Chapter 1. Introduction
Figure 1-2. Logical position of SMS gateway between a phone and a content server.
An SMS gateway can also be used to relay SMS messages from one GSM network to another, if the
networks do not roam messages normally.
Kannel works as an SMS gateway, talking with many different kind of SMS centers, and relaying the
messages onward to content providers, as HTTP queries. Content providers then answer to this HTTP
query and the answer is sent back to mobile terminal, with appropriate SMS center connection using
SMS center specific protocol.
In addition to serving mobile originated (MO) SMS messages Kannel also works as an SMS push
gateway - content providers can request Kannel to send SMS messages to terminals. Kannel then
determines the correct SMS center to relay the SMS message and sends the SMS message to that SMS
center, again using SMS center specific protocol. This way the content provider does not need to know
any SMS center specific protocol, just unified Kannel SMS sending interface.
Features
This section needs to be written.
Requirements
Kannel is being developed on Linux systems, and should be fairly easy to export to other Unix-like
systems. However, we don’t yet support other platforms, due to lack of time. Kannel requires the
following software environment:
•
C compiler, development libraries and related tools.
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