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I've been working on an android program. One portion of this program interacts with a webservice using a socket connection, sending files that on average are about 320 kB. The code ran on a desktop takes about 1.5 minutes to transfer. Using my android phone (Atrix) it seems to be taking about an hour. The phone is connected to wifi so I wasn't expecting it to take such a long time. My initial thought was to add a wifi lock, but it hasn't helped any.

I have the actual upload running in a async task (For reading I've made some of it pseudo)

@Override
protected void onPreExecute() 
{
    //Before starting the task show the uploading dialog
    uploadingDialog.show();

}
@Override
protected void onPostExecute(final Boolean success) {
    //After the task close the dialog
    uploadingDialog.dismiss();
}
@Override
protected Boolean doInBackground(String... params) {
    //Upload the files in the background

    //keep track of upload results
    boolean uploaded = true;
    boolean temp;

    //lock wifi on and stop the program from sleeping
    _keepOnStart();

    //Upload each file individually
    for(int i=0; i <= fileNameList.size()-1; i++){
        //this method does the actual writing to the socket/converts
        //the file to a byte array etc.
        temp = serverConnection.uploadWord(fileNameList.get(i));
        if(temp == false) {
            uploaded = false;
        }
    }
    _keepOnStop();
    return uploaded;
}
private void _keepOnStart() {
    if (_powerManagement == null) {
        _powerManagement = (PowerManager) ctx.getSystemService(Context.POWER_SERVICE);
    }
    if (_wakeLock == null) {
        _wakeLock = _powerManagement.newWakeLock(   PowerManager.PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK | PowerManager.ACQUIRE_CAUSES_WAKEUP | PowerManager.ON_AFTER_RELEASE,
                                                    "0 Backup power lock");
    }
        _wakeLock.acquire();
        WifiManager wifiManager = (WifiManager) ctx.getSystemService(Context.WIFI_SERVICE);
        if (wifiManager != null) {
            _wifiLock = wifiManager.createWifiLock("0 Backup wifi lock");
            _wifiLock.acquire();
        }
}

private void _keepOnStop() {
    if ((_wifiLock != null) && (_wifiLock.isHeld())) {
        _wifiLock.release();
    }
    if ((_wakeLock != null) && (_wakeLock.isHeld())) {
        _wakeLock.release();
    }
}

On the desktop version of the code I was just timing "serverConnection.uploadWord(fileNameList.get(i));" with a set file name. The method itself grabs the byte data from the file, creates a packet to send to the server and then sends it out.

Some of my manifest permissions:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.INTERNET"/>
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_NETWORK_STATE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.ACCESS_WIFI_STATE" />
<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.WAKE_LOCK" />

I'm wondering if anyone can provide an explaination for this. My assumption is that the device is using it's data connection, but at the same time only background data is allowed on the device, and I see no data use in the last 7 days.

(any and all help is much appreciated. If I'm unclear in anyway please let me know.)

sherwood
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  • Do you see the wifi icon in the status bar, or the mobile network one? If you have access to the server logs, check the IP address - assuming your wifi involves NAT, the phone on wifi should appear to the server to have the same IP address as a PC on your wifi accessing the server at the same point in time. – Chris Stratton Jun 12 '12 at 15:22
  • In the status bar I have both wifi and H+ shown. The database doesn't store the ipaddress of the devices. Unfortunately the logs written by the webservice aren't working. (or haven't been getting updated...) I do have access to /var/logs/messages though something in there might help. Checking to see if they have the same ip address is a great way of knowing if the phone is using wifi or data. Solid suggestion. – sherwood Jun 12 '12 at 17:39
  • Looking over the messages logs I don't see anything in there. Any other idea? or am I looking in the wrong log? – sherwood Jun 12 '12 at 17:55
  • I'm a bit surprised you have both icons at once. You might try hitting one of those show-your-ip websites from the browser on the device and from the pc. – Chris Stratton Jun 12 '12 at 17:57
  • The desktop I use has ip: 131.202.xxx.xxx - The phone ip shows as: 131.202.xxx.xxx – sherwood Jun 12 '12 at 18:12
  • I assume that is with the browser. If you have a shell account on the server, perhaps you can run netstat while one of these slow uploads is in progress. Or perhaps your wifi access point has detail monitoring capabilities? – Chris Stratton Jun 12 '12 at 18:29

1 Answers1

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For anyone looking at the same thing. It seems this is the correct approach. The immense amount of time was a derivative of a very inefficient encoding scheme that was done before sending the data. (It did not scale well)

sherwood
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