Android and iOS libraries for HAT 4G bonding.

Hybrid Access Technologies (HAT), are an Ipswich based company providing connectivity solutions. Offering a range of ways to keep Residential, SMB, Smartphones and IoT applications connected.

What was the problem?

The clients existing HybridLink mobile application while functional, had a number of issues. The logic implementing the Hybrid access technologies 4G bonding solution was tightly coupled with the application UI, making it difficult to rebrand the app or for companies to include the HybridLink functionality in their existing applications.

The application depended on a number of deprecated or legacy platform APIs. Usage of these APIs needed to be removed in favour of the current recommended approach on each platform.

Coderus solved the problem by writing a new library and a new app using the existing app as a reference alongside the specification.

Rapid development based on agile methodology. The development effort was broken into 2 week sprints. At the end of each sprint the latest version of the app would be released to the QA team. Once their testing had been completed the app would be made available to the client. Enabling them to see progress every 2 weeks and provide feedback to the Android and iOS teams on the work so far.

As part of the development workflow, unit and integration tests were written alongside the development of new features. These tests were run by our continuous integration server before new features could be introduced into the code base. Static analysis to check the code for potential bugs was also performed automatically, with any errors being reported to the developer.

Development and testing made use of Docker containers to simulate the server and router. Allowing for faster development without the need for physical hardware or cloud services. This also meant that everyone working on their project had their own isolated environment.

Emphasis on stability – the bonding and top-up service must be reliable. Extensive unit testing and system testing was employed to confirm this using simulated servers and routers running in Docker container.

Coderus delivered 4 things which are now part of HATs product range.

Native iOS and Android libraries implementing HAT’s packet relay technology.

Native iOS and Android applications which can be easily modified to match the brand guidelines for any company or used as a example for how the HybridLink functionality can be integrated to existing applications.

Both Android and iOS developed separate libraries containing the networking functionality, and easily rebrandable apps that met the client requirements.

All traffic being relayed across the mobile device is encrypted for security preventing data snooping.