Kannel is an open source SMS gateway and a true dinosaur in the best sense of the word. A dinosaur because the Kannel development began as early as 1999. Also a dinosaur because of its size. The Kannel system consists of 300,000 lines of C code. Such a comprehensive project cannot easily be replaced or developed anew.
And although we fondly call Kannel a dinosaur, Kannel is still very much alive today. Not only because a large number of customers and we ourselves use Kannel as a client to establish SMPP connections, but also because after a long hiatus between 2014 and 2018, life and movement have returned to the project.
LOX24 and SMPPP
How does LOX24 come into play now? For SMS messaging, we actually do not offer any support. SMPP interface SMPP is a compact binary protocol that is excellent for large SMS volumes with low bandwidth usage and consumes little power. However, it also keeps one or more TCP sockets constantly connected to the SMSC, which is not good for scalability, load balancing, and failover.
Even worse, SMPP does not offer any transport-level security, such as:. SSL/TLS, And it sends all your data, including the access credentials, in plain text. The connection therefore needs to be secured via VPN or tunnel, which adds additional complexity and susceptibility to interference.
HTTPS SMS is the solution
It is therefore advantageous Kannel with our https SMS API to connect. Then we have the advantage of SSL encryption without additional tools, and at the same time Kannel customers can continue to use their usual tool and do not have to integrate our API into their system. Those who already use SMPP connections with Kannel can thus take advantage of our SMS Gateway in approximately 5 minutes configure and use it just like any other SMS connection.
Kannel is inherently compatible with https. Therefore, no changes to the Kannel source code need to be made or anything additional needs to be installed. Normally, one would use the „generic“ system type. (group = smsc, smsc = http, system-type = kannel). However, „generic“ is complicated to configure and – once you get into the details – it is also very limited compared to the other SMSC types.
Therefore, we use „system-type = kannel„. This https connection is actually intended to connect different Kannel clients, but it is excellent for using the LOX24 SMS Gateway. For Kannel, it looks as if the SMS is being sent to another Kannel client. In reality, however, the SMS is being sent to the LOX24 SMS API. This is not a disadvantage for Kannel and a great advantage for you as a Kannel user, as it makes the configuration extremely simple and does not have the drawbacks of the generic type. If you wish, LOX24 simulates a small Kannel.
However, you need to make a decision in advance. How do you want to receive the delivery reports? We can provide these to you. either directly to your own endpoint send, e.g. an URL on your server or an email address. In this case, we do not send the delivery reports back to Kannel, but directly to you. Alternatively, we can send the Delivery reports returned to Kannel And you can then receive the delivery reports from Kannel. This solution is usually suitable if you are already sending SMS with Kannel via SMPP and are processing the delivery reports from Kannel.
Option 1: Delivery reports directly to you
In Kannel, you set the following configuration:
group = smsc
smsc = http
system-type = kannel
smsc-id = "lox24"
allowed-smsc-id = "lox24"
port = 10443
send-url = "../../api/kannel/{SERVICE_CODE}.php"
smsc-username = "{USER_ID}"
smsc-password = "{API_KEY}"
max-sms-octets = 1530
- SERVICE_CODE – replace with the SMS type you want to use, i.e. ‘economy’, ‘pro’ or ‘direct’
- USER_ID – is your customer number, the same one you use for logging in to our website
- API_KEY – is the key that you can generate in the API settings in your web account. You must choose the ‘API Kannel’ type.
The delivery reports go to the URL that you have stored as an API v2 endpoint in your web account. This can also be an email address.
Option 2: Delivery reports to Kannel
In this case, you set the following configuration in Kannel:
group = smsc
smsc = http
system-type = kannel
smsc-id = "lox24"
allowed-smsc-id = "lox24"
port = 10443
send-url = "../../api/kannel/{SERVICE_CODE}.php"
smsc-username = "{USER_ID}"
smsc-password = "{API_KEY}"
dlr-url = "http://youhosthere.com:10443/?username={USER_ID}&password={API_KEY}"
connect-allow-ip = "127.0.0.1;213.133.127.70;116.203.64.153;85.10.245.*"
max-sms-octets = 1530
- SERVICE_CODE – replace with the SMS type you want to use, i.e. ‘economy’, ‘pro’ or ‘direct’
- USER_ID – is your customer number, the same one you use for logging in to our website
- API_KEY – is the key that you can generate in the API settings in your web account. You must choose the ‘API Kannel’ type.
- youhosthere.com:10443 – you need to replace it with the address of your Kannel installation
In the SMSC configuration we use port 10443, but it can be any port you like. We strongly recommend that you only allow the LOX24 server in your firewall settings so that no one else sends DLRs to your Kannel:
LOX24 Server: 116.203.64.153, 213.133.127.127.70, 85.10.245.*
You can find some more information about the delivery reports and the exact configuration in our API Description.
