NetComm Wireless

SMS ForwardingFeature Spotlight

What is SMS Forwarding?

In the consumer market, SMS has been a long used and well known form of sending messages to other people.

In the emerging machine-to-machine market, SMS is often used as a means of relaying instructions to a device.

Many of the functions of the MachineLink 3G can be controlled using SMS, providing an alternative means of operating it when mobile broadband is down.

Similarly, downstream devices connected to the MachineLink 3G can receive instructions via SMS messages through the use of the router’s SMS forwarding feature.

This presentation demonstrates how to configure and use the SMS forwarding feature to communicate with downstream devices.

SMS Forwarding example diagram

Call home

sudo reboot

Network backbone

NetComm Wireless router

Downstream device

TCP/UDP packets

NAT

Call Home

SMS -> IP Forward Engine

Internet

Phoning home…

Public IP Private IP

SMS Forwarding example diagram

reboot

sudo reboot

Network backbone Downstream device

rebooting

TCP/UDP packets

Cell tower

SMS -> IP Forward Engine

NetComm Wireless router

Configuring SMS Forwarding

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Configuring SMS Forwarding

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Example use scenarios

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SMS Forwarding demonstration

Below is a screenshot showing the configuration of the SMS forwarding function. We are going to send an SMS message to the router which will then be relayed via UDP port 1550 to a Windows machine. We will then capture the information on the computer to demonstrate the SMS being converted to IP packet data and being transmitted downstream.

SMS Forwarding demonstration - UDP

The computer connected to the router on 192.168.1.190 was running Wireshark at the time the message was sent and captured the UDP IP packet data of the event.

Keep in mind that while this is a human readable string of text, the SMS you forward can contain other forms of instructions used to control or communicate with a device connected to the router locally.

SMS Forwarding demonstration - TCP

Some final words on SMS Forwarding

SMS Diagnostics and SMS Forwarding may be used at the same time

When SMS forwarding is enabled, all messages are passed to the downstream device, including SMS Diagnostics messages. The downstream device should be capable of filtering out the irrelevant messages.

SMS messages may be forwarded a TCP port and a UDP port simultaneously.

An optional feature for use in OpCos rather than GDSP use is that SMS messages may also be forwarded to another mobile number in addition to via TCP and/or UDP.

Further information

More information:

There is a very detailed and informative section in the user guide dedicated to this feature.

There are many more supported commands listed in the user guide.