Problems with SMS handling in RapidSMS + Kannel and Operator SMSC

[Nori]

Hi fellow RapidSMS users,

I am writing to share with you a problem that we (at the Innovations Lab Kosovo) are encountering with our RapidSMS and Kannel application set up. We are using RapidSMS for a project to report un-registered births through a national number in one of the local mobile operators. We are using RapidSMS 0.9.6a (with Django 1.3 and Python 2.7) as well as Kannel 1.4.3-2 (with SMPP 3.4).

So all works fine in terms of sending SMS-es and receiving them, interpreting them through our own RapidSMS app and replying to the sender. However, after a certain period, usually within 48 hours, the SMS-es are received and the RapidSMS app interprets them, prepares the reply but the reply is not sent back by Kannel to SMSC! This is impossible to notice in RapidSMS and only though Kannel logs you will realize that bearerbox has failed to send the SMS to operator SMSC.

And also, usually within 48 hours, Kannel has failed to receive SMS-es from SMSC for no apparent reason.

In short, every couple of days both bearerbox and smsbox need to be manually restarted because the system simply fails to receive SMS-es or send back replies.

Has anyone else encountered the same problem (with the configuration described above) and if so, do you have any suggestions for solving this?

Thanks,
Nori

[Victor Miclovich A. K.]

Could you perhaps use rapidsms-httprouter to handle messaging??

Also, please send a copy of your kannel.conf with the passwords hashed. Someone on list could perhaps spot something.

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[Nori]

we are Victor, we are using httprouter of rapidsms but still at some point bearerbox returns an error of this kind:

2013-04-10 23:18:51 [903] [8] DEBUG: Routing failed, re-queued.
2013-04-10 23:18:51 [903] [8] DEBUG: sms_router: handling message (0xc98440 vs 0xc98440)

and here is the kannel.conf:

group = core
admin-port = 13000
smsbox-port = 13003
admin-password = ******
log-file = "log"
log-level = 2
box-deny-ip = "*.*.*.*"
box-allow-ip = "*.*.*.*"
dlr-storage = mysql

group = smsbox
bearerbox-host = *.*.*.*
sendsms-port = 13014
log-level = 0

group = sms-service
keyword = default
max-messages = 0
get-url = "http://*.*.*.*:8000/router/receive?backend=%i&sender=%p&message=%b"
concatenation = true
assume-plain-text = true
accept-x-kannel-headers = true
omit-empty = true

group = sendsms-user
username = ******
password = *****
concatenation= true


group = mysql-connection
id = ************
host = localhost
username = ********
password = ********
database = kannel

group = dlr-db
id = ************
table = kannel
field-smsc = smsc
field-timestamp = ts
field-destination = destination
field-source = source
field-service = service
field-url = url
field-mask = mask
field-status = status
field-boxc-id = boxc

group=smsc
smsc=smpp
smsc-id=****
interface-version=34
host=*.*.*.*
port=2775
receive-port=2775
system-id="*******"
smsc-password="*******"
system-type=default
transceiver-mode=1


thanks

[bayo opadeyi]

I have had similar issues while using an application to connect through kannel to an SMSC.

In my case, I used a shell script to stop kannel every night (off-peak) wait for 10 mins and start it up again.

IIRC, the problem was from the load on the SMSC and it's configuration (the SMSC configuration).

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@boyombo
http://bayo.opadeyi.net
A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
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[Matt Langeman]

Hi Nori,

This sound very similar to a problem we had that ended up being a bug in kannel that stops kannel from reconnecting to the transmitter bind after it reconnects to the receiver bind. We fixed the issue by having kannel use transceiver mode. However, it looks like you already have that setup. Might be worth double checking. 

For us, we would occasionally get dropped connections between kannel and the smsc. Kannel would try to reconnect, but once it reconnected the receiver port, it assumed all was fine, and did not reconnect the transmitter port. Meaning we got messaging coming in (we processed them in rapidsms and send back to cannel), but then kannel could not sent them back to the smsc. Using transceiver mode fixed this for us.

We found some old kannel forum posts that lead us to this diagnosis and solution.

http://www.kannel.org/pipermail/users/2009-May/007037.html

http://www.kannel.org/pipermail/users/2011-May/015723.html

It looks like you are already using transceiver mode, but given the similar issue, I thought I'd mention it.

Matt

[Arbnor Hasani]

thanks Bayo and Matt,

we were also thinking that it is probably something related to SMSC, but I was wondering also if it could be a missing feature (of implementing SMPP v3.4) in Kannel, whereby SMSC is saying that it is busy and cannot deliver messages but Kannel is not handling that properly.

We have transceiver-mode setup to 1.

I guess we will also have to write a script to restart kannel at night

thanks,

nori

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Arbnor Hasani, MSc
Design Center Officer
Innovations Lab Kosovo
phone: + 386 49 854 628
email: aha...@unicef.org
website: www.arbnorhasani.com