The Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP) protocol is an open, industry standard protocol used to send and receive short message data.
Using the SMPP protocol, the Connect SMPP components initiate an application layer connection with a Short Message Service Center (SMSC) over a TCP/IP network connection to send and receive short messages.
Benefits
The following are some benefits of SMPP:
- SMPP supports a full-featured set of two-way messaging functions.
- Send a registered short message (a delivery receipt is returned by the SMSC to the message originator).
- Send optional parameters such as Type-Length-Value (TLV) to the SMSC. A set of optional parameters is defined by the SMPP specification but the SMSC provider defines custom parameters. A billing code is an example of a custom parameter.
- Select a message mode such as datagram, transaction or store and forward.
- Define short message data coding type.
- There are many other extended features like cancelling a message, querying the status of the message, setting the validity period of a message you can use in the future.
Definitions
To help understand SMPP better, read through the following defintions.
Short Message Service (SMS): A mechanism used to deliver short messages over mobile telephone networks. The original text message is stored in a central short message center (SMS) which then forwards it to the destination mobile phone. This means that if the recipient is not available, the short message is stored and can be sent later. Each short message can be no longer than 160 characters.
Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP): A telecommunications industry protocol for exchanging SMS messages between peer entities such as short message service centers (SMSC). It is designed to provide a flexible data communications interface for transferring short message data between a Message Center and an SMS application system.
Short Message Service Center (SMSC): A network element in the mobile telephone network used to deliver SMS messages. When a user sends a text message (SMS message) to another user, the message is stored in the SMSC. The message is delivered to the destination when the user is available.
Type-Length-Value (TLV): Also known as Tag-Length-Value, it is a way to pass special parameters to and from the SMSC within the SMPP protocol.
Users: Connect users.
In Connect documentation, SMSC or SMSC gateway is used to describe any SMPP server.
Connect with SMPP Overview
The SMS Sender and SMS Receiver are single components that can be installed on the node outside the firewall. In the current Connect release, they are single components because of the limitation imposed by the SMSCs on the number of binds that can be made by a client.
The components maintain a cache of servers and are updated whenever the user changes the SMSC configuration in the UI. The components communicate with the CM (ConversationManager) and other internal components via socket.