| Nokia E71 and intercarrier messaging via MM4 |  Search
|
|
NowSMS Support Forums ⬆ NowSMS Support - MMS & Advanced Issues ⬆ Archive through July 07, 2009 ⬆ |
◄ ► |
| Author | Message | ||||
| Joseph Smith New member Username: Falangjoe Post Number: 5 Registered: 08-2006 |
Union Telephone v2008.06.03 We have started selling the Nokia E71. When a MMS message with a picture is routed via Verisign to a Verizon phone over MM4, it does not always display. It depends on the receiving phone model, but it is not working with most of them. I know that this is probable a trancoding issue, but this is not happening with any of our other phones. Is it possible that the when the messages are routed via MM4 to Verisign that they could get mangled in some way. We have other Nokia smart phones and they seem to work OK. Thanks, Joseph | ||||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 900 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hi Joseph, It's definitely a transcoding issue. But this type of issue is difficult to troubleshoot because essentially what happens is that the NowSMS MMSC transcodes the message into MM4 format. And then the receiving end transcodes back to MM1 format for delivery. In this scenario, the interconnect may not be doing any transcoding at all ... but just relaying it to the other operator MMSC where that MMSC does the transcoding. So you could end up with different transcoding issues depending on which partner receives the message. It is also possible that both the Verisign interconnect and the receiving operator MMSC are performing some transcoding. We can't really see what is going on at the receiving end. (Or maybe we could if we setup NowSMS with a modem to receive the message via another carrier. That could be interesting. Does your interconnect support sending to T-Mobile US numbers?) Let's do this... I'd like to take a look at the MM4 output from your system ... comparing similar messages from the E71 and whatever earlier Nokia model is working ok for you. I've setup a receiver mailbox to make it easier to get this information to me. Define an "MMSC Routing" definition to route messages to this mailbox. The account name doesn't matter ... give it something meaningful like "nowsmstech". Check "Allow Sender Address Override". For "Route messages to this account for recipient phone number", enter "9999". Route messages via MM4. Server Address = aspmx.l.google.com E-Mail Domain = nowsms.com Message Format = Generic E-Mail Other settings can be left at defaults. Send an MMS message to 9999 from the E71 and the other phone using the same content that would otherwise be corrupted if you were going through Verisign. (Make a note in the text of the message to indicate which phone sent which content.) Let me know when you've done this, and I'll take a look at the messages in that mailbox to see if there's anything unusual ... or any significant differences in the output. Also, let me know what part of the content is missing when you send the same message to a phone through the Verisign interconnect. -- Des NowSMS Support | ||||
| Joseph Smith New member Username: Falangjoe Post Number: 6 Registered: 08-2006 |
Des, I sent messages to the mailbox. The messages contained a subject and a jpeg. 1. Nokia E70 at 10:28AM MST - This phone is ok with Verizon. 2. Nokia E71 at 11:18AM MST - This is the phone with the problem. The problem seems to be just with images and not with other content types. Although, I have not done enough tests to be sure of this. We can send to T-Mobile. I previously did testing on the problem and did not see it with T-Mobile and AT&T. Although, I may not have tested enough. In one of the tests with Verizon , I sent an MMS message to two different Verizon phones. One of the phone was able to display the picture and the other one was not. This makes me think that the pictures are not arriving at Verizon corrupted. Thanks, Joseph | ||||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 903 Registered: 08-2008 |
Joseph, I received the test MM4 messages via e-mail. Unfortunately, the messages are so similar that I can't see any potential issues. The only insignificant difference between the two is the file names. The JPG file in the E71 message is 06052009033.jpg and the JPG file in the E70 message is 06052009.jpg. Similarly, the SMIL file names are different, but they are of the same length, so I don't think that's significant. There are also slight differences in the SMIL, but only related to width and height of the picture, none of which should be significant. Here's what I'm thinking ... I'm thinking that there are only two possibilities. 1.) The length of the image filename is causing a problem at the Verisign interconnect or the other operator MMSC. I seriously doubt that this is an issue, as the length is not excessive. But it is a small possibility. 2.) There is something about the pictures taken by the E71 that either the Verisign interconnect or the other operator MMSC does not like. Wasn't it you who recently had an issue where NowSMS image handling wasn't scaling down an image from one of your Nokia devices? Maybe the Verisign interconnect or the other operator MMSC is having a similar problem. #2 is more likely than #1. It's also very possible that there is something else that I'm not thinking of ... but I'd suggest more testing to try to narrow down the problem. Here's what I'd suggest. Both the E70 and E71 support SD cards, right? Take pictures from the E70 and send them via MMS to the other network using both the E70 and E71. Are there any problems? If there are any problems, does the problem follow the picture or the sending phone? Similarly, take a problem picture from the E71 and try sending it with the E70. Does the problem follow the picture or does the E70 have no problem sending it? -- Des NowSMS Support | ||||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 904 Registered: 08-2008 |
