MMS Notifications: SMS Sender Address & SMPP Connection Choice

Topic Keywords: operator MMSC, routing, SMPP

An interesting series of questions from our support mailbox:

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Hi Now SMS Technical Support,
Hope you are all keeping well.
Just had a question. Is there any way to define a sender ID for MMS where the leg out to the SMSC seems to have no Calling Party Address?

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Define a “Default Sender Address” under the properties for the SMSC connection.

SMS messages that are generated for MMS notifications are posted by the MMSC with a blank SMS sender address, with the intent that this default sender address is applied.

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Thank you for coming back to me. Would this only be used if the sender address was blank and will not override an existing sender address?

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I assume there are other applications sending SMS via this same server.

As long as “allow sender address override” is checked, the default value will only be applied for a blank/missing sender. If UNchecked, the default is applied for all.

 

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If I have multiple SMPP connections defined, how do I select a particular SMPP account for MMS notifications?

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This is a very good question. For the MMSC, we generally make an assumption that if a server is being used as an MMSC, then it is dedicated to that purpose.

Of course, that is not an absolute requirement…I am just explaining our original design intent.

That said, there is a way to force MMS notifications to a specific SMPP account.

Create an SMS User account named localsystem-mmsc … disable all login protocols so that the user cannot actually login … like this:

For the SMPP connection to be used for MMS Notifications only:

Add localsystem-mmsc to the preferred list…and make certain “Support any outbound message traffic” is checked.

When the preferred list contains one or more user accounts, the connection is preferred for that account and blocked for others. However, for these preferred accounts, normal routing rules still apply. So this combination routes all messages submitted by localsystem-mmsc (an internal name used by the MMSC) only via this SMPP connection, and blocks all others.

Important Note: On most versions of NowSMS, there is a bug where this technique only works if the “Default Sender Address” setting is not blank.