Issue
What is this wizardry?
My 3G indicator is grayed out. The android browser fails to load pages (I have been testing against Google), even by IP. The Facebook app, however, loads new posts, comments, pictures, everything. It does it without batting an eye.
There has to be something they are doing from a technical level to make this happen, right? I refuse to believe that the app is imbued with magic.
I have noticed one specific thing that happens every time: the GPS indicator will pop up, Facebook loads new stuff, then the GPS indicator goes away. Is the app somehow using GPS to establish a data connection?
If there is legitimate tech behind this, it would be valuable knowledge to have.
Further info:
- The facebook app allows you to request new stuff on-demand. This is also working while other apps are not.
- As far as I know, the App doesn't pre-load comments. If I click on a post, the comments load without a problem.
Solution
If the 3G indicator is grayed out, then it means you're on the edge (2G) network.
I know this very well. T-Mobile switches me over to edge network every time I hit my so-called monthly soft limit of 2 GB for my "unlimited" plan. Then of course, everything times out for me.
I used to remember a time when the edge network was still functional even for data, as long as it wasn't too much data, but that time is gone now.
Facebook is boosting its edge network with its own servers to speed the delivery of its photos according to Frank Frankovsky, a VP at the social networking company. Frankovsky outed his plans onstage at the structure 2012 event and explained how he hopes to scale.
I suppose this is because now companies like Facebook are paying for the privilege for the carrier to host their server on premises, so this gave a financial incentive for carriers like T-Mobile to accelerate the heavy traffic of Facebook photos on its edge network at the exclusion of the much lighter text traffic of non-Facebook applications (as you said it yourself, even the heavily optimized text traffic of Google doesn't go through, even thought all the Facebook photos and updates do).
UPDATE ON THIS TOPIC: (but with a different company)
A friend of mine just came back from a telecom conference in China and reports that the Chinese application WeChat was caught by China Mobile flooding their networks with ping requests to make sure their traffic got first priority.
According to my friend, this created a similar situation to the one I described to him with Facebook. The network bars indicator on his phone would be very low, or non-existent, and the WeChat application was the only application that would keep on working and transmit data (and yes, it's possible to have no bars showing on phones and have that phone still work for some things, because there is no standardization process for such network indicators, and it's up to the carrier/manufacturer to decide at what threshold of connectivity it will show zero bar, one bar, three bars, 3g, etc).
In mid-March, media reports said that Chinese telecom carriers, led by China Mobile, are likely to start charging Tencent for hosting WeChat.
Telecom operators claimed that the WeChat service consumed too much traffic on their wireless networks but returned few benefits.
Above is the only reference in the press I could find about this alleged incident with WeChat, but it doesn't confirm the entire story from my friend and I didn't search for very long. Perhaps there is a better article somewhere that goes into more details.
Answered By - Stephan Branczyk
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