and trying to send any message over 2MB will result in a bunch of IP reset (RSET) commands sent by the Comcast blocking system which blocks the message from being sent.

We have received 2 calls in the last week regarding this issue, and 4 other tech people with Comcast cable modems have confirmed that sending attachments over 2MB no longer works. The error received is the following:


"Remote system no longer responding: [Server name] mail.box"


If you try to send a message just under 2MB you might see the following:


"Mail was successfully submitted for delivery but a copy has not yet been saved in your mail file due to server not responding"

Has anyone else received complaints from home / laptop Notes users about this issue?

UPDATE: This appears to be confirmed by a posting at www.dslreports.com which discusses Comcast's use of a filtering product called "Sandvine":

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r18323368-Comcast-is-using-Sandvine-to-manage-P2P-Connections

Thursday, August 2, 2007

BlackBerry Date/Time Source Explained

You have three options of how to get the Date/Time synchronized automatically on the BlackBerry:

1. Set it to BlackBerry (the default), which gathers the information from the BlackBerry network, i.e. the RIM NOC.

There is some confusion about this, let's clear it up right now. Setting this to BlackBerry does not mean you have to set the date/time yourself on the BlackBerry. It does not mean that it gets the time from Desktop Manager when you cradle / sync. (that is so 2005 anyways, it's all wireless now baby!) It means that you get the date/time directly from RIM over the air, that's it. Here is the debug log lines from the device when you click Update Time:

guid:0x1295B4AADE149AFC time: Thu Aug 02 15:12:08 2007 severity:5 type:2 app:net.rim.timesync data:SynR
guid:0x1295B4AADE149AFC time: Thu Aug 02 15:12:08 2007 severity:0 type:2 app:net.rim.timesync data:Send
guid:0x1295B4AADE149AFC time: Thu Aug 02 15:12:10 2007 severity:0 type:2 app:net.rim.timesync data:Recv

2. Set it to Network, which gathers the information from the wireless carrier network, whether AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Rogers, O2, Vodafone, etc. Here is the debug log lines from the device when you do this:

guid:0x1295B4AADE149AFC time: Thu Aug 02 15:15:55 2007 severity:5 type:2 app:net.rim.timesync data:SynR

Interestingly, when you click Update Time with the Network setting, it just copies the date/time recorded under "Network Time" and "Network Date", instead of directly querying the carrier network. I assume this "Network Time" is regularly synced through some background mobile radio process.

3. Set if to Off, which does not gather any info. You set it and maintain it yourself.

Please note that, as I explained in my prior post, none of these settings will update the time zone you are in to the local time zone when you travel. None of them. Stop trying to change from Network to BlackBerry and back and clicking "Update Time" over and over again. It just won't do it.

Automatic TimeZone Switching for BlackBerry

The Motorola Q does it, the Treo does it, the Razr does it... and yet NO BlackBerry does it. What am I talking about? The seemingly obvious and basic cellular phone function of automatically switching the time zone for you while you travel.

This does not require internal GPS, as the other phones do not have/need it and yet have gotten their location / time zone directly from the network they attach to for years.

Now I have seen multiple discussions on the forums complaining/questioning about this feature, where "switchers" to BlackBerry just can't understand how to enable this feature on their BlackBerry... it is such an obvious feature that they think they are stupid and don't know how to get it to work, rather than the ridiculous notion that maybe this feature does not exist on the BlackBerry!

Arguments about setting the Date/Time source to Network vs. BlackBerry, the use of GPS, GPS not required, A-GPS vs internal GPS, it is just an endless circular conversation I have seen over and over with little resolution.

There have been justifications floated around that since the BlackBerry is a multifunction device, not just a phone, that the calendar items would be off whenever you traveled to a new time zone, causing mass confusion. For this reason they left it to the user to manually change the time zone.

This makes little sense to me, in that it might cause me mass confusion to have my calendar appointment times off from the local time I am in! In any case, RIM could even leave it to the user by default, but at least put it there as an option to turn on.

My theory on this, using no background information at all, is that RIM simply does not trust the wireless carrier networks to provide an accurate time zone setting from their networks. If one of the carriers passes out bad time zone data and messes up someone's entire calendar then RIM would be blamed. That is just a theory on my part, but that fear does not necessitate leaving out even the *option* of enabling this feature on the device.

So at WES a few months back I came armed with a couple of questions I was going to get answers to... one of them being this issue. The people I talked to - who granted were not the go to handheld development people - did not express any sort of justification for leaving the functionality off. In fact, they expressed the idea that "Yeah, that makes sense, we should look into enabling a feature like that."

There must be a back story I am missing here, there must have been some conversation about this at some conference table at some time in the 5 years since the first BlackBerry phone was released. Can someone enlighten me... please?