Hoopla!

I’m loving my new Moto Q with it’s unlimited data plan but I’m wondering just how robust their service is.

I was using my Windows Mobile 5 version of Internet Explorer to check the mobile-formatted layout on one of my websites when I got curious and went looking for it’s IP in my log files. I thought I’d see what services were running on my phone:

$ ping [my_phone_ip]

PING [my_phone_ip] ([my_phone_ip]) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from [my_phone_ip]: icmp_seq=1 ttl=105 time=244 ms
64 bytes from [my_phone_ip]: icmp_seq=2 ttl=105 time=415 ms
64 bytes from [my_phone_ip]: icmp_seq=3 ttl=105 time=250 ms
64 bytes from [my_phone_ip]: icmp_seq=4 ttl=105 time=256 ms

--- [my_phone_ip] ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3104ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 244.003/291.695/415.518/71.624 ms

This showed moderate latency (1.2ms) and worked perfectly. On to a port scan:

$nmap [my_phone_ip]

Starting Nmap 4.03 ( http://www.insecure.org/nmap/ ) at 2006-06-08 16:18 PDT
Interesting ports on 1.sub-[my_phone_ip].myvzw.com ([my_phone_ip]):
(The 1655 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
PORT      STATE    SERVICE
22/tcp    filtered ssh
42/tcp    filtered nameserver
135/tcp   filtered msrpc
136/tcp   filtered profile
137/tcp   filtered netbios-ns
138/tcp   filtered netbios-dgm
139/tcp   filtered netbios-ssn
179/tcp   filtered bgp
445/tcp   filtered microsoft-ds
1023/tcp  filtered netvenuechat
1433/tcp  filtered ms-sql-s
1434/tcp  filtered ms-sql-m
1720/tcp  filtered H.323/Q.931
3306/tcp  filtered mysql
4444/tcp  filtered krb524
4899/tcp  filtered radmin
6101/tcp  filtered VeritasBackupExec
8000/tcp  open     http-alt
10000/tcp filtered snet-sensor-mgmt

Nmap finished: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 67.776 seconds

There are only two explanations for this: + My phone is very insecure and for some reason is running a LOT of strange services (unlikely) + My phone is routed through a proxy during web requests – a proxy that is running a LOT of services (likely)

Either way, it looks like Verizon’s data network is running MS software with boatloads of open ports. I’m particularly interested in why they’re running ms-sql server and mysql at the same time (presumably, they could have remapped the ports).

I played around a bit today with the software that ships with Windows Mobile 5 – and a lot of it is crap. The ‘tasks’ app that helps you keep track of todos isnt even as good as Rail’s ‘scaffold’ interface. The calendar app is basically useless (it doesn’t seem to sync up with any other calender) and it doesn’t have anything for reading rss.

All that though is mitigated by my understanding that this is a new OS and it’ll take a while for many good programs to show up – and by the competency of Mobile IE and Windows Media Player 10. I can watch streaming video – that’s awesome. Equally awesome is IE’s understanding of complicated session and history management. Case in point: I wrote this whole post in the standard Typo admin section entirely from my moto q.