Joseph, I'm wondering if maybe the Verizon MMSC is having a problem scaling down some images, similar to the problem that we were having here: http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/485/24951.html You may also want to test to see if image sizes are a factor. Perhaps for one test device the Verizon MMSC has to scale down the image, but not for the other. Unfortunately, it's also possible that it may be a phone that doesn't like something about the image. That would seem very unlikely to me if we hadn't encountered that earlier problem. But having seen that issue, I wouldn't be surprised if some phone models might have some JPEG compatibility issues. -- Des | ||||
| Joseph Smith New member Username: Falangjoe Post Number: 7 Registered: 08-2006 |
Des, It looks like I was wrong. We have not sold the E70 in a while. I tested and it has the same problem sending to Verizon. I talked to CSRs that have been working with customers on this problem, and this is how they have characterized the problem. Sending to low end or old Verizon phones from the E71 works, but sending to new higher end Verizon phones does not. Is the model or operating system type of the phone that sent the MMS in the MM4 message? Thanks, Joseph | ||||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 921 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hi Joseph, I took this issue back to discuss with my colleagues. It is very good that both the E70 and E71 were having problems, because their message formatting is so similar. Then something jumped out at me. The SMIL component of the message doesn't include any line breaks. This triggers the MM4/SMTP encoder to use "quoted printable" encoding. We use the same MIME encoder for the MM7 message body. But a few years ago, we stopped using "quoted printable" encoding because that is more of an SMTP encoding than an HTTP encoding ... and we found that some MMSCs could not accept it. I expect that we're facing a similar issue with Verisign's MM4. We're working on an update with a configuration option that would validate this. But I've got pretty high confidence that this has to be the issue. The MMS messages themselves that are generated by the E70 and E71 are of a very generic format. We can't see anything else that would be an issue. -- Des NowSMS Support | ||||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 929 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hello again Joseph, Rather than send you a test version to validate our theory, I'm thinking that it may be more practical to ask you to send some test messages. This way we'll have the least impact on your system. The following ZIP file contains MMS message components extracted from the test message that you sent me using the E71:
Use the NowSMS web interface to send an MMS message, include the 0605200933.jpg file and pres.smil file. Leave the MMS Text area blank. Basically, if you send these files as part of an MMS message from the NowSMS web interface, you should see the same results as your earlier test. Once you've confirmed those results, substitute presmod.smil for pres.smil in another test. I've basically just manually edited the SMIL file to insert line breaks so that 7-bit SMTP encoding rules don't force us to use quoted-printable encoding. I'm guessing that the test with the manually edited SMIL will work. Assuming that it will, then we can move forward with an update to perform this transcoding automatically. -- Des NowSMS Support | ||||
| Joseph Smith New member Username: Falangjoe Post Number: 8 Registered: 08-2006 |
Hi Des, You are are correct. I sent the picture with presmod.smil, and they were able to view the picture. When I sent the picture with pres.smil, they were not able to view it. You guys are great! Thanks, Joseph | ||||
| Des - NowSMS Support Board Administrator Username: Desosms Post Number: 940 Registered: 08-2008 |
Hi Joseph, That's good that we finally know what the problem is. I wish there was a work-around that didn't require an update. I'm probably going to regret this, because I'm on holiday the next two weeks. But we're in the late stages of finalizing a major update. The plan is to release it at the end of this month or beginning of next month, depending on whether or not any unexpected issues are found. It's the latest iteration of test releases that we've been posting since the beginning of this year. Anyway, automatically inserting line breaks into the SMIL for transport over MM4 was an easy change. And it's been implemented. It was decided that this late in the cycle, we shouldn't make this a default setting (although I think we may in the future, as I would not think this would introduce any new compatibility issues ... but we have to play it safe). The update can be downloaded at http://www.nowsms.com/download/nowsms2009rc.zip. With this version, edit MMSC.INI, and under the [MMSC] header, add MM4QuotedPrintableOK=No When that setting is present, the MMSC will automatically insert line breaks into SMIL files when transmitting over MM4. As I mentioned, I'm going to be on holiday. Someone else will be covering for me here, but they're also trying to finish testing on the new release. If the update introduces some new problem, you can run the install for the old version to put it back in place. (Or as a safety precaution, backup all of the EXE and DLL files and replace them to go back to the existing installed version.) -- Des NowSMS Support | ||||
| Joseph Smith New member Username: Falangjoe Post Number: 9 Registered: 08-2006 |
Des, I configured our backup license with the new software and switched over. This fixed the problem, and I have not seen any other issues from this release. Thanks, Joseph | ||||
pres.zip
