How To Turn Your Mobile Phone into a Web Server

By: Gerald Cortez

Mobile phones has come a long way, from those bulky analog car phones, to state of the art sleek multimedia enabled phones that doubles as a web browser, video cam, digital cam, and who knows what else will come. Mobile phones has become fast and powerful in terms of processing, that it is already comparable to web servers in the late 80's, but with high capacity storage of up to 4GB in multimedia phones.

Nokia has open some of its codes at Open Source Nokia to let developers produce software that will run in Symbian OS. This step has triggered lots of new concepts that may be later integrated in future models of Nokia Phones. Such concept is the Mobile Web Server.

Although the concept of a mobile phone web server has no intended use yet, this step by step guide demonstrates the capability of Apache Httpd, and 3G/GPRS technology to run a mobile web server.

What Do We Need?

> At least a Nokia 6630 (or any higher model with Symbian 60 OS) phone, I used a Nokia 6680 phone
> A network/mobile provider with GPRS or better yet, a 3G network
> Phyton for Symbian 60 OS that can be downloaded here
> Windows 2000 or XP
> Nokia PC Suite which is available here
> Data cable to connect your mobile phone to your PC
> The Racoon client bundled with the ported Apache Httpd from here
> A test account at openlaboratory.net to bypass network firewall that can be requested from here


What's next?

> Wait for an email confirmation on your requested account..
> If you already have an account, install the Phyton for Symbian 60 preferably in the memory card.
> Install the "racoon.sis" to your memory card
> Since we are using the memory card, install "httpdconf_mc.sis" (automatically to memory card).. otherwise, if phone memory is being used, then use "httpdconf_pm.sis" instead.
> Install webcontent.sis to memory card, too (location should be same as with the previous 2 sis file)

Phyton and Racoon installed

Setting Up The Web Content

You may now grab your favorite HTML editor to create your index file. You may want to create a link to a pre-made webpages named "concepts.html" (demonstrates functionalities such as webcam/remote camera capabilties), "leavemessage.html" and "sendim.html" both of which are messaging capabilties. After creating your "index.html" file, you may then save it at "E:\apache\htdocs\" folder together with the other pages. Use your Nokia PC suite to transfer files between your PC and phone. You may also use a memory card reader, just remember where the apache folder is located.

The apache folder in the memory card

After finishing your index file, you may want to configure "httpd.conf" to enable browsing the root folder, or password protecting your directories, etc. You may add a username and password by editing the "users" file. These two files are located at "E:\apache\conf\" folder.

the configuration files

Setting Up The Web Server

After all your web content are finished, you may now then configure your web server settings. Use your account that you requested from openlaboratory.net to input your indetifier and password for the gateway. After setting up the gateway, you are now ready to connect to the internet and run your web server.

configuring the web server

selecting the access point

web server running

browsing the phone's memory card from a desktop PC via internet

monitoring the server

send an instant message to phone

the website message when the server is off