Hi Quinn You could be right on the misunderstanding of modern networking. I wrote my first socket code in early 1990s. But for this app I'm keen to use the most up-to-date solution possible. Yes. Apple platforms only. Yes. Two separate users... Yes. Two separate devices... which could be in completely different continents. My app doesn't really justify TCP so I chose UDP (for speed, and because TCP ended up needing an NWProtocolFramer due to it combining multiple messages together.) Currently I am only targeting iOS.

Thanks

Thanks Quinn for the explanation. It all makes sense. My app is not a game, but in simple terms it requires one user to send a small amount of data to another user (possibly remote), on a regular basis (maybe every 5-10 seconds?). I have a working prototype which uses Google Firebase to transfer this data via "documents" in an online database, but of course this has an associated cost. My hopes were that a socket (or some other mechanism) could provide this functionality for free. The solution doesn't have to be serverless, but should be as cost free as possible.

Hi Quinn, I feel you were gently guiding me towards GameKit and the Game Center, so I did some research to see if I could go this route. The good news is that Game Center does EVERYTHING I need, (Send/receive of data, Push Notifications, find and invite friends, nearby users, etc, etc, etc...). BUT My app is not a game. If I could hide all the Game Center parts, we would be good to go. I know I can change the Notifications, and ViewControllers, but the users will still be forced to have a Game Center account and log into it. I feel that Game Center is an unnecessary distraction for my users. Is there an alternative, simply using the Apple Sign In? That would be awesome. Thanks again.

Thanks again Quinn. I'll have a look into CloudKit, and see if I can get it working in my App. I'll feed back to you once In know.

Hi Quinn, I can't believe that 2 months have passed, BUT... I have implemented a CloudKit solution, and it works. I even went as far as to use the new CKSyncEngine to make my code even simpler. It is a lot harder to set up than Google Firebase :-0 but is does have the advantage that it is free, which was initially my main concern. In terms of performance: I can see (in development mode so far) a delay of 2-3 seconds from the data showing up on the master device, before it shows up on the remote devices. Whilst not anywhere as fast as a socket connection, it works robustly, AND it is good enough for my use case. So I'd like to thank you for your guidance. Thanks to you, I feel I am well on my way towards understanding and using modern internet networking :-) Cheers