What is SMSC number : Indian Mobile Operators - How does it work and how to change SMSC Number in Android phones

A Short Message Service Center (SMSC) is a network element in the mobile telephone network. Its purpose is to store, forward, convert and deliver Short Message Service (SMS) messages.

The flow of message in mobile network system happens as follows:

1. From mobile to another mobile - referred to as MO-MT (Mobile Originated - Mobile Terminated)
2. From mobile to a content provider (also known as Large Account / ESME) - referred to as MO-AT (Mobile Originated - Application Terminated)
3. From application to a mobile - referred to as AO-MT (Application Originated - Mobile Terminated)

We should remember that An SMS message is stored temporarily in the SMS center if the recipient mobile phone is unavailable. It is possible on most mobile handsets to specify an expiry period after which the SMS message will be deleted from the SMS center. Once deleted, the SMS message will no longer be available for dispatch to the recipient mobile phone (even if it comes on line). The validity period should be regarded by the handset user as a request, as the SMSC itself can be configured to ignore or otherwise handle message delivery schedules.


Sometimes you face problem in sending SMS or Changing SMS center number. While sending SMS you will get ‘unable to send’ error, this Error is mainly caused by Mobile SMS center number is changed. You can change this number in your mobile Network/SMS settings


Following is the list of SMSC numbers (latest) for leading mobile operators in India:

• Aircel sms center number +919809099060
• Airtel sms service center number +919895051914
• Jio sms center number +917010075009
• BSNL sms center number +919440099997
• Idea sms service center number +919847099996
• Reliance sms service center number +919020000500
• Tata Docomo sms service center number +919032055002
• Uninor/Telenor sms center number +919084051550
• Vodafone SMS center number +919846000040

An SMS centre (SMSC) is responsible for handling the SMS operations of a wireless network.

1. When an SMS message is sent from a mobile phone, it will first reach an SMS centre.
2. The SMS centre then forwards the SMS message towards the destination.
3. The main duty of an SMSC is to route SMS messages and regulate the process. If the recipient is unavailable (for example, when the mobile phone is switched off), the SMSC will store the SMS message.
4. It will forward the SMS message when the recipient is available and the message's expiry period is not exceeded.

Guess what! This completes the full information you should know.

CD with mapped mounted drive on network : CHDIR command

It has happened with me that I was able to succesfully mount a network drive and can freely access it using Windows file-system Explorer. But my script was not able to access it. Digging a step further, i noticed that I could not even CD to that drive on command prompt. Hence i finally wrote this blog post for anyone running into the similar issue.

Question : How do I change to a mapped network drive at the command line?

Issue:
Say, you have a networked drive mapped to "U:\"
Now you want to go to that drive from a command line.
However, when you try you get an error suggesting
C:>u: The system cannot find the drive specified.


Solution:
There are two aspects to the solution:
1. The Syntax to use CD command on Windows may be the cause. Remember that for changing directories you should use cd /d U: rather than just U:
2. You should first start using the map drive on command prompt. Command used to do that is as follows:
net use u:

See attached screenshot showing the error as well as what happened after solution.

C:\Users\mfaiz\Downloads>net use p:
Local name        p:
Remote name       \\sxa.xxx.xxx.com\ap-xxx
Resource type     Disk
The command completed successfully.

CentOS 6.3 - Version/ Network/ GCC/ GDB - Settings

Good that you chose CentOS for your usage. Undoubtedly, it is a good Linux flavor. You may download latest binaries/ iso images etc from http://www.centos.org/

What is CentOS Linux?

It is worthwhile to mention that CentOS is an Enterprise-class Linux Distribution derived from sources freely provided to the public by a prominent North American Enterprise Linux vendor.  CentOS conforms fully with the upstream vendor's redistribution policy and aims to be 100% binary compatible. (CentOS mainly changes packages to remove upstream vendor branding and artwork.)  CentOS is free.

CentOS is developed by a small but growing team of core developers.  In turn the core developers are supported by an active user community including system administrators, network administrators, enterprise users, managers, core Linux contributors and Linux enthusiasts from around the world.

Above description may also be read in full details at centos.org.

How to check Version of CentOS? 32bit or 64 bit?

if u do uname -a

you will get linux kernel description. for eg.

Linux dnsserver 2.6.xx-yyy x86_64.

it tells you that it is a 64 bit OS

in case you want to read centos version do the following:

cat /etc/centos-release

it will return you something like "CentOS release 6.3 (final)"

Now this typically tells you that it is CentOS 6.3. Voila!!

You can also use cat /etc/redhat-release.

Install Gcc and GDB

This usually comes bundled.

In order to check version you can use --version switch. For eg.

gcc --version

gdb --version

CentOS 6.3 comes with GDB 7.2.xx series.

In case you dont have gcc etc, you can use Yum command.

First check with rpm.

Then use yum command.

For eg.

rpm -q gcc-c++

yum install gcc-c++

Network Settings in CentOS 6.3

Being a UI rich OS, you can directly set network parameters.

