If you stick with SMS messages, the weakest link will always be the carriers SMS gateway. Since this is the last item in the chain, any upstream service will still be handicapped by the gateway. I've worked with a variety of carriers, and they have all had problems at one point or another with their SMS gateways getting overwhelmed with SMS spam, etc.. causing long SMS delivery queues or dropped messages. If you can find the SMS gateway admin at Verizon they can probably comment on what the issue is and any planned resolutions, else you may need to switch providers to one with a more cluefull SMS gateway team. So far this year, I have only had a couple instances of delayed/dropped SMS delivery via the AT&T/Cingular SMS Gateway.. Peter Kranz Founder/CEO - Unwired Ltd www.UnwiredLtd.com Desk: 510-868-1614 x100 Mobile: 510-207-0000 pkranz@unwiredltd.com -----Original Message----- From: owner-nanog@merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog@merit.edu] On Behalf Of David Ulevitch Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 10:00 AM To: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Postmaster @ vtext.com (or what are best practice to send SMS these days) We've noticed that 1234567890@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