kannel’s ‘failed’ on status page

Question

I run kannel http administration page and have this status

Kannel bearerbox version `1.4.3'. Build `Sep 24 2009 16:10:11', compiler `3.4.6'. System SunOS, release 5.10, version Generic_139555-08, machine sun4u. Hostname clark, IP 10.1.1.155. Libxml version 2.6.23. Using native malloc.

Status: running, uptime 0d 5h 53m 27s

WDP: received 0 (0 queued), sent 0 (0 queued)

SMS: received 0 (0 queued), sent 39855 (0 queued), store size 0

SMS: inbound (0.00,0.00,0.00) msg/sec, outbound (3.93,4.23,1.88) msg/sec

DLR: 0 queued, using internal storage

Box connections:
    smsbox:(none), IP 10.1.1.155 (0 queued), (on-line 0d 5h 53m 27s) 
SMSC connections:
    CMP    EMI2:10.1.1.12:4200:12345 (online 21207s, rcvd 0, sent 39855, failed 257, queued 0 msgs)

We send an quite huge amount of MTs.

What I concern is the 'failed 257'. Is this normal? What does it mean?

Answer 1

"Normal" is relative. Considering your sent-to-failed ratio is under a percent, I would have to say that it is acceptable. Of course, this depends on the purpose and perceived importance of your messages.

Historical reference is definitely required before determining if the failure rate is an issue, as well as knowing if your SMSC is an aggregator or has a direct GSM/SS7 connection.

Ultimately, you need to check your relevant kannel logs for the error message/s, if any, returned. Could be something as simple as a message encoding problem to a blacklisted recipient, etc. but you won't know till you look. Not sure what sort of back end you use and if you store status codes per message, but only you can decide the relative level of importance versus the possible effort involved.

Hope this helps.