Goto System-->Preferences-->Network connections

Choose connection you want to correct (usually eth1 for ethernet)

Go to IpV4 setting and provide Ip address.

Press OK

Then from command shell you can check whether it is set or not. Use the command "ip a"

So, your Development or Testing infrastructure is ready. Use, code, distribute, and test your applications. And thank me too!!

Signing off for now.

Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz

Toughjamy@yahoo.com

Internet Censorship: Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz : Thought 2

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

I would again re-emphasize that the--

Internet Censorship is wrong and devastating. We are still fortunate that it is a Fool's day prank. We may achieve it but those efficient programmers are in Mars. Find them and get the task done!

what do you feel?

Internet Censorship: Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz: Thought 1

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

The Internet and cyber Censorship has become latest craze of governments across the globe. But they fail to understand the real situation and challenge in solving the issue:

"The time you spend while reading this article must have been used by several people at several locations to generate several offensive contents for several societies in several languages over several internet portals. And be assured of several formats too!"

Lets see how far the ban in china, Arab spring, and ruling against Facebook, Yahoo, Google etc in India takes us. I believe that the Internet is free, is free, and not be curbed. So, no need to be afraid of. as No Mayan Calendar end date has still been set for the Internet!!

Cheers!!

Click on links too dear!!!

Image against Internet Censorship, Ban/Blocks

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

Facebook Page on Internet Censorship Voyager

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

A page has been created in Facebook for Internet Censorship Voyager Blog Readers.

Users who wish can Like the page and add their comments, thoughts, and feedback on that page too
You may access the page at :
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Internet-Censorship-Voyager/172211709553542

You can discuss bans and blocks over websites in China, Arab, India or about any Geographical boundaries.

Let's see you there...

What is Internet Censorship Voyager

Post from Internet Censorship Voyager Blog.

I have defined in the header itself the intention and the purpose of this blog.


Mission: Travelling in modern times to understand, revisit and analyze the technical and ethical issues related to Global Internet Censorship.

Description	The Internet or the Cyber world has taken our Real world from the Library-Magazines-Only state to the state having Search Engines, Wikis, CMSes, Social networks, Whistle Blowers, et al. But as it reaches to its puberty age, it is fearing about censorships from governments across the globe.

Vision: I intend to understand the real need of Internet Censorship, the real problems, the real stories behind every Cyber Censorship attempts; And bring out to my readers latest news, laws, policies, problems, solutions, viability, and correctness of every such attempts in the name of Offensive and Objectionable contents; And to discuss any past or contemporary ban, block, or charges against Google, Facebook, Yahoo and other Internet and Social networking companies operating in the Cyber World.

New Blog: Internet Censorship Ideas, discussions, problems, and solutions

There is a new blog exclusively dedicated to the Internet censorship issues across the globe. The blog has a related Facebook page too. I am giving the links. Read and like those pages. Blog is full of original, rich, quality articles on the niche area.

Blog Name : Internet Censorship Voyager

Blog Link:  http://internet-censorship-voyager.blogspot.com/

Blog Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Internet-Censorship-Voyager/172211709553542

I hope you all will enjoy the stuff out there!!

Stress Testing [What How When]

This post aims to throw light on questions such as, "what is stress testing", "how to do stress testing", "when to do stress testing". So basically, it gives you my visualization of stress testing. Specifically, how i see it and feel of it. In Stress testing you try to break the system under test. Rather you can also call it study of Emotional quotient of your system. How well it behaves when it is subjected to stress. Definitely this means of finding innovative ideas to give the system/process a really really tough time. This can be achieved by expanding its resources or by taking resources away from it. Often in the latter case (but sometimes in both) it is called negative testing. The main purpose behind this testing is to make sure that the system fails and recovers gracefully. So, the keyword here is RECOVERABILTY.

It is to be understood that the performance testing demands a very controlled environment. Since you are going to set baselines and compare against old baselines, you have to be very cautious about the environment, architecture, OS etc. But Stress testing enjoys the beauty of randomness. You may very well doubt on what beauty I am talking about. But seriously, only a Good tester can tell you how much he enjoys in inducing chaos, catches and unpredictability. I felt this pride and fulfillment many times in Adobe and Symantec.



It should be instilled deep that stress testing is not breaking the system purely for the pleasure of breaking it. Rather it allows observation of how the system reacts to failure. It tests recoverability, error messages, breach of security due to unpredictable behavior, hangs etc. For example the simplest you can do is to parallelly run processes that consume resources. This may be CPU, memory, disk, network, database consuming processes. Think about tools and utilities available. For instance read my post related to 'ulimit' tool on linux. [PS: There are thousands of tools. i am just giving an example, because that is also very helpful. And yes, for me you clicking on Advertisements is very helpful.] If no tool is working out you can think of writing you own test application. Simplest is an application with overriden new operator. Look my post on that. Find from references below. Think about doubling the baseline number for concurrent users. What happens if different protocols used to access same system at same time. What happens if the Files being processed are of very large size, or of very small size.

