WNS or MPNS for Push notifications?

Question

I am creating an app that makes constant use of push notifications as means of communicating between users (messaging of sorts). This whole ordeal seems to drive me a bit nuts, so here are few questions I could not find an answer to.

1. I found mentions that non-authenticated web services (ones without certificate) are throttled to 500 push notifications per day per subscription in MPNS. However, I could not find such mentions anywhere when trying to find limitations regarding WNS. Do these limitation/requirements exist for WNS?

2. At best, I am sending quite many push notifications (i.e. 1-3 per second per active user). I understand that this might eat battery life out of smallest devices (my targets are Windows 8 devices in general), but so does polling the server for updates. My approach has the advantage of being very responsive, but I am not sure push (raw) notifications are meant for communication such as this. Are there any alternatives? Basically I have ditched the persistent connection option due to the nature of mobile networks (connections can drop out)

3. What is the actual difference between these two?

Perhaps I'm slightly confused with the terminology and some other sources suggested that I can't even go around MPNS, but doesn't WNS do exactly that?

I'm not sure if this is the right media to post these questions, but I hope someone out there can shed some light into this.

Devil

Answer 1

1. The 500 push notifications per day per subscription in MPNS only apply is you don't authenticate your service calls to MPNS. If you authenticate, there won't be any limits.

2. Such a high frequency doen't seem an appropriate use for push notifications for mobile devices, but I'm not sure about the alternatives.

3. WNS is the push notifications service for Windows 8 store applications. MPNS is the push notification service for Windows Phone devices. The service you should use depends on which OS you are targeting.

Pic

Thank you! Are you aware of similar limits to WNS (the daily limits). Basically my target is Windows 8 devices including PCs, tablets and phones. Does that mean I have to use separate solution for WP8 or is MPNS WP7 solution and WNS for all W8 devices? Also, when you say it's probably inappropriate, is it merely because of the battery power issue or is my approach flawed by design? Something I looked into recently was notification hubs, that might be a partial solution for bundling up those pushes. It would still mean a lot of notifications being sent, but they could be bundled up. – Devil

MPNS is for all Windows Phone devices (WP7, WP8). WNS is only for Windows 8. You'll have to use both if you target for both operating systems. Push notifications for mobile apps are not supposed to be sent in such a high frequency. They are meant to notify the user of an app about some update in the app, and the user doesn't want to get many messages from the same app in a short period of time. – Pic

Alright! Thank you very much! Some practical test showed that wins will throttle messages very quickly so this approach is not even possible. – Devil

Please not that this information was fully correct in 2013, but nowadays is outdated. Details in my answer. – Trigonous

Answer 2

With the release of Windows Phone 8.1, WNS is now available for Windows Phone, too. Since convergence is the goal, prefer the new WNS API. The MPN API is still available for backwards compatibility though. The MPN layer in WP8.1 is actually a shim built on WNS. For more details, watch the Build 2014 session "Notification Platform Development on Windows".

Trigonous

Answer 3

You should use WNS, since Windows Phone 8.1 is using also this method for Universal Apps. WP 8.1 Silverlight Apps could use both.

Cantle