The Short Message Peer to Peer (SMPP) protocol is an open,
industry standard protocol designed to provide a flexible data communication
interface for the
transfer of short message data between External Short Message Entities (ESME),
Routing Entities (RE) and Message Centers. SMPP is capable of carrying any
message type, just like UCP/EMI.
SMPP can be used as a protocol that transfers messages between applications,
such as Ozeki NG SMS Gateway and the Short Message Service Center
(SMS Center) of the GSM Service provider over an IP link. This link can be
a leased line or the Internet. The IP connection between your PC and the
SMSC might be protected by VPN (Figure 1.)
Figure 1 - SMPP connection between a PC and the SMSC
If you wish to use the SMPP protocol to the mobile network,
you need to get the following information from the service provider:
For a better understanding of SMPP, you should be familiar with
some of the following terms. A Message Center (MC) is a generic term used to
describe systems such as a Short Message Service Centre (SMSC), GSM Unstructured
Supplementary Services Data (USSD) Server, or Cell Broadcast Centre (CBC).
An ESME typically represents a fixed network SMS client, such as a WAP
Proxy Server, E-mail Gateway, or Voice Mail Server. It may also represent
a Cell Broadcast Entity (CBE). A Routing Entity (RE) is a generic term for
a network element that is utilized for MC to MC and ESME to MC message
routing. A RE has the ability to emulate the functionality associated with
both an MC and an ESME. To an ESME, a RE appears as a MC and to a MC,
a RE appears as an ESME. A carrier may utilize REs to hide a network
of Message Centers, presenting only the REs as the external interface
points for ESMEs.
Figure 2 illustrates the context of SMPP in a mobile network:
