3 tips for app developers during the net neutrality debate

This sponsored post is produced by Neumob. 

After six months of deliberation, a U.S. federal court ruled in June that high-speed internet service can be defined as a utility, representing a major landmark in a debate that has raged for over a decade about freedom and regulation of the internet. However, the corporations that benefit from favoring private networks — like Comcast and AT&T — oppose ‘net neutrality’ since it would cut deeply into their profits, While the FCC won this round against the cable and telecom giants, with this much skin in the game, it’s unlikely that this issue will get resolved any time soon.

There have been calls from mobile operators for apps such as WhatsApp and Skype to ultimately fall under net neutrality rules as well, which may one day affect how those and other apps evolve, and how other new apps are developed to use network bandwidth in the first place.

As a developer in the here and now, instead of worrying about the distant outcome of the clash of the internet titans, here are three tips you can use today to ensure you’re making the most of the mobile and Wi-Fi bandwidth you’re given.

1. Avoid SDK fatigue

SDKs are playing an increasingly important role in the app ecosystem as developers experiment with various analytics, marketing, and advertising services on mobile. However, integrating too many SDKs can compromise performance, slowing things down and/or causing frequent crashes. Mparticle is an API that cuts down on SDK fatigue and its associated third-party calls, which can be a common reason for poor app performance. Serving as a data layer that manages app data, it enables developers to control how much and what data gets sent to partners and transforming raw data into useful audience segments. With the company’s single API, mobile developers can make sure that data doesn’t drag their app down.

2. App acceleration on the world’s networks

When data is transmitted between an app’s server and its user, that opens up opportunities for cloud latency, packet loss, retransmission, and congestion, which cause lags and slow load times. In addition, the TCP/IP protocol that the internet and CDNs rely on is over 40 years old and was not designed to handle the complexities of the modern mobile internet, which requires lots of requests/responses and “handshakes” just to deliver one object. Apps typically have 20-50 objects and third-party calls, and mobile makes this problem 4 times worse. Neumob’s technology addresses this problem by eliminating latency in each mobile delivery stage. Its SDK provides a mobile app with instant access to acceleration features, and can speed apps by 30 to 300 percent in countries around the world.

3. Global cell network testing

App developers build for global markets, but they don’t always have insight into how their product works in other countries. Mobile-first markets are filled with inconsistencies in bandwidth and connectivity. This can cause an app to break in one region but not another, creating a nightmare for developers who need to find and fix these problems.

Headspin provides real-world network metrics for testing around the world, allowing developers to easily test and monitor on 1152 global cell networks across 72 cities and 29 countries. Developers can instantly see how their app is performing in real-time and use this insight to proactively improve performance.

While various corporations, regulatory bodies, and interest groups duke it out over the fate of net neutrality, app makers can’t wait around to see which side will prevail. An app’s performance has a critical impact on its success, and every developer should seek out opportunities to ensure theirs runs as smoothly as possible.

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