Can I send MMS?

Can I send MMS? SearchSearch
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yomi
Posted on Friday, August 15, 2003 - 09:59 am:   

I have a wavecom gsm modem.
I downloaded the NowSMS and can send sms without any problem.
But could I send MMS via gsm with NowSMS/MMS gateway? If can, how to set WAP gateway and MMSC..?
THX.
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Posted on Thursday, September 04, 2003 - 04:33 pm:   

Hi Yomi,

There are two ways to send an MMS message.

Let me explain a bit about how MMS actually works.

When a mobile phone receives an MMS message, what it is actually receiving is an MMS notification message which it receives over SMS. This MMS notification message contains header information about the MMS message, and a URL pointer that the recipient must fetch in order to retrieve the content of the MMS message.

So when you send an MMS, you can do this in one of two ways:

1.) Direct MMS delivery. The MMS message content is stored on the Now SMS/MMS Gateway, and the gateway publishes a dynamic URL for access to the MMS message content. The gateway generates an MMS notification message to the recipient device which is sent over SMS, and this notification includes a URL pointer back to the MMS message content.

2.) Send the message through the operator MMSC. In this case, NowSMS makes a GPRS connection over a GSM/GPRS modem, connects to the operator WAP gateway that is designated for MMS usage by the operator, and the message is submitted to the operator MMSC via the WAP gateway over the GPRS connection. (The operator MMS gateway then generates the dynamic URL and MMS notification message that is ultimately received by the recipient device.)

NowSMS can send MMS messages via either of these approaches. (The v4.x release only supports approach #1, the v5.0 release can support both approaches. The v5.0 release is still in beta, with details and download at http://www.nowsms.com/beta5.)

The problem with approach #1 (Direct MMS delivery) is that the MMS client on every mobile phone is configured with settings for how the phone sends and receives MMS messages. To send or receive an MMS message, the phone makes a GPRS connection (to a GPRS APN), it then usually connects to the MMSC for sending/receiving messages through a WAP proxy/gateway. The pre-configured MMS settings on many mobile operator networks are setup to connect to a special MMS-only GPRS APN which connects to an MMS-only WAP gateway ... and this GPRS APN/WAP gateway is configured only to allow connections to the operator MMSC. If the recipient mobile phone is subscribed to an operator that has this type of setup, and you attempt direct MMS delivery, you can send the MMS notification to the phone over SMS, but the phone cannot retrieve the MMS message from your server because the GPRS APN/WAP Gateway does not allow it. In those cases, the only alternative is to submit the message through the operator MMSC. (I recently described these settings for how to make a connection to an operator MMSC in some more detail here: http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/585.html.)

I should mention that I've only really addressed sending MMS messages through a GSM/GPRS modem here. Some operators may also allow you to establish accounts to send MMS messages through other protocols. Now SMS/MMS Gateway v5.0 also supports these types of connections using the MM7, MM4 or EAIF protocols.

-bn
GPRSFreshman
Posted on Monday, September 08, 2003 - 10:55 am:   

Hi,Bryce,
you ever said,"makes a GPRS connection (to a GPRS APN)",I don't understand how to make the connection to special APN)? can you explain it in details? for example,these are two gprs conenction, one is GPRS NET,with APN: orangenet,the other is GPRS WAP with APN:orangewap, how do you distinguish them when you make a GPRS connection (to APN)? thanks a lot.
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2003 - 10:04 pm:   

Hi GPRSFreshman,

If you're doing it with a phone directly, of course you would configure it in the phone.

If you are connecting via a PC, then this is in software, generally with AT commands. For example, in NowSMS, you tell us which APN you want to connect to, and we configure the modem to connect to that particular APN.

For discussions of AT commands and GPRS dialing, the following thread might provide helpful information:

http://support.nowsms.com/discus/messages/1/369.html

-bn
pankajzamvar
Posted on Sunday, September 14, 2003 - 09:10 pm:   

i have to download sms which r coming to me in my mobile. so how can i receive my sms on my computer
plz tell me about this
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Posted on Thursday, September 18, 2003 - 05:25 pm:   

The Now SMS/MMS Gateway can receive SMS messages off of a mobile phone. When the messages are received, they are either written to a directory for another application to process (.SMS files in the SMS-IN directory), or you can define a "2-way" command that is executed each time an SMS message is received. This command can either be an executable program that is passed details about the message as command line parameters, or it can be an HTTP script (ASP, PHP, etc.) running on a web server somewhere that is passed information about the message as URL parameters.

Details of this interface are found in:

http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/2_way_sms_support.htm

-bn
arun
Unregistered guest
Posted on Friday, November 21, 2003 - 10:51 am:   

test
Varun Katyal
New member
Username: Varunkatyal

Post Number: 1
Registered: 11-2003
Posted on Monday, November 24, 2003 - 05:38 am:   


Hi Manu this is just a tst msg
Varun Katyal
New member
Username: Varunkatyal

Post Number: 2
Registered: 11-2003
Posted on Monday, November 24, 2003 - 05:41 am:   

Hello
Paul Sabertini
Unregistered guest
Posted on Monday, November 24, 2003 - 11:45 am:   

Hey Bryce,

I'm trying to get a better understanding of the MM1 protocol and how it actually works.

How does the data actually get posted? For example, is it just a matter of posting the MMS PDU directly to the MMSC? Assuming I have the GPRS connection live, could I manually post the PDU to the MMSC via something like the MSXML object (XMLHTTP)? I'm just trying to understand the format of the actual HTTP post.

Many thanks for any light you can shed.

Paul.
Bryce Norwood - NowSMS Support
Board Administrator
Username: Bryce

Post Number: 1222
Registered: 10-2002
Posted on Monday, November 24, 2003 - 10:57 pm:   

Paul,

If you're posting the MM1 message to NowSMS, then a simple post with that object is fine.

http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/mms_notifications_and_c ontent/Submitting_MMS_Messages_MM1.htm

For other ways of submitting MMS messages to the NowSMS gateway, see:

http://www.nowsms.com/documentation/ProductDocumentation/mms_notifications_and_c ontent/Submitting_MMS_Messages.htm

If you are asking about using MM1 to post directly to an operator MMSC ... in most cases they require that you perform the post via a WAP gateway over the GSM/GPRS connection, where the WAP protocols are used instead of direct HTTP.

-bn