SMS Testing

Testing is always an essential part of application development, the staging of an application, and when an application has been deployed. SMS has several different aspects that require some degree of testing to ensure that applications will perform, and will continue to perform, as expected when used by customers.

As an example, Short Message Peer-to-Peer (SMPP) implementation testing shows the level of conformance to the protocol when sending and receiving SMS messages between applications and mobiles. SMPP Testing also determines the implementation's level of performance. Testing shows the conformance of an application, SMSC or SMS Gateway to the SMPP protocol, its behaviour when sending and receiving SMS, and its performance, e.g. rate of SMS processing. It is essential to perform such testing to understand the behaviour or the application in various situations and its limitations.

Testing should be performed on SMS applications (clients), SMSCs/SMS gateways (servers) and actual live delivery of SMS messages to and from mobile users on target mobile networks. Some of this can be automated, but the rest involves manual testing by developers, engineers, or support staff.

Types of Testing

SMS client and SMS server (SMPP server / SMSC)

Melrose Labs SMPP Testing and SMSC Simulator services can be used to perform the following:

• Application behaviour - generation of outbound SMS and handling of inbound SMS.
• SMPP support - used for SMS operations between client and server.
• Stress testing - high volumes of simultaneous SMS messaging over a period of time (example SMPP SMS load test report).
• SMPP/SMSC/SMS application vulnerability testing - check for issues handling malformed SMPP packets and fields or content.

Delivery

Melrose Labs Tyr SMS Gateway and SMS Test services can be used to perform the following:

• Delivery testing - confirming that messages can be sent to mobiles belonging to a country/network.
• Content testing - confirming that specific types of messages can be sent to mobiles belonging to a country/network.

Use the Tyr SMS Gateway service to send messages to mobiles. Use the SMS Test service to confirm that messages you send (via your chosen SMS gateway or SMSC) are delivered to target mobile networks.

Device

• Confirming that messages are displayed as intended.
• Confirming that messages are otherwise handled as intended (e.g. SIM updates).