TeleTips Network

Increasing Throughput on SMPP Links

By Arch Stanton on June 29, 2008

We recently began using what we call an SMS Push application. SMS Push allows us to send Text Messages to our subscribers in bulk. Typically these messages are some Marketing promotion or a Customer Service announcement. The message text and a list of MDNs is provided to the application and it sends them serially, one at a time. We wanted to speed that up.

The SMS Push application was provided by Quantum System Integrators in Costa Mesa, CA. We've worked with them on several projects before and they've always high quality software and services with excellent customer support. The application runs on Sun Solaris and is started from the shell command line. It sends a predetermined messages to each MDN in a list provided as a command-line argument. The application spawns a single instance of itself and sends the messages . Through-put has been about 1 message per second, using an SMPP link to our Primal Technologies SMS-C.

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PDSN packet inspection

By Arch Stanton on June 18, 2008

Today Nortel presented their solution for monitoring and billing high bandwidth users of the wireless broadband network. Software running directly in the Starent PDSN basically uses deep packet inspection to implement traffic shaping. The product is called Enhanced Charging Services (ECS) and it claims to provide integrated content-based billing. The solution as presently sold might not truly be called "deep" packet inspection. It only looks as deeply as layer 4, TCP and UDP packets.

Topics: Wireless Data | Comments | Share This

Least Cost Routing is harder than it looks

By Arch Stanton on March 11, 2008

All voice network operators are continually looking for ways to cut the cost of delivering outgoing long distance calls. The best way to do this is to use 2 or more Inter-Exchange Carriers (IEC, in FCC-speak) or what you and I might call "long distance service providers," and cherry pick the cheaper provider for each dialed destination. This approach is called "Least Cost Routing." Seems simple, right? Well, it's not, really.

First there is the tyranny of numbers. A Least Cost Routing application typically will use the Local Exchange Routing Guide (LERG) to determine all possible dialed destinations. The LERG defines roughly 450,000 destinations. For each destination you might have a cost proposal from several IEC. We tried evaluating 8 IEC.

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Traffic Pumpers Filling Long Distance Pipes

By Arch Stanton on March 4, 2008

Starting late last year our long-distance network has been overwhelmed with calls to various for-free services. These services often appear to be the proverbial free lunch, with no apparent business model because the service is 100% free to the end user. Typical offerings include free conference calls or voice chat rooms. These services can completely destroy a flat-rate all-you-can-eat telephony service provider.

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RIM experiences yet another network failure

By Arch Stanton on February 11, 2008

Information Week is reporting that BlackBerry Users Experience Service Outage

What's going on over at RIM? Is this the 3rd or 4th highly publicized network failure they've experienced in the last year or so? Running a network is a highly repetitive, process-oriented business. Not much sex and magic involved. Widespread service-affecting events are signs of poor blocking and tackling: time for RIM to get back to fundamentals.

This just has to leave user shaking their heads and heading for the exits. Typographic error we expect to see soon: "current BlackBerry infrastructure outrage."