Help Center

Makani Mobile Web Basics

1. What is Makani Mobile Web Platform?
2. How does Makani Mobile Web Platform works?
3. Does Makani Mobile Web Platform speed up web enterprise apps and web videos?
4. *NEW* How does Makani speed-up web videos?
5. Does Makani Platform accelerate only web-based applications?
6. How secure is web access using Makani Mobile Web Platform?
7. *NEW* How does Makani handle geo- load balancing, geo- directional IP, auto-failover, auto-recovery and hot-standby?
8. Can I see the (quantitative) benefits using the Makani Mobile Web Platform?
9. Can I use Makani Mobile Web Platform with a dial-up connection?
10. How does using Makani Mobile Web Platform affect my privacy?
11. What are Makani Mobile Web Platform 's system requirements?
12. Can I run a browser other than Internet Explorer or Firefox?
13. What should webmasters and content providers know about Makani Mobile Web Internet Platform?
14. *UPDATED* Does Makani dynamically reformat online content, inserts or replaces advertisements?
15. Can Makani offer transparent access to handset vendors, network operators and service providers?
16. How do I stop using Makani Mobile Web Internet Platform?
17. Can I purchase Makani Mobile Web Platform as an (hardware) appliance product?
18. Can I purchase Makani Web Platform as a software or a virtual appliance product?

Makani Mobile Web Basics

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1. What is Makani Mobile Web Platform?

Makani Mobile Web "Platform-as-a-service" is a Makani Networks product that makes web access significantly faster, more efficient, and secure. Makani Web Platform is easy to use; all you have to do is point your web browser proxy or Access Point Name (APN) settings to mob.makdns.net (Port: 8080), and from then on web pages will download in a snap. For transparent access to Makani Mobile Web Services, please Contact Us.

Mobile Web Platform-as-a-service is currently only available for mobile end-users accessing our service from North America. We plan to offer our services in other regions of the world in the future.

We welcome suggestions for further improvement.

2. How does Makani Mobile Web Platform-as-a-Service work?

Makani Mobile Web Platform incorporates the revolutionary Makani Latency Buster Architecture™ to make web access significantly faster, more efficient and secure.
The single-point solution implements a number of strategies:

• Compressing content, both fixed and variable fidelity (including videos), before sending it to your mobile or PC.
• Accelerating and optimizing transport protocol connections over slow, fluctuating and high-latency channels.
• Tracking and proactively anticipating users' web activity and then adapting both the connection and content to reduce delays.
• Dynamically scanning users' web traffic for any worms, viruses, trojans, etc., and if detected, immediately blocking the connection.
• Intelligently Storing or Caching copies of frequently looked at pages to make them quickly accessible.
• Prefetching certain pages in advance.

3. Can the Platform speed up web enterprise apps and web videos?

Yes. Makani Mobile Web Platform not only speeds up web pages or other web-based enterprise applications, but also attempts to speed up large web downloads such as PDF, PPT, Word, Spreadsheets, MS-Excel files etc. by compressing them. In addition, Makani Web Platform dynamically re-encodes and re-shapes all types of online video content, e.g., FLV, MPEG, MPEG4, WMV, 3GPP files etc., whenever possible, leading to major web video speed up.

4. How does Makani speed-up web videos?

Makani's Web Platform performs site-specific dynamic re-encoding and compression of web videos. For instance, if the downloaded video intercepted by Makani's Web Platform is less than certain (predefined) size, then the video is re-encoded and compressed in real-time and shipped to the end-user. The delay in downloading and re-encoding the video and then shipping it to the user is hardly perceptible to the end-user. For example, web sites that offer their web videos in small-size mobile network friendly video file formats perform well and offer decent compression and video data reduction.

On the other hand, "streamed" content from web video providers not only source "huge" videos but also "rate-limit" their video servers thereby significantly increasing the total time to download the full video content. Intercepting and re-encoding partially streamed video content for huge web videos is not feasible today due to many practical reasons, amongst others, including massive computing and I/O requirements, fragmentation of video codecs (e.g., H.263/H.264, MPEG1/2/4, VP6, Sorensen), diverse video container formats (e.g., FLV, WMV, MPEG/MPEG4, ASF), and competing economic interests among content providers. Unless today's stakeholders agree on a common standards-based video codec and video container format that also enables in-network dynamic re-encoding and optimization of videos, mobile operators will have absolutely no incentives in allowing these content providers to source huge videos over their networks. After all, sourcing huge videos over mobile networks is *grossly* unfair to other mobile data and mobile VoIP users.

5. Does Makani Platform accelerate only web-based apps?

No amount of compression or acceleration will solve all the problems over wireless links. The dramatic differences between wireless and wireline link characteristics must to be addressed with an effective and realistic QoS and bandwidth allocation model that enforces practical business priorities at multiple levels. Besides optimizations at the transport level and fine-grained QoS control at the application-level, Makani implements network level QoS with a novel resource abstraction called Virtuals Channels™. Upto six Virtuals Channels™ can be dynamically instantiated: Customised QoS policy templates ensures that interactive and internet-critical control traffic are priorized first using high priority Virtual Channel. Voice and other real-time apps are similarly prioritized while ensuring that Web and business-critical enterprise applications get the major share of the link bandwidth (whenever they need it) even during periods of excessive app or resource contention. Finally, email (e.g., IMAP, SMTP) and bandwidth-hogging P2P applications get the remainder but never starve; per-user and application-specific rate control ensures the implementation of cost-effective and consistent QoS management policy. And by quickly looking inside the payload at the network level, Makani Platform also differentiates and then prioritizes one enterprise application traffic (e.g., Citrix) over another (e.g., SAP).

