How device data is created and used

This page explains how to use our device data and the methods used to create it.

1 Vendors provide hardware, browser and operating system information.

Data Sourced

Data is also obtained from testing real devices alongside hardware, operating system and browser vendors published documents. Examples include; vendor specific databases, web sites, and user agent profiles.

Feature tests such as those provided by Ringmark are used to obtain additional information.

  Data flows to 51Degrees.mobi processing system.
2 Option to share usage information post HTTP request processing. 51Degrees.mobi data processing system.

Collation

Usage information from live deployments is combined with vendor sourced data using a mix of automated processes and manual data entry. Over 100,000,000 device headers are processed every week.

Device data is uploaded to cloud services.
3 Cloud services used to distribute device data.

Publishing

Our free Lite data is published to open source distribution portals such as Codeplex and Sourceforge. Paid for data is made available via a private cloud accessible to those who've purchased a licence key every week.

  Data is downloaded periodically by client deployments.
4 Device data held locally within client web site or server environment.

Deployment

The very small data file (typically under 2mb) containing the distributed device data is added to a web site using our APIs for .NET, C, Java and PHP. When enabled live deployments can feed usage information back to 51Degrees.mobi via a background process.

Paying customers can automatically update their local data file ensuring they're always using the latest version of device data.

    51Degrees.mobi tells web site about requesting devices.
5   End users access the web site.

Web Requests

When an HTTP request is received by the web site 51Degrees.mobi APIs will identify the device enabling a tailored response. For example; advertising images which work well on bigger screens are not as effective on a smaller handheld device

51Degrees.mobi device data can also be used to analyse web site access logs. See our publicly available Mobile Analytics system.