North American Network Operators Group

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Re: Using Mobile Phone email addys for monitoring

  • From: Joe Greco
  • Date: Thu Sep 06 20:30:26 2007

>   > Anyone else have any issues, past or present, with this kind of thing?
> 
> It takes ~ 7 minutes from the time Nagios sends an email sms to AT&T to 
> the time it hits my phone.  I'm using @mobile.mycingular.com because 
> mmode.com stopped working (which results in at least two txt pages vs. 
> the one I was used to).
> 
>  > Is SMTP to a mobile phone a fundamentally flawed way to do this?
> 
> I'm beginning to think it is!

It appears that device messaging in general is getting more difficult.
We use SNPP and TAP paging to drive paging to actual pagers.  Years ago,
I experimented with using cell phones instead of pagers, and the
reliability of the service offered by cell phone companies was all over
the map, despite the fact that a phone ought to make a fairly ideal
pager, being two-way capable, rechargeable, etc.  Slow and non-deliveries
were about ~50%.

These days, we're seeing that problem with our pager service, where the
pager is a confirmed delivery pager, like the PF1500.  In this model, the
pager network knows where it last saw the pager, so there's no multistate
or nationwide broadcasting of pages - the local tower speaks to the pager,
which confirms.  If it fails to confirm, the network queues the message,
and when the pager reappears, rebroadcasts.  This even handles the case
where the tower is too distant to hear the pager, since the page is still
sent in the last seen area.

Unfortunately, we've noticed a degradation in service quality on the part
of the paging network, with problems ranging from busies on the TAP dial
pool, to other really stupid stuff.  It used to be that I could be in a
basement or other RF-nasty environment, come on out, and pages would be
retransmitted to me within a few minutes.  Now, I can drive around areas
near towers, not get pages, or, for more fun, and this is great, get near
a different tower, get *new* pages, followed an hour or two (or twelve)
later by *old* pages.

I think I mostly despise the UI on the PF1500 anyways.  I'd rather be able
to dismiss a page with a single keystroke, and overall I preferred the way
the Mot Adv Elite used to work.

Anyways, this is an interesting and useful topic, which I'm watching with
some interest.

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.