Multiple SMSC with same host address/name?

Multiple SMSC with same host address/name? SearchSearch
Author Message
Chris Stenz
New member
Username: Cstenz

Post Number: 4
Registered: 08-2004
Posted on Wednesday, October 13, 2004 - 08:34 pm:   

Bryce:

In order to accommodate different profiles at Clickatell it appears you need to setup multiple accounts with them that all resolve on the same host. In other words I need to have more than one SMSC pointing to the same domain and the same port. E.g. api.clickatell.com under SSL port 443.

We need to do this in order to support the routing of ported numbers in the US as well as International numbers.

When I try and set this up under NowSMS the first setting gets overwritten with the second since the setting appears to be targeted at host and port. If I specify one at port 80 and one at port 443 all is fine.

Is there a way to have 2 settings to the same host domain, same port, and maintain different SMSC records in NowSMS without having them get overwritten? I'd like to have both connections running securely.

Thanks,
Chris
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 3561
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Tuesday, October 19, 2004 - 04:35 pm:   

Hi Chris,

We've followed up on this issue via e-mail, but I just wanted to give a "heads up" to others with similar issues.

It is not an elegant solution, but historically we have recommended to people that they use HOSTS files to setup multiple aliases to the server. This is described in the following links:

http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/485/791.html
http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/2167.html

That works fine for SMPP, UCP/EMI and CIMD connections, but as I was about to recommend this same approach to you, I realised that it was going to have a potential problem with HTTP connections. HTTP connections want to see the host name in the actual request, so if you were to locally alias it, the request may not work properly.

That fact encouraged us to rethink this issue.

It has been quite a kludge solution to ask people to make HOSTS file entries, so we have been considering other ways of handling the situation, but hadn't made it a priority to deal with this issue. But the HTTP issue did up the priority.

I've sent Chris an update that handles this better. This update will be reflected in all post-v5.51 releases, but until we make a formal release, anyone who needs it can request it by sending an e-mail to nowsms@now.co.uk with a subject line of "Attention Bryce - need update", and we will send it to you via e-mail.

In this update, you'll see that when you define a second connection to the same SMSC, a suffix such as "#2" or "#3" etc gets added to the host name or IP address in the SMSC list.

-bn