SMS Server Administration

This section provides information for SMS Server administrators. In addition to the topics on this page, see also Supported SMPP v3.4 Operations.

SMS Server Handles Empty Messages

SMS provider sometimes delivers empty messages (no text, no payload). These messages must be processed by an agent. To send empty messages to an agent for processing, enter text for the value of the x-smpp-empty-message configuration option. This text will be delivered to an agent as a content of the original empty message.

Important

The text you specify for the x-smpp-empty-message configuration option can optionally be an empty string.

SMS Server Masks Sensitive Data in Logs

To mask sensitive data, perform the following two steps:

1. Set the logging-filter-active configuration option in the settings section to true, to activate SMS Server specific filtering.
2. Apply the standard log filtering. Standard log filtering covers Key-Value pairs in User Data of ESP requests, which can contain sensitive information. Use _smsText, Subject, FromAddr, PhoneNumber, and _smsDestNumber Key-Value pairs for filtering. To filter out information in the target Key-Value pair, in the log-filter-data section create an option with the same name as the Key-Value pair (for example, Subject) and set its value to hide or skip.

SMS Server Processes Extra Parameters for PDU

Some SMPP commands (or PDU – Protocol Data Unit) contain a set of optional parameters. Some SMS providers require these optional parameters to correctly process SMPP protocol. SMS Server supports this functionality – you can define PDU's optional parameters on two levels:

• As a parameter of ESP request – Inside ESP request in a strategy, optional parameters are defined by the Key-Value pair extraopt in Extra optional parameters of Send SMS Out block.
• As a server option – In the server, optional parameters are defined by the value of the x-smpp-extraopt option in the channel-any_name_for_sms section.

If optional parameters are defined in the ESP request, they are used in PDU. If optional parameters are not defined in the ESP request, they are taken from server option. If optional parameters are not defined in either the ESP request or the server option, PDU is formed without optional parameters.

Whether defined in the ESP request or the server option, optional parameters are defined by the string of the format, as described below.

In SMPP, optional parameters are defined as a triplet (tag, length, value) called the TLV value. SMS Server implements the following format of the string, representing optional parameters:

 tlvItems:
 [
   { tag:<tag value>, typ:<value type (i.e. byte or int or octets or short or strnz or strz) >, val:<value> }
   . . . MORE TLV SPECIFICATIONS SEPARATED BY COMMAS
 ]

A parameter’s type defines encoding and data size placed in PDU:

• byte is coded as 1-byte integer binary value
• int is coded as 4-bytes integer binary value
• octets is coded as a sequence of bytes, specified as a sequence of hex values
• short is coded as 2-bytes integer binary value
• strnz is coded as ASCII sequence with a length, defined by the string content without adding a terminating zero byte
• strz is coded as ASCII sequence ('CString' as in SMPP specification) with a length, defined by the string content with terminating zero byte added

Example:
{tlvItems:[{tag:5121, typ:octets, val:0011aacc00}, {tag:5122, typ:strz, val:abc123}, {tag:5130, typ:strnz, val:abc123}, {tag:5131}]}

Produces:
(extraopt: (oct: (tlv: 5121) 0011aacc00) (oct: (tlv: 5122) 61626331323300) (oct: (tlv: 5130) 616263313233) (oct: (tlv: 5131) ) ) )

SMS Server Supports Message Throttling by Configurable Rate

The SMS service provider might impose limits on the frequency with which they accept SNMP messages.

SMS Server has configurable options that define parameters of communication with SMSC, including an option to control the maximum rate at which messages are sent to the SMS Center:

• x-smpp-sar-max-segments
• x-smpp-submit-max-rate
• x-smpp-submit-window-size
• x-smpp-response-max-waiting-time