Thursday, November 22, 2007

Smart unblocking Smart 3G ports?

Corrupted Partition reports that Smart Communications is opening up the ports it was previously blocking in its 3G service which prevented some applications from working. So I figured it was time to try Fring again. Fring is a free mobile phone VOIP service which I managed to get working on Globe's Visibility service but not on Smart 3G.

So I went to the Fring site and installed it and managed to make a test call. It worked!

12 comments:

jazzbo said...

Yeah, Corrupted Partition ripped off my post from my Philippine Cyberspace Review yahoogroups mailing list (PH-Cyberview), LOL! At the time, SMART was opening up its ports in the the regular internet APN, so I was soliciting feedback from users to find out if there are still certain apps that aren't accessible so I could report it back to Smart's network team. Good news on FRING by the way. Let me know if you find any apps that still don't work. If you can identify the specific port used, even better.

Anonymous said...

I tried to login to Gtalk and it worked fine. But still having problem connecting to skype.

jazzbo said...

Must be a Fring setting. Skype for Windows works fine on a laptop connected via Smart 3G.

Anonymous said...

just tried it again. It works fine also for skype.

Christopher said...

Why they did unblock Smart 3G ports? Because they have launched the SmartBro Plug It service.

I did verify it last night and when i run nslookup on my pc, it did show the dns server as:

dns1.smartbro.net

See? :-)

I did also ask the smartbro hotline and they said thay now unblocked all ports. Now, almost all internet applications are usable!

For example, online games like Ran & Audition can now be played on smart3g connection.


-Chris

jazzbo said...

@Christopher - well yes and no... there really was a long term plan to open ports on the firewall for Smart 3G's internet APN. But the fact that Smart Bro's Plug-It was launched at the ongoing Ad Congress is entirely coincidental :) Besides Smart Bro's 3G product has its own APN called SMARTBRO.

Your nslookup apparently shows that Smart 3G now gets bandwidth from a connection to Smartbro apart from Infocom.

Robin Lim said...

Very interesting info you have been giving us, jazzbo. How about giving us the heads up next time you have news about a new product. We credit our sources :)

christopher said...

@jazzbo - thanks for the info.
did a few tests, speedtest.net now identifies my connection as Smart Broadband, before its infocom. I did the test at Kamuning QC area and San Juan area.

Thanks again for the info.

Anonymous said...

Read through the comments and I agree with most of them, you can use skype or any program at that but can't use it to download files like on lime wire or torrents. I tried to use fring on SE w960 and it won't use the smart 3g connection or gprs at that, it only uses wifi connection on the phone. Its still a puzzle for me to use fring on smart3g.

jazzbo said...

@ano, I use Fring all the time on my Nokia e61i connecting via Smart 3G. As far as I can tell all functions work (Skype, IM) though I mainly use it as a Twitter client nowadays.

As for downloads, I was never a limewire user but I can verify that Bit Torrent works just fine. I sometimes get faster downloads on 3g rather than DSL because 3G is completely open (for now at any rate), no throttling of torrent at the moment.

Robin Lim said...

@anonymous

Maybe it is a settings problem. I am able to use Fring on my E61i too.

Anonymous said...

wow internet in tagbilaran Bohol sucks big time, I can't get any decent service, they dont even have hardware to install! absolute crap, I mean really bad service man! I heard the smart port blocks where lifted, then why cant I use pop3 and smtp?