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NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - SMS Issues ⬆ Archive through September 15, 2003 ⬆ |
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| Author | Message | |||
| Anonymous |
I'm trying to send a test sms using nowsms and the gateway interface. I have taken my smsc settings from http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/136.html#POST403, which are Host Name : api.clickatell.com Port Number : 80 URL Template Text : /http/sendmsg? api_id=*APIIDHERE*&user=*USERNAMEHERE*&password=*PASSWORDHERE*&to==@@PhoneNumber @@&text=@@Text@@ URL Template Binary : /http/sendmsg? api_id=*APIIDHERE*&user=*USERNAMEHERE*&*password=*PASSWORDHERE*&to=@@PhoneNumber @@&udh=@@UDH@@&text=@@Text@@ When I test these settings is says they are good, and when I try to send a test sms using the web interface, the number of messages sent (found in the serial# section of the software) climbs by one. However, no message ever reaches my phone, and no credits are deducted from my account with clickatell. Has anyone else had this, and if so, what did you do to solve it? Many thanks. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support |
Make sure that you don't actually have "*" characters in the template URL. Those are just placeholders that I used when typing the original message, but they should not be included in the actual template. I'd suggest putting the gateway into debug mode, which you can do by manually editing SMSGW.INI, and under the [SMSGW] section header, add Debug=Yes. Then restart the gateway service. Repeat your attempt to send a message, and an SMSDEBUG.LOG file should be produced. Post a relevant excerpt from this log file, but place "x" characters over your apiid, username and password. It sounds like something is not right with the template. Unfortunately error handling with HTTP connections is not very consistent as the HTTP responses generated for error conditions by different systems are inconsistent. You might want to considering trying the Clickatell SMPP interface. -bn | |||
| Anonymous |
Thanks for getting back to me Bryce, I contacted clickatell about the above problem, and they recomended that I change my profile settings. It would seem that certain phone operators (including my network Vodafone) take 1.5 credits per message as oppose to 1. Changing this setting allowed me to send sms and binary messages, however I still cannot send any kind of Multimedia Message. When configuring my mmsc, do I need to use clickatell settings, or can I route these files through my own server? And either way, could you please advise what to enter as my settings? Many thanks for all your help so far. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support |
Which Vodafone are you on? Looking at the Clickatell price list, I see they are now charging 2 credits to send to Vodafone in the UK. I see Vodafone NL is 1.5 credits, so I'm assuming that you are there. There is an issue when sending MMS messages that the pre-configured settings on mobile phones from many operators can block MMS messages originating from MMSCs other than the mobile operator's. Take a look at the message in this thread, and the other thread that it references as well for a good technical explanation of how MMS works, and some alternatives: http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/685.html | |||
| Anonymous |
I'm on Vodafone UK. I guess Ishould have explained that clickatell advised me to activate both the 1.5 and 2 credit sending settings in my profile. When I try to send an mms I get the error : Error: Unable to fetch URL: http://mydomain.co.uk/20030911/08/3F6023D9a.MMS So does this mean that I need to configure the mmsc in nowsms with the settings for vodafone uk rather than using my own server? And if so, is this something that I can get from Vodafone support (or maybe even from my phone itself)? Looking at the threads you suggested it would seem that I could get around this problem by using a gsm modem connected to vodafone uk. Could this phone be the same phone that is intended to recieve the mms? Thanks again for your help. | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support |
When you send an MMS message, what actually gets sent out over SMS is an MMS notification message. This MMS notification message is sent as a binary encoded SMS ... and it includes a URL pointer to the content of the MMS message itself. When the recipient phone receives this MMS notification message, the recipient phone needs to be able to connect back to the MMSC to retrieve the URL that has the content of the MMS message. The server itself performs a validation check to verify that it can actually access the URL before it bothers to send out the MMS message. This error message indicates that the server cannot validate the URL itself. "mydomain.co.uk" is the value configured for the "Local Host Name or IP Address" setting on the "MMSC" page of the configuration dialog. When the MMSC sends out an MMS message, it uses that value to build the URL that is sent out for the MMS notification message. So this value needs to be set to a valid host name or IP address that is internet accessible so that the recipient phone can actually retrieve the URL. You can run into some problems with firewall configurations where you have an external host name or IP address through which the host is accessible through the firewall ... however the server itself cannot validate the URL because the firewall does not allow internal connections to the external address. You can get around this (as long as you are using a host name, not an IP address), by adding the host name to the \WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS file, with the host name pointing to the PC's local IP address. When NowSMS performs a validation check on the URL, it will resolve the address using the HOSTS file. When the recipient device receives the notification, it will resolve the address through standard DNS. Note: The NowSMS server needs to be directly accessible via the internet. Don't mess with the HOSTS file to try to get around this validation check if NowSMS cannot be accessed directly via the internet, as that won't solve your problem. If you don't have a dedicated IP address, www.no-ip.com has a very good service for allowing a permanent host name to be assigned to a PC that is on a dynamic IP address (as long as your dynamic IP is openly accessible over the internet and not behind a corporate firewall). -bn | |||
| Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support |
The v5.0 release of our product (still in beta), has additional options for how MMS messages can be sent out. That might be what you are reading about in other threads. For example, in the UK, Vodafone and O2 have open MMS settings. For recipient phones on those networks, you can send an MMS where NowSMS acts as the MMSC, and an MMS notification message is sent to the recipient phone over SMS. However, Orange's MMS settings are closed to external MMSCs. (Which is the case with quite a few operators outside of the UK.) Our v5.0 release has an option where you can send your MMS messages out over GPRS via the operator MMSC using a GSM/GPRS modem. If you want to read more about that, the following thread has a pretty good description, and then it in turn links to another thread that describes how you configure this. http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/589.html | |||
