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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - MMS & Advanced Issues ⬆ Archive through October 14, 2015 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Bob Croslin New member Username: Croz Post Number: 1 Registered: 02-2014 |
I have NowSMS lite installed on a notebook with a AT&T modem attached. I'm able to send and receive SMS and MMS messages successfully using your web interface. The purpose behind this project is to deliver MMS messages generated on our server to the notebook with NowSMS on it and have it send them out over the AT&T modem. If we can get this to function the intent is to replicate the notebook and modem(s) to provide redundancy. We have no need or desire to receive messages over the modem so I have that disabled in NowSMS. My questions: 1) Can message content be delivered to NowSMS over LAN or WiFi not the modem? I'd like for the modem to only handle outbound MMS messages. 2) Where would messages be placed by our server (directory or path on the notebook) for NowSMS to find and send them? 3) When messages a placed in the above directory are they automatically sent out by NowSMS? 4) Can a script be used on the notebook to poll the server for messages for NowSMS to deliver? Are there any examples? I see where php and other scripts look like they will deliver messages to NowSMS for delivery. Is this the only direction it can be done. Our thoughts are we would prefer to poll the server so that multiple notebooks could be used to create some form of redundancy. Thank you very much for your time helping this newbie out! | |||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 4805 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hi Bob, We generally recommend using HTTP to post the MMS message content. (There is a file based interface for SMS, but not for MMS.) There are samples for PHP, Java, VB.NET and C#.NET here: http://www.nowsms.com/sending-mms-messages-with-nowsms There is also a command line sample referenced in that link ... I had forgotten about that example ... here's a direct link: http://www.nowsms.com/sending-mms-from-the-command-line 1.) The modem would only be used for sending or receiving MMS over the mobile network. If you have content to send out, you would always transfer it over the LAN.' 2.) See above. 3.) See above. 4.) Hmm .... you do raise an interesting point. To add an interface to poll an external directory for messages to be sent would not be difficult. However, when you talk about redundancy, it is more likely that a modem would fail than a computer. So a good solution might be to configure NowSMS to configure NowSMS to operate off a shared network directory ... or at least to have its outbound message queues reside on a network directory. Setting up only the queues to be on a shared directory is the easiest to comprehend. Configure the two or more systems with the same configuration (especially route names), and then edit SMSGW.INI and under the [SMSGW] header add: QDir=\server\volume\path And in MMSC.INI under the [MMSC] header add: VASPQDir=\server\volume\path This will put the outbound SMS and MMS message queues on an external server. Be aware that by default NowSMS is running under the local system service account, so to access a share, you need to go into the services admin and configure the NowSMS services to run under a user account that can access the share (unless the share is wide open). You would still need to handle the failover logic if posting via HTTP and one of the servers is down. -- Des NowSMS Support | |||
| Bob Croslin New member Username: Croz Post Number: 2 Registered: 02-2014 |
Thank you very much for the rapid response and very helpful information. Can you provide me with a sample of what the poll request to the server would look like, and what should be returned? | |||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 4814 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hi Bob, I'm sorry for the delay in response ... I'm just confused about what you're looking for ... and I might be misinterpreting. It gets confusing because terms like send, receive and deliver can mean different things ... direction-wise ... depending on your perspective. Here's what I think I understand. So please correct me if I'm wrong. You have a server that is going to create MMS messages and wants to send them out. You would like to have one or more NowSMS Lite installations poll that server to collect these messages and send them out via a modem. Am I understanding correctly? There is no facility for NowSMS to poll for messages to be sent out. (And while that is an interesting idea, I am concerned that if NowSMS were to poll, find a message to be sent, but then encounter a modem failure, that message would be stuck in the message queue for that NowSMS notebook. That is why I suggested configuring the NowSMS notebooks to put their message queues on a shared network drive, so they could work from the same outbound sending queues.) I may have confused the issue by my explaining all the settings about configuring shared message queues on a network drive. So let's ignore that for a moment. NowSMS will not poll another server for messages to be sent out. It expects them to be posted to it. The first of the links that I shared has pointers to examples in different languages: http://www.nowsms.com/sending-mms-messages-with-nowsms But it also details the raw HTTP POST .... basically NowSMS is expecting a standard "HTTP file upload" form ... multipart/form-data MIME type. Let me know if I can clarify any of this further. -- Des NowSMS Support | |||
