SMS Message Split

SMS Message Split SearchSearch
Author Message
Mathew Mathachan
New member
Username: Mathewm

Post Number: 1
Registered: 04-2011
Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 08:14 am:   

Hi,
Is there a parameter to control at what length a Long English message is to be split and at what length a long unicode (Arabic) message is to be split. For e.g long english messages (if greater than 160 characters) to be split at 130 characters and long arabic messages (if greater than 70 characters) at 60 characters.
Regards
Mathew
Des - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Desosms

Post Number: 3096
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Wednesday, April 13, 2011 - 05:05 pm:   

Hi Mathew,

Unfortunately, no, there is no such setting.

The limits are hard coded.

That said, I discussed this with one of our engineers, and he indicated that it wouldn't take much effort to make these settings configurable on a system level.

The only problem is that if an SMPP client were to submit a message already segmented at a longer length, we probably would not be able to easily reassemble and resegment at the adjusted length. If that were a requirement, it would require more in-depth technical consideration.

Can I ask you more about why this is needed? Although engineering says it would be a simple effort, I want to get a little more background information before I get this put on the engineering schedule.

--
Des
NowSMS Support
Mathew Mathachan
New member
Username: Mathewm

Post Number: 2
Registered: 04-2011
Posted on Sunday, April 17, 2011 - 01:17 pm:   

Thank you Des for the response. We have some operators in MEast who have published the spec to say that Unicode messages have to be split at 63 / 65 etc. Though messages split at 70 go through, unexplained failures at their end are attributed to this.
Des - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Desosms

Post Number: 3108
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Monday, April 18, 2011 - 03:49 pm:   

Hi Mathew,

We're going to implement a setting to allow the segmentation length to be customised to see if it makes a difference.

It should be ready for testing by the latter part of next week.

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

Post Number: 3117
Registered: 08-2008
Posted on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 - 06:27 pm:   

Hi Mathew,

A quick follow-up. We put a configuration setting for maximum message size in the 2011.04.19 build that can be downloaded at http://www.nowsms.com/download/nowsms20110419.zip.


quote:

* SMS Gateway: Add configuration parameter to allow customisation of the maximum message length for automatic message segmentation to allow for smaller segments that may be necessary in some environments. These settings can be configured under the [SMSGW] section header of SMSGW.INI, using the following parameters: MaxSMSSegmentLengthText=160 and MaxSMSSegmentLengthBinary=140




It doesn't do exactly what you want. It sets a max segment size. This segment size is the max length of a segment (including headers). If a message exceeds the size, it is segmented.

What you were asking for is a little more complicated. You appear to be asking for a separate segment size threshold (after which segmentation occurs) and a maximum segment size for segmented messages.

But this may be useful for testing.

Let's take a Unicode message for example.

The default setting MaxSMSSegmentLengthBinary=140 means that if a message exceeds 70 Unicode characters, it will be segmented. Each segment has 6 bytes of header, leaving 134 bytes for data, or 67 Unicode characters per segment.

Change to MaxSMSSegmentLengthBinary=136, and the threshold becomes 68 Unicode characters, and 65 Unicode characters per segment in a segmented message.

I should have been more clear with our engineering team in the first place, but I will see if they can separate a threshold size from the max size of each segment in a segmented message.

--
Des
NowSMS Support