2008

NowSMS Update Available for Test Release

Over the past several months, we have been working on some optimisations and performance enhancements to the core SMS message routing logic of the NowSMS product. These enhancements have been geared primarily toward supporting higher volume messaging environments with speed requirements of 400 messages per second and higher. These core performance enhancements are also of interest to other high...

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MMS Conversion to SMS With Web Link

When using the NowSMS MMSC, one of the MMS routing options is to convert an MMS message to an SMS message with a web link. This setting is most often used in operator MMSC configurations for one or more of the following configurations: 1.) Delivering an MMS message to a mobile phone that does not support MMS. (This is most frequently used in conjunction with auto-provisioning, where MMS...

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NowWAP, Radius Accounting and MSISDN headers

NowWAP was recently updated over the summer months to address an issue on heavily loaded systems where Radius packets could be lost. NowWAP uses these Radius accounting packets in order to determine the identity (phone number or MSISDN) associated with the device that is making a request. NowWAP includes the phone number in an X-MSISDN header when forwarding the request to a downstream content...

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NowSMS and Multitech CDMA Modem

NowSMS is primarily used for sending and receiving SMS and MMS messages in GSM environments. In GSM environments, there have been long established standards for special “AT commands” used for sending and receiving SMS messages using a GSM modem interface. We sometimes get questions about using NowSMS with operators that use CDMA technology. This question comes up most frequently in...

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OMA MMS Postcard conformance

An odd question came in via e-mail, and I thought it was worth noting here… Please confirm the below feature is supported in Latest version ofNowSMS: MMS postcard services Under “OMA MMS specs 1.3” is supported in “Jun 2008 NowSMS version”. What is an MMS postcard? MMS Postcard is a name for a collection of person-to-service/application services where multimedia...

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mBlox and NowSMS: Premium Rate SMS and OPPC

Here at NowSMS, we make it a point not to endorse any particular SMS service provider. The fact of that matter is that bulk SMS services are a volatile business, and we like our customers to have flexibility to choose and change SMS service providers that best fit their needs. That said, some SMS service providers have unique configuration attributes, and you need to apply special configuration...

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2-way SMS Command Speed and Performance (updated)

Before I get to the speed/performance issue that I want to highlight, I’ll review some of the basics of 2-way SMS in NowSMS and provide a few starter links for beginners who might have stumbled upon this post. The 2-way SMS facility of NowSMS is designed to facilitate the processing of inbound, or mobile originated, SMS messages. When NowSMS receives an SMS message, it will evaluate the...

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MMS MM7 SOAP Problems with Vodafone UK

If you’re trying to use NowSMS to interface with the Vodafone UK MMSC over MM7, you may be experiencing a problem where the Vodafone MMSC is reporting SOAP errors, indicating that the SOAP headers cannot be accessed. This appears to be a bug in their MMSC. The Vodafone UK MMSC does not like the MIME boundary text that NowSMS generates. While the MIME boundary used by NowSMS correctly...

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SMS Retry Error Handling with UCP/EMI and CIMD

There’s a great post that discusses how NowSMS handles message retries in SMPP environments at the following link: https://nowsms.com/smpp-error-code-handling-in-nowsms However, to date, there hasn’t been anything written that goes into as much detail regarding how NowSMS handles message retries in UCP/EMI or CIMD2 environments. The short answer is that, by default, if NowSMS receives...

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SMPP Connection Types – Sender, Receiver, Transceiver

When making a connection to an SMPP server, there are three different types of connections that can be supported. A “sender”, or “send only”, connection is allowed to transmit messages only over the connection, it cannot receive any messages. (Some SMPP servers will still deliver SMPP delivery receipt messages over a “sender” connection.) A...

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MMS Message Retries, Expiration, Conversion to SMS

There was a good simple question posted on the NowSMS Discussion Board. We are using the MMS Gateway service. For how long does the MMS contentstays in the system?Can we set a specific time for the message expiration?We also use the option of converting the mms to SMS with web link. Forhow long is the content stored in the platform? As I replied to that question, I realized that there are a...

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Routing SMS messages to a Specifc SMSC Route

If you need control over routing to particular SMSC connections, the logic in NowSMS works like this: When NowSMS routes a message, it first looks to see if a sender address has been specified for the message submission (normally there is not a sender address specified, unless either you submitted the message via HTTP and specified a “Sender=” parameter, or a “Forced Sender...

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One WAP Gateway for both MMS and Browser Data

Smaller mobile operators often ask us how to deploy a single WAP Gateway (or WAP Proxy if you prefer that terminology, as our marketing folks seem to prefer) to deploy both MMS traffic and general browser traffic. Of course, technically there is no reason that a single WAP Gateway can’t support both types of traffic. So if you’re not a mobile operator, you’re probably wondering...

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GSM Modem CMS Error Code List

When sending and/or receiving SMS messages with a GSM modem, if an error occurs, the modem will report a “+CMS ERROR” with a numeric code to indicate the reason for the problem. These error codes are defined in the ETSI GSM specifications, specifically GSM 07.05, GSM 03.40 and GSM 04.11. I posted a list of CMS ERROR codes on the NowSMS discussion board almost 5 years ago at...

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SMSC Speed Limits

In a perfect world, we’d all be able to send SMS messages as fast as we wanted. But the reality is that there is a combination of commercial and technical limitations throughout the message distribution chain. NowSMS has commercial limitations where outbound message delivery is throttled at a per minute or per second license limit. Individual SMS service providers have similar limits that...

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Migrating to a Multiple Server MMSC, WAP Gateway, or NowSMS Gateway

The recent postings about multiple server redundant NowSMS or NowWAP configurations have generated a lot of questions from existing customers about how to migrate an existing installation to a multiple server configuration. Migrating an existing NowWAP installation to a multiple server configuration is the easiest task to explain. That’s because there is no shared data storage requirement,...

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NowSMS in Fault Tolerant or Redundant Load Balanced Environment

For many configurations it is desirable to install NowSMS on multiple servers in order to achieve fault tolerance and/or improved throughput and performance. NowSMS offers extreme configuration flexibility to facilitate these requirements. This document outlines the multi-server configuration options that exist for NowSMS v2008.06.03 and later versions. Preferred Solution for Load-Balanced...

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NowWAP in Fault Tolerant or Redundant Load Balanced Environment

For many configurations it is desirable to install NowWAP on multiple servers in order to achieve fault tolerance and/or improved throughput and performance. The only special consideration when running NowWAP in this type of clustered configuration is if NowWAP is configured to use RADIUS accounting to supply MSISDN information to one or more content servers, such as an MMSC. This document...

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MMSC MM4 Interconnection Basics

MM4 is the standard protocol that is defined for connecting together two or more MMSCs. MM4 is an SMTP based protocol, meaning that the MM4 protocol defines how MMS messages are encapsulated for delivery over the SMTP protocol. In NowSMS, to define an MM4 interconnection, it is necessary to define two components. The outbound connection to the other MMSC is defined under “MMSC...

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2-way SMS: Multiple operators with the same shortcode

This configuration issue comes up quite a bit. Let’s say that you are connecting directly to multiple mobile operators, and your service is using the same short code on each operator. When customers send a message in to your short code, you want to make sure that the reply is sent back via the same mobile operator as which the message was received. Additionally, if that message from the...

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