Remember my pictorial representation above. Stress testing means 'giving your application really really tough time. Think about innovative ways to test the Emotional quotient of your system.'

But do remember to come to this test only after your functional and integration testing has been done. If you are only responsible for some module, then you may stress test your module/API/DLL/lib/so (Hmm..anything) once your Acceptance and Unit Testing are finished. Obviously in Agile environment, due to time crunch, Functional testing and stress test can be started in parallel on different systems. Although the former is more important, but unfortunately time is the only thing you go out of often. So stress can be triggered on some machine. And you can analyze results of functional test. And if FT is pass, you can also analyze stress test result. For Antivirus products, you can have a stress file set that contains Zip compression bombs, large files, files having viruses. For Desktop publishing applications, your test set files may contain large application files, fuzzed files, or files not saved properly, or any set of files that are known to give tough times to your system.

References On my Blog:
Ulimit as a tool on Linux for Stress Test
Different types of Software Testing
Overriding new and delete operator for stress testing

Google chrome wrong message for network diagnostic

If your internet connection is not available or lost, and you try to open some website over the internet using Google Chrome, you get an Error. Absolutely, there is no problem untill now. But Google advises you a method to verify and check the problem. Now if that resolution is wrong, there is a problem. And if the wrong resolution is given by Google, it is a big problem.

The same issue is also posted in Google Chrome Help forums at Click to See this in Google Forum
See the picture for instance: (Click on picture to view it large)



Google says to go to %windir%, which simply means the windows installation folder. On my system it comes out to be C:\windows
After this it says, to launch network diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe. Now there is no file as such at said location.

Actually there are two problems:

1) If you type what is advised by google on the Start->Run.
%windir%/network diagnostic\xpnetdiag.exe
Then there is a error saying, there is no folder c:\windows/network. Actually the path should be in double quotes. The people proficient in computer systems and troubleshooting would even know this beforehand. But I dont know why Google believes that even general people would know of this.

2) On my system, XP SP3, there was no folder named network diagnostic at all in C:\windows. So that means even if I used double quotes in the path, I got know resolution.

My personal gut feeling is that, Google sould not advise those methods which are not generic. Also, the advises should be easy to understand by the common masses. I guess, my voice being heard.

DOS and DDOS: An article on Hacking using Denial of Service Attacks

A very common term in the field of hacking and Security is DoS Attack. Hackers employ a number of techniques to attack and disrupt computer systems and networks. There is an important point here, to understand the two flavors of DOS attacks. Attacks can be of different types depending on the aim and speciality of the attacker. Some just want to disrupt computer systems but there are some hackers who intend to infiltrate the computers and steal sensitive information for drastic and really crazy purposes.

DOS or Denial of Service attack: This is a common way to attack a computer network. The main intention of a DOS attack is to disrupt the activities of the server through overloading it with unwanted requests. The attacker usually sends large number of requests to the server which leads to overloading. When the server gets overloaded, it is unable to answer to normal requests. DOS attacks are usually directed at websites. It is very easy to prevent and stop DOS attacks. In very plain words it should be noted that DOS attack if properly done can bring server on knees. Users and some scripts and functions would be starved of some services. These services may be among some of the crucial ones.

As said on the Symantec Website:
“ DoS is a Denial of Service to a victim trying to access a resource. In many cases it can be safey said that the attack requires a protocol flaw as well as some kind of network amplification.
Denial of Services is also an attack on a computer system or network that causes a loss of service to users, typically the loss of network connectivity and services through the the consumption of bandwidth of the victim network, or the overloading the computational resources of the victim system.
The motivation for DoS attacks is not to break into a system. Instead, it is to deny the legitimate use of the system or network to others who need its services. One can say that this will typically happen through one of the following means:
1. Crashing the system.
2. Deny communication between systems.
3. Bring the network or the system down or have it operate at a reduced speed which affects productivity.
4. Hang the system, which is more dangerous than crashing since there is no automatic reboot. Productivity can be disrupted indefinitely.”


There is yet another but more advanced form of denial of service attack. Here, a large number of zombie computers are used to send requests to the server which is being attacked. This is popularly known as DDOS or Distributed Denial of Service Attack. This attack causes the server to get overburdened within a short span of time. The zombie computers are controlled by hackers by means of malware. Because of the large number of computers involved in the attack, the power of the attacker gets magnified thousands of times. The best way to protect against distributed denial of service attacks is to use a traffic filter. A traffic filter is a device that prevents traffic from the IPs from where the malicious requests are originating.
Again it is worth to mention what Symantec website says about this:
“A Distributed DoS (DDoS) is the combined effort of several machines to bring down victim. In many cases there is a master machine that launches the attack to zombie machines that are part of a bot network, as shown below in Figure 1. Some bot networks contain many thousands of machines used to launch an attack.”

-Mohd Anwar Jamal Faiz
Software Engineer (White Box API and Security) at Leading Software Product Company