Postmaster @ vtext.com (or what are best practice to send SMS these days)

Wed Apr 16 19:19:30 UTC 2008

In my experience, even with TAP, sending messages to a cell phone is 
spotty at best. I have folks on both uni-directional pagers via TAP or 
SNPP, as well as cell phones via e-mail and TAP. There isn't a 
noticeable difference in delivery time between e-mail and TAP on the phones.

Cell to Cell is probably the best option if you want to stick with SMS 
to cell phones. I have no idea how reliable it is between carriers. I 
still get some comfort knowing that people have pagers with a TAP 
gateway - I've no idea how the technology differs between a pager and 
SMS, but it seems much more reliable. All of the pager problems I've had 
in the last few years have been, erm, 'payment related'.

David Ulevitch wrote:
>
> We've noticed that 1234567890 at vtext.com is no longer a very reliable 
> form of delivery for alerts from Nagios, et al.  It seems as our 
> volume of alerts has risen, our delivery rate has dropped precipitously.
>
> We don't expect much trying to actually reach a postmaster for 
> vtext.com   so I thought the better question would be to ask what the 
> current best practice is to get SMS alerts out?
>
> Back in the day, I remember a company I worked for had something 
> called a TAP gateway.  Is that still a good route?  I've also been 
> told to check out an SMS gateway/api service called clickatell.com  -- 
> anyone using them to delivering timely notifications?
>
> Is the best thing to do to try and get a programmable cellphone in a
> datacenter?
>
> What else are operators doing to get the pages out when things go wonky?
>
> -David
>