My recommendation as of late has been to use WCTP with a TAP backup. (using qpage at $WORK) This way you get the faster delivery/rate of WCTP, with an OOB fall-back should it be needed. Most pager companies (and presumably many cell providers) provide interfaces for one/both of the above. - d. On Wed, 16 Apr 2008, Patrick Shoemaker wrote:
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2008 13:33:40 -0400 From: Patrick Shoemaker <shoemakerp@vectordatasystems.com> Cc: nanog@merit.edu Subject: Re: Postmaster @ vtext.com (or what are best practice to send SMS these days)
My solution is to use a modem / POTS line hanging off the nagios box along with the qpage daemon to send alerts out through a TAP gateway. If you need the specs and 800 number for Verizon's TAP gateway I can send it offlist.
http://www.dynowski.com/blog/2006/05/19/using-nagios-with-quickpage-a-sms-ta...
This is important not only to avoid the inconsistency of the vtext email-sms gateway but to get an alert out in case of a major network disruption that breaks email functionality.
Patrick Shoemaker President, Vector Data Systems LLC shoemakerp@vectordatasystems.com office: (301) 358-1690 x36 mobile: (410) 991-5791 http://www.vectordatasystems.com
David Ulevitch wrote:
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
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