CardBoardFish has developed hundreds of pieces of proprietary technology, positioning the company at the forefront of the SMS aggregation industry. A brief description of just a few of these technologies is available below. Most of them can be licensed for 3rd party use or are available as completely outsourced solutions.

Central to CardBoardFish's SMS services is its feature packed messaging platform, developed over 6 years to meet the needs of hundreds of clients and suppliers. The platform is capable of processing thousands of messages per second and offers carrier-grade reliability with tested uptime exceeding one year.

Not only does it support the standard SMS protocols including SMPP 3.3 & 3.4, UCP/EMI, CIMD2, and OIS, the platform offers a range of custom protocols including HTTP, SOAP XML, and API's for many languages (Perl, PHP, VB, Java). Every protocol can be used for both incoming and outgoing connections, and all provide support for delivery receipts, unicode, 8-bit messaging (such as WAP push, ringtones, logos) and concatenated messages. This platform is available as an outsourced solution; to read more click here.

For clients wishing to operate premium rate SMS services, CardBoardFish provides access to its multi purpose premium rate platform with the following functionality:

	Real-time statistics and billing
	Subscription services and automatic re-billing
	Easy competition set-up
	Quiz builder
	Content management (including Java games, ringtones, logos, wallpapers, mp3’s)
	Content profiling to match the correct content format for each mobile phone model
	Easy development of custom applications via an easy to use PHP API
	Multiple user access levels (admins, developers, content managers, content users)

This is also available as an outsourced solution, although this is rarely needed due to the multiple user access levels and the ability to re-brand the web interface.

Overview

One of the most challenging and complex processes facing SMS/VOIP aggregators and mobile operators is that of making routing, pricing, and other billing decisions based on any number of criteria. Not only must these decisions be made on a per message or connection basis, but they must also take place at high speeds (e.g. 1000/sec throughput) and using minimal hardware. CardBoardFish has designed a unique module specifically for SMS routing and billing, which can also be adapted for VOIP billing.

Core features:

	Routing tables allow source/destination matching by country and/or mobile network
	Routing tables support inheritance and hierarchical overriding
	Each routing table entry can specify a primary route and up to 4 failover routes
	Unsupported mobile prefixes can be specified for each route
	Each route allows decisions to be made per message based on the routes support for long concatenated SMS, 8-bit binary, Unicode, delivery receipts, alphanumeric originator, international numeric originator, national numeric originator and shortcode originator
	Routing profiles allow routing tables to be grouped together and common pricing set
	User tables give the ability to mix routing tables and routing profiles and override destination routing and pricing
	Automatic or manual reloading of routing and user data.
	Support for multiple currencies.
	Intelligent load balancing option to take into account queue size and route throughput.
	Custom Remote Procedure Call TCP protocol allowing for efficient centralised routing management.

Example Routing Demonstrating Inheritance and Overriding

Routing Decision Extensions

Through the use of other CardBoardFish systems, it is possible to add further decision making functionality:

	Route status (Up or Down)
	Delivery receipt status (Up or Down)
	Current Route Throughput
	Current route queue size
	Invalid number detection
	Ported number detection

Performance

Using pooled connections to the DBMS (MySQL 5.0) which is running on the same RedHat Linux Enterprise Server 4 machine, the routing module is capable of exceeding 1,000 transactions/second throughput with minimal CPU and RAM utilisation using standard server hardware. The above test was performed using only destination network matching with destinations having a long 8 digit prefix (the most complex possible). The same test using only destination country matching to avoid per message database utilisation produced throughputs exceeding 400,000 transactions/second. These tests were calculated using a pooled set of TCP connections to a routing module running on a remote server.

Further Information

The CardBoardFish Routing Module has been designed to work with common database management systems including MySQL, PostgreSQL, and Oracle and performs all optimisation processing within the module to keep database load to a minimum. Optimised SQL billing functions are also included to perform tasks such as deducting credits/currency as well as confirming a user has enough credit in a single query.

This module is included in the CardBoardFish Short Message Routing Gateway, and can also be licensed separately. For further information, please contact us here.

Due to increasing restrictions governing the type of traffic allowed over certain SMS routes, CardBoardFish has developed an SMS batch filtering service for aggregators and mobile operators. The filter works with the most common protocols including SMPP, UCP, and CIMD2 to provide a seamless integration into existing systems. It is capable of splitting incoming traffic into separate “streaming” and “batch” outputs, and allows batch messages to be rejected, or re-routed. As well as detecting batch messages, it can detect premium rate marketing messages specific to the destination country, and fully supports the delivery receipt return path. Emails can be automatically generated to notify you or your customers of any detected batches.

Through its commitment to provide an unrivalled level of quality, CardBoardFish has pioneered the most sophisticated SMS route monitoring platform available in the industry today. Capable of quickly and reliably detecting route downtime and delays, it can immediately re-route messages to provide a consistently high level of service 24/7. The platform also employs several techniques to reduce false alarms and is capable of alerting CardBoardFish staff, as well as suppliers as soon as a problem is detected. Not only does it track message delivery time, the platform also monitors how long it takes for delivery receipts to be returned and can make routing decisions based on this information too.

A selection of graphs to clearly illustrate the performance of every SMS route, and to identify any patterns such as recurring periods of slower delivery times are also generated in real time. These allow the quality of an SMS route to be easily assessed both in terms of message delivery time, and delivery receipt return time.

An industry grade GSM modem gateway and fixed GSM antennas provide a robust infrastructure for the monitoring platform to receive SMS. Typically used for reliable wireless SMS transmission, and capable of receiving signal from mobile base stations over 20 miles (32km) away, CardBoardFish utilises the gateway solely for SMS route testing to 20 international GSM operators.

CardBoardFish believes it is essential to maintain up to date and accurate information about all 700+ mobile networks worldwide in order to guarantee comprehensive coverage, and to provide high quality customer support.

The following data sets are meticulously maintained:

	Mobile network names, alternative names, abbreviations, default operator logo text, and network technology type
	Multiple MCC and MNC’s for each network
	Network prefixes optimised for efficient routing by minimum length and sorted by order of popularity
	Mobile number minimum and maximum lengths per prefix
	Test mobile numbers per network and per prefix
	SMS route coverage per network

As well as collecting the above data, CardBoardFish goes one step further by verifying the data in the following ways:

	Confirming prefixes and mobile number lengths with national telecoms regulators
	Performing HLR lookups on test numbers to verify MNC codes and to validate prefixes are in use and number length information is correct
	Sending SMS to test numbers to confirm coverage either by checking with the recipient or using delivery confirmations

Although there are various numbering plan resources available on the Internet, none of them specialise in providing up to date and accurate information solely for mobile networks. Furthermore, these resources have little incentive to guarantee the accuracy of their data (because they may not use it themselves) and, in most cases, do not have the ability to verify the data in the ways that CardBoardFish can (via HLR lookup, SMS with delivery confirmations, and via communication directly with mobile operators).

Licensed access to the CardBoardFish Networks Management system is available for a nominal annual fee. Please contact us here for further information.