6. How secure is web access using Makani Mobile Web Platform?

Two aspects of security are critical: securing the Makani Platform itself and securing the data that traverses the device. Makani Web Platform dynamically scans users' web traffic and immediately blocks a web connection if it detects a worm, virus, trojan, spyware, malware, adware or other malicious content. The scanner engine database consists roughly half a million signatures of viruses, worms, trojans, malwares, spywares, adwares, etc. and is updated daily. Makani Mobile Web Platform also protects against other common known web attacks: cross-site scripting, cookie/form tampering, buffer overflow, phishing, OS command injection and web protocol validation. Makani maintains blacklists that ensures isolation from online threats. Makani NetSensor engine further proactively detects and prevents unwanted intrusion attempts. Access to Makani Mobile Platform can be (optionally) secured using either SSL-VPN or IPSec-VPN. IPSec algorithms 3DES/AES ensures strong packet encrytion and MD5/SHA1 for packet authentication with dynamic key exchange. The Makani Web Platform can also be configured to talk either single-sided (client) or dual-sided (client+target) HTTPS in "trusted" SSL VPN mode by first decrypting, optimizing, and then accelerating users' encrypted web connections. Makani Mobile Web Platforn is one of the most secure platform for Mobile Web access.

7. How does Makani handle geo- load balancing, geo- directional IP, auto-failover, auto-recovery and hot-standby?

Three new products from Makani - MakDNS, MakMON and MakHEAL - enable geo- load balancing, geo- directional IP, auto-failover, auto-recovery and hot-standby. A smart infrastructure using MakDNS, MakMON, and MakHEAL products from Makani Networks is currently deployed across three continents and is capable of handling thousands of servers and more than 1 billion unique queries per day. The smart infrastructure in effect enables Makani Networks to rapidly deploy highly reliable, available, and scalable services in thousands of servers located around the globe.

8. Can I see the (quantitative) benefits using the Makani Mobile Platform?

Yes. Makani Mobile Web Platform provides detailed statistics of its benefits.

• For Makani sample DEMO videos, see Makani Video Demos.
• For Makani appliance webGUI configuration screenshots, see Makani webGUI screenshots.
• For content compression and web speed up, see Content Analytics.
• For user access and cache content statistics, see Access Statistics.
• For video transcoding and reshaping statistics, see Video Statistics.
• For web security analysis and secure web traffic scanning, see Makani ThreatCenter.
• For dynamic pop-ups, banners, and ads replacement/insertion, see Makani AdsNetwork.

9. Can I use Makani Mobile Web Platform with a dial-up connection?

Although designed specifically for mobile users, Dial-up users may see significant improvement, as Makani Mobile Web Platform is designed to speed up web access for all connections.

10. How does using Makani Mobile Web Platform affect my privacy?

Makani Networks receives much of the same kind of information you currently send to your ISPs when you surf the Mobile Web:

• Makani will receive your requests for unencrypted pages (those with "HTTP:", not "HTTPS:", at the beginning of the URL), along with information such as the date and time of the request, your IP address, and computer and connection information
• If you enter personally identifiable information (such as an email address) onto a form on an unencrypted web page, some sites may send this information through Makani. We do not cache cookies only the payloads in order to improve performance
• In order to speed up the display of pages generally, Makani Mobile Web Platform may store copies of web pages, including prefetched pages that you did not visit, in the shared Makani Mobile Web Platform cache. This is separate from your browser's cache, which only identifies pages that you actually visited.

The policies for the Makani Mobile Web Internet Platform, like those for Makani Networks Inc., uphold the highest level of integrity and respect for our users' information. Makani will never rent or sell a user's personal information to third parties without a user's explicit permission. To learn more about our privacy practices, please see the Makani Mobile Web Internet Platform.

11. What are Makani Mobile Web Platform 's system requirements?

To use Makani Mobile Web Platform, your mobile or computer must have a standard operating system. Makani Mobile Web works with Internet Explorer 5.5+ or Firefox 1.0+ browsers.

12. Can I run a browser other than Internet Explorer or Firefox?

Yes: please configure your browser proxy or access point name (APN) settings to mob.makdns.net:8080 for all Web connections.

13. Does Makani offer transparent access to handset vendors, network operators and other services providers?

Sure. Transparent access requires traffic to be redirected from the operators' network to our own network. In general, a (secure) tunnel can be provisioned that "tunnels" network traffic from the operators' network to our own network. Alternately, operators' traffic can be transparently redirected to APN (Access Point Name) mob.makdns.net (Port 8080). For detailed information on how network tunnels are provisioned or transparent traffic redirection, please Contact Us.

14. What should webmasters and content providers know about Makani Mobile Web Platform?

If you're a webmaster or content provider interested in learning how Makani Mobile Web Internet Platform with your site, please see our Mobile Web FAQ.

15. Does Makani Mobile Web reformats online content, inserts and replaces advertisements?

We are continually refining our network ad-replacement and ad-insertion technology; Makani plans to introduce dynamic ad insertion and replacement in the future through the Makani AdsNetwork.

16. How do I stop using Makani Mobile Web Platform?

Reconfigure your browser proxy settings for HTTP connections.

17. Can I purchase Makani Mobile Web Internet Platform as an (hardware) appliance product?

Yes. For further information please contact sales@makaninetworks.com.

18. Can I purchase Makani Web Platform as a software or a virtual appliance product?

Yes. Contact sales@makaninetworks.com.