Introduction to SMPP (Short Message Peer to Peer)

The Short Message Peer to Peer (SMPP) protocol is an open, industry standard protocol designed to provide a flexible data communications interface for transfer of short message data between a Message Center, such as a Short Message Service Centre (SMSC), GSM Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD) Server or other type of Message Centerand a SMS application system, such as a WAP Proxy Server, EMail Gateway or other Messaging Gateway. Using the SMPP protocol, an SMS application system called the ‘External Short Message Entity’ (ESME) may initiate an application layer connection with an SMSC over a TCP/IP network connection and may then send short messages and receive short messages to and from the SMSC respectively. The ESME may also query, cancel or replace short messages using SMPP. SMPP supports a full featured set of two-way messaging functions such as:

• Transmit messages from an ESME to single or multiple destinations via the SMSC
• An ESME may receive messages via the SMSC from other SME’s (e.g. mobile stations)
• Query the status of a short message stored on the SMSC
• Cancel or replace a short message stored on the SMSC
• Send a registered short message (for which a ‘delivery receipt’ will be returned by the SMSC to the message originator)
• Schedule the message delivery date and time
• Select the message mode, i.e. datagram or store and forward
• Set the delivery priority of the short message
• Define the data coding type of the short message
• Set the short message validity period
• Associate a service type with each message e.g. voice mail notification