Trey Hilyard's dashboard

Trey Hilyard replied on April 15, 2009 00:51 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

memeth, it was a problem from outside of Sprint. The e-mail service that powers messaging.sprintpcs.com is complex, but was affected by a different issue entirely. It wasn't related to the Twitter problem and affected quite a few e-mail SMS messages during a short window.

Trey Hilyard replied on April 14, 2009 17:42 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

It had to be a problem where the message was coming into the Sprint network from Twitter, since we (Sprint) received it already split. I haven't yet heard an official answer from Twitter, but it was them that asked me to test it and see if it was still happening after it had been resolved, so I assume, at least, that they are aware of what was done to fix it.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 31, 2009 23:56 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Good news. I finally heard back from a couple people at Twitter, and they claim that they are looking into the issue. I made sure they had the link to this thread, so thanks to everyone who helped contribute.

I don't know if they will post here or not, but if not, I'll post any follow-up I receive from them.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 31, 2009 14:46 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Okay, I decided to go a different direction. Sprint has a team that may be able to contact Twitter directly, so I have sent an e-mail trying to get them to start working on this as well. I will update if I hear anything back.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 31, 2009 14:20 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

I don't have any updates. I turned this over to Twitter and have never heard anything back. I will see if there is some method to escalate with them. I have to believe that they haven't even looked into it yet, because I assume it would be fairly easy for their SMS provider to fix.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 23, 2009 14:52 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

I believe that Twitter has to be aware of this problem now. I bombarded them with e-mails and support requests, but I haven't heard anything back yet. I got another one this morning, so it looks like it is still a problem.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 01:47 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Interesting quote from Twitter's blog. Looks like it may correlate to the beginning of the issue.

Wed March 11
"Our upstream SMS provider will perform planned maintenance from 10:00 to 10:30 PDT tonight. This maintenance will not affect AT&T and T-Mobile customers; customers of other carriers will not be able to use SMS with Twitter during this period."

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 01:42 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Not that anyone probably cares, but I am now just keeping notes here in case any Twitter developers ever read this.

I found out that Twitter sends messages in an SMPP (the common protocol for this type of application) message directly to Sprint's network. The Messaging Centers in our network don't even have the ability to "split" messages like this, so it appears that they have to be split by Twitter prior to sending the SMPP. Anything that comes in that is longer than 160 characters would just get truncated by our system, so you would get a single incomplete message instead of two.

Also, to address the concern about getting the second half before the fist: Our messaging centers are made up of a lot of computers, so if the messages come from Twitter in rapid succession, the system may not be able to keep them in order. That part, obviously, will be alleviated once the messages are no longer split.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 01:10 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Sent messages to some Twitter devs and heading to the office to find someone who knows how Twitter SMS messages get to Sprint. I think we can now safely say that it isn't just third-party clients. Thanks for the quick responses everyone.

I'll update if/when I know more...

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 00:46 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Thanks Ben. Good info. I am doing some testing now, and that's good to know. I am worried that we may be stuck until I can find someone who can tell me the path these messages take to get into the Sprint network so I can start working backwards towards Twitter.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 00:38 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Dan, Virgin Mobile actually uses the Sprint equipment so technically your messages are still "Sprint" messages. Anything that is broken on Sprint will also be broken on VMU/Helio. Learn something new every day, huh?

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 00:30 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Okay. The heavy-hitter I found was HootSuite and they confirmed that they didn't change anything, so I am working under the assumption that the Twitter API has been changed.

Now, on to the tough task of trying to find a Twitter developer that might be willing to look at it or, at least, run some tests. I am hoping that they pick up this thread, but I am going to try some other avenues as well.

I will ensure everyone right now that Sprint isn't the one splitting these messages.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 00:16 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

Reb, can you tell me what client(s)? I have only seen two so far and just want to see if yours are the same two.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 00:07 to the problem "Two part SMS messages" in Twitter:

I am a Sprint engineer and have been looking in to this problem. It appears that the messages are being divided prior to entering the Sprint network, so I can't tell if it is Twitter or one of the gateways in the middle. One thing that I believe I have seen is that all of the tweets that are split come from other Twitter clients, meaning not directly from twitter.com.

I am trying to determine if this is truly the case. Has everyone else seen this same thing? If you don't know how to tell, go to Twitter when you get a split text message, and see if it is "from web" or from another application name.

In order to determine where the problem lies, I think we need to narrow this down first. I don't know if Twitter sends directly to each carrier, or if they send to a "Bulk Messaging Gateway" that determines which carrier to send it to.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 21, 2009 00:00 to the problem "Sprint customers receiving 2 text messages on long tweets" in HootSuite:

I believed that to be the case, but I can only seem to duplicate this using HootSuite. Thought maybe there might be a bug in their API, or maybe the way HootSuite calls a specific function. I will check out their forum and see if they have any suggestions.

Thanks for the advice.

Trey Hilyard replied on March 20, 2009 23:16 to the problem "Sprint customers receiving 2 text messages on long tweets" in HootSuite:

More info: AT&T users don't appear to experience this. Haven't tested Verizon yet. Also, I am a Sprint engineer and have traced the SMS messages all the way to the point they enter the Sprint network, and they appear to be coming in as separate messages. Not sure if Twitter makes this division or if HootSuite does it.

I have example messages from Twitter user DeptZero that meet this condition. That user normally tweets 130-140 characters, so the issue can be reproduced easily with a Sprint phone by following them and activating device notifications.

Trey Hilyard reported a problem in HootSuite on March 20, 2009 23:09:

Sprint customers receiving 2 text messages on long tweets

When posting 140 characters to Twitter, Sprint mobile followers receive 2 text messages instead of 1. Total number of chars including Twitter username doesn't exceed 160.