Longtext messages

Longtext messages SearchSearch
Author Message
john
New member
Username: Syirrus

Post Number: 6
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Tuesday, March 27, 2012 - 10:27 pm:   

I currently having troubling figuring out a problem I'm having with a few users, not receiving text messages.

Setup:
Computer running windows 2008 server
NowSMS installed
Wavecom quad band modems (they seem to work perfectly)
SMS over circuit switching

When I look in the SMSOUT log, I see that the particular people who are complaining about not receiving the SMS message are there. That is NowSMS has logged the message as being sent to them. Here is the message:

2012-03-26 10:44:21,SAR-16104251XXX-d9-2-1.req,127.0.0.1,16104251XXX,OK -- COM3:,SubmitUser=user;Binary=1;UDH=050003D90201;Data=AE4369F528CC6E78D737DB0C0F8 FD71B9F0E242DDBD3F3F4DB0DA2BF41E770BB0C9A8FD165729D5D768182F7701E740EB7CBA0B71B3 4ADBBC9E13C0B1484CBD36C506C4E0F819A6F791994769BDFF276989E7EBB41F43768FC6E975D203 8BB1C9E9741EDB07C0DCABFEB72D038CC2EBBC961F9DC05A296F17490383C5E83D26650FE5D070D8 3


2012-03-26 10:44:24,SAR-16104251XXX-d9-2-2.req,127.0.0.1,16104251XXX,OK -- COM3:,SubmitUser=user;Binary=1;UDH=050003D90202;Data=9C272A08CE0EE75D

As you can see, the message is divided into two parts, because it’s a long message?

Q1: Why is this message divided into 2 parts (This is 1 SMS message in English)? It should have been less than 160 characters, but I’m not sure because I can’t read the encoding.

Q2: How can I stop messages from being divided into two parts?

Q3: Why didn’t this person (blackberry) receive a message, when I myself did receive the message (iPhone)?
Des - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Desosms

Post Number: 3876
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - 03:11 pm:   

Hi John,

1.) I'm guessing that this message was 162 or 163 characters.

It is tough to tell because of the way NowSMS logs longer messages. We changed that behaviour a few years ago (early 2009), so that the messages are logged in text format instead. If you were running a more recent version of NowSMS, it would be easier to decode that text.

There are a few characters that require 2 characters when being sent out ... perhaps one or more of them were used:

^ { } \ [ ] ~ | €

I did a quick decode, and I can see that the message was 160 characters, but it included [ and ], which pushed it to 162 characters.

Q2. Other than keeping it under 160 characters, there is no way. We don't have an option to force truncation.

Q3. That's a good question. It's probably more of a mobile operator issue than a device issue.

What mobile operators are the modem, iPhone and Blackberry on?

Can the iPhone send a message longer than 160 characters to the Blackberry?

When a message is sent from a subscriber of one operator to another in North America, segmentation headers (which allow the message to be reassembled by the receiving device) are typically discarded, and the recipient usually just receives two parts as separate messages. Perhaps there is some other problem with long message connectivity between these operators?


--
Des
NowSMS Support
john
New member
Username: Syirrus

Post Number: 7
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Wednesday, March 28, 2012 - 06:16 pm:   

Des,

Thank you for responding quickly. The carriers are Verizon. So perhaps it is a combination of handsets, and carrier interoperability with message segmentation. Is there anything else you can think of?

John
john
New member
Username: Syirrus

Post Number: 8
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 10:55 am:   

Des,

I also have another question. After shortening the messages so that it was no longer segmented the user still reports not getting the message even though it is in the SMSOUT clear as day. Is it common for messages to appear in the SMSOUT log with an okay status and then not be delivered? When I send test messages to myself I get them ALL. Are there any statistics or rules of thumb for how reliable longcode messages delivery is?

Sorry for the rant.

John
Des - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Desosms

Post Number: 3879
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Thursday, March 29, 2012 - 03:56 pm:   

Hi John,

The OK status means that the modem has indicated that the message has been accepted by the network for sending.

If you just send out an individual message to that user, does it get sent?

Assuming that also fails, what if you remove the SIM from the modem and put it into a phone. Try sending a message to that number with the SIM in a phone.

I'm assuming that all of these attempts are going to also fail, meaning that there is something else going on. Something in between the network on which the modem is connected (I assume it is not Verizon, while the iPhone and BlackBerry are both Verizon).

