Support Blog

NowWAP: Enabling Cookies for HTTP Header Enrichment

NowWAP HTTP Header Enrichment (HHE) is described in more detail in the following article:  http://www.nowsms.com/nowwap-and-http-header-enrichment In addition to the HHE issues discussed in that article, we frequently receive questions about using HTTP Cookie headers for identifying the MSISDN. These questions are usually asked for the following reasons: Customers migrating from or augmenting...

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NowSMS Status Query with PHP

Previous articles have described the XML-based status query interface that can be used to programmatically retrieve information about the current status of NowSMS. The XML-based status query interface that reports information similar to what is reported on the “Status” page of the NowSMS configuration dialog. The query results include information about SMSC connection status, the number of...

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Repairing a Corrupt MMSC User Database

We recently had a customer whose MMSC stopped automatically provisioning new users. The MMSC user database had become corrupt, preventing new users from being able to be automatically provisioned.  While it is not known why this corruption occurred, the most common potential cause is an abnormal system shutdown, such as power failure. Future versions of the MMSC will include start-up logic to...

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International Prefix Conversion for SMS

There are many situations where end users submit messages using local number formats, but the upstream SMSC connection requires that the message be submitted using an international format (e.g., include a country code and possibly require TON=1 for SMPP connections). For example, an end user in the UK might want to send an SMS message to 0777777777 using the local number format, but the upstream...

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Multiple SMPP Connections to One SMSC

Although it is possible for SMPP Asynchronous connections to process hundreds of SMS messages per second, sometimes there are performance gains by having more than one SMPP connection to the same SMSC.  This is especially the case if the SMSC has per connection speed limits, or other performance limiting characteristics. It may also be necessary to specify more than one SMPP connection to the...

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NowSMS Update Release 2011.07.05

An updated release of the Now SMS & MMS Gateway is currently available at http://www.nowsms.com/download/nowsms20110705.zip.  Use the executable file in this ZIP to update an existing NowSMS installation. This document details the update release history since the previous official release, version 2010.11.04.  Release history for the changes prior to the current official release can be...

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SMS Distribution Lists with PHP

An earlier post described the HTTP URL formats for working with NowSMS distribution lists. This post provides some example PHP functions that can be used to simplify this process.  Now that NowSMS can support PHP scripts natively without a separate web server, it is even easier to prototype SMS applications with NowSMS. In this example, we’ll use these example PHP functions to allow users...

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NowWAP Statistics Reports

The log files created by NowWAP are of a text format that follows the common log format for web servers. These log files are stored on the NowWAP server, with one log file created for each day, using a file naming convention of WAPGW-yyyymmdd.LOG, where yyyymmdd is the 4-digit year, 2-digit month and 2-digit day. NowWAP 2011 has optional functionality which can convert these log files into a...

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SMPP TLV Parameters for Advanced Message Routing

There has been some interesting recent discussion about the use of optional SMPP TLV parameters to help facilitate message routing between SMS hubs. Some of this discussion can be found at the following message thread on the NowSMS discussion forum: http://www.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/70053.html This article attempts to summarise this information. Those interested in further information are...

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Using PHP Scripts to Extend NowSMS

PHP scripts are a great tool for integrating NowSMS into another application environment, or extending the functionality of NowSMS. PHP scripts are often used for 2-way SMS or MMS processing, providing a convenient mechanism for processing the received message content in an application, and optionally replying back to the received message, updating or querying a database, or taking other action...

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Basic MMS SMIL Tutorial

A recent thread on the NowSMS discussion board made my head hurt:  MMS: first shows a picture and then the text It started off simple enough. If you send an MMS message using the simple web form in NowSMS, and you include some text and an image, the resulting message displays the text first and then the image. What if you want the image displayed first and then the text? Or what if you want the...

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NowSMS and SSL Certificate Chains

If you have purchased an SSL certificate from a certificate authority for use on a NowSMS server, you may encounter a problem with some browsers displaying a warning or refusing to accept the certificate.  This can occur when SSL certificates are not signed by a certificate authorities’ root certificate, but by an intermediate certificate.  (This has been observed with certificates issued...

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Migrating from another vendor’s MMSC

Customers frequently inquire about the complexity of migrating from an existing MMSC installation to NowSMS.  Is it possible to do this with minimal impact to their subscribers? In most cases, this is possible.  The NowSMS MMSC is designed with minimal administration requirements and automatic subscriber provisioning.  For a typical mobile operator configuration, subscribers are automatically...

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NowWAP and HTTP Header Enrichment (HHE)

The HTTP Header Enrichment (HHE) capability provides solutions for a content provider to identify a subscriber. Basic HHE allows the subscriber to be identified by their MSISDN. Aliased HHE allows the subscriber to be identified without divulging the subscriber’s MSISDN. A standard feature of the NowWAP Proxy is to provide Basic HTTP Header Enrichment to facilitate operator billing for...

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Send SMS from PHP Script (Updated)

Quite a few people use the PHP script that Bryce provided 7-1/2 years ago for sending an SMS message through NowSMS from PHP. Over the years, we’ve added a few comments to clarify how the script is to be used.  However, one of the most limiting things about the script is that it doesn’t support any of the additional SMS URL parameters supported by NowSMS. Among other uses, these...

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iPhone MMS Message Send Failure on GPRS and EDGE

We’ve recently investigated a problem reported by a NowSMS MMSC customer where iPhone 4 users were reporting a high volume of failed MMS message sending. Our investigation suggests that this problem is related to a software issue in the iPhone MMS client, when operating outside of 3G coverage.  There is no problem in the operation of either the NowWAP Gateway or the NowSMS MMSC. (Note:...

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Shift Tables – National Language SMS in 160 characters without Unicode

The fact that messages that contain characters outside of the GSM character set require Unicode encoding and are limited to 70 characters per message instead of the expected 160 character limit, is a frustrating limitation for many languages. Messages longer than 70 characters can, of course, be sent, but they are sent as multipart (segmented) messages, and reassembled by the receiving client....

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WAP Gateway Blocks BlackBerry App World

WAP Gateway Blocks BlackBerry App World

It has come to our attention that the default configuration setting for the NowWAP WAP Gateway blocks users from connecting to BlackBerry App World. The reason for this seems to be some unusual communication patterns between the handset and the App World server. The handset attempts to created a tunneled connection to the HTTP port (80) of the BlackBerry App World server. Symptoms of the problem...

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SMPP Information and Resources

SMPP (Short Message Peer-to-Peer) Protocol is an industry standard protocol that is used for exchanging SMS messages between peer entities.  In SMPP terminology, two types of entities are defined, a Short Message Service Centre (SMSC), and an External Short Messaging Entity (ESME). In simplistic terms, an SMSC manages SMS messages for a mobile operator network, delivering SMS messages to mobile...

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SMPP Asynchronous Mode

One of the biggest limitations to SMPP performance is protocol implementations that do not support SMPP asynchronous mode, or to state it more correctly, do not take advantage of the speed boost that is possible with SMPP asynchrnous mode. SMPP Synchronous Mode = One Message at a Time In SMPP Synchrnous mode, each side of the SMPP client has only one outstanding transaction active at a time. ...

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