Hmm ... you say it's a BlackBerry ... maybe this person is running an app that blocks SMS unless it is from a known contact. Actually ... that is pretty easy to do on a BlackBerry: http://helpblog.blackberry.com/2011/11/blackberry-message-block/

--
Des
NowSMS Support
john
New member
Username: Syirrus

Post Number: 9
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Saturday, June 16, 2012 - 01:36 am:   

Des,

Thank you again for you response. I have still been battling this issue with Verizon users intermittently receiving text messages. I did learn that there were some issues with iPhone's on Verizon's network, however some of the people report using Androids. I have been keeping a log of people not receiving messages and they seem to be localized to Verizon. They GSM networks we use for sending out messages are T-mobile and At&t. It doesn't seem to matter which network. I have also used different modems just to make sure it wasn't a bad modem to no avail. Do you have any other ideas what could be causing this issue? These users show up in the Outbound SMS log, but they report not receiving the message.

John
Des - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Desosms

Post Number: 3997
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Monday, June 18, 2012 - 10:03 pm:   

Hi John,

Is it still only messages that get sent out as multipart (long) messages that are having problems?

When a message is not received by Verizon subscribers, do all Verizon subscribers seem to be affected, or do some receive the message?

Do problem messages seem to have any similarities? (I'm thinking perhaps a particular non-alphanumeric character that might be causing confusion at the SMS interconnection link between the mobile operators?)

I can only figure that the messages are being blocked or dropped for some reason at the SMS interconnection link between the mobile operators. Because the interconnection link to Verizon has to convert from GSM to CDMA format, it is likely to have more quirks than a GSM to GSM transfer. That's why I'm suspecting it has a bug dealing with a particular character, or a length related issue.

--
Des
NowSMS Support
john
New member
Username: Syirrus

Post Number: 10
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Monday, June 25, 2012 - 05:44 pm:   

Thank you for your response. If there is a problem with CDMA and GSM inter-connectivity, I would think it would be a much larger issue for carriers being that millions of people text between carriers in the US. Could be NowSMS? Did you have problems like this with any particular version of NowSMS? Also, is there a CDMA modem that you could recommend that is shielded from EMI that works with NowSMS?
john
New member
Username: Syirrus

Post Number: 11
Registered: 04-2006
Posted on Monday, June 25, 2012 - 06:55 pm:   

Oh and I forgot to mention that these messages that are reported as being dropped from the end users aren't long messages. They are also alphanumeric. Some messages may contaain a forward slash (/) or an apostrophe (') and a colon (:)
Des - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Desosms

Post Number: 4004
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Monday, June 25, 2012 - 08:56 pm:   

Hi John,

I wish I had some better ideas for you.

All I can think of is looking for some type of pattern to the failure.

When a message does not go through to a Verizon subscriber, do any other Verizon subscribers receive that same message? (Or is the text of the message such that it is customised for each recipient, so this would not be relevant?)

By asking this, I am trying to establish if the issue is somehow related to the message content, or if it is random.

Along those lines ... If a missing message is resent with the exact same content, does it also go missing?

What type of volume are you sending?

I'm not seeing any possibility of NowSMS issue ... I wish I was because then we'd have something to go on.

What version of NowSMS are you running?

Without some sort of pattern emerging, the only ideas that come to my mind are real longshots.

By default, NowSMS always uses binary PDU mode for submitting messages, because it offers more control over message attributes than text mode.

This binary vs. text mode has nothing to do with whether the message is binary or text. PDU mode is just closer to the actual format that is sent over-the-air from the modem to the SMSC. Even if NowSMS uses text mode, the modem is going to convert to a binary PDU format to submit the message to the SMSC.

But, if we want to rule out an issue with NowSMS creating the binary PDU, we can configure NowSMS to use text mode to talk to the modem, and let the modem create the binary PDU.

To configure this, under any appropriate [Modem - driver name] section header in SMSGW.INI, add:

ModemTextMode=Yes

Note that if you apply this setting, NowSMS will fail any long messages or other non-text messages. So I would not recommend this setting for most installations, but it might be a useful thing to try for your situation.

An additional setting idea that I would have is a setting that adds a slight delay/pause after sending each message. The idea here is that some modems have been observed to behave inconsistently under a constant barrage of message sending. There is a configuration command that can insert a delay after each send. Similar to the above setting, DelayAfterSend=### goes in the [Modem - driver name] section of SMSGW.INI. ### is a value in milliseconds. For example, DelayAfterSend=250 would be 250 milliseconds or 1/4 of a second.

I'm less optimistic about this delay setting making a difference. If you had a modem that required this setting, you'd be more likely to see frequent retry conditions when sending messages. And if there were missing messages, I wouldn't expect them to be confined to a particular carrier.

--
Des
NowSMS Support
Des - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Desosms

Post Number: 4005
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Monday, June 25, 2012 - 09:01 pm:   

Regarding CDMA modems, there is only one we know of that works. That is the Multitech CDMA modem.

That said, this is a quirky modem, because it is emulating GSM modem commands.

We had to recently make a software update to work with recent firmware revisions of this modem. (NowSMS would refuse to let you add the modem because of suspect responses to our initialisation queries. NowSMS 2012.05.01 or later is recommended if you attempt to use that particular modem.)

--
Des
NowSMS Support