Just out of curiosity...how carrier forwards MMS...

[goandroidgo]

Hello,

This is just out of curiosity....
Say your carrier is A... say send MMS to your friend, Tom(Say his carrier is B).....

So when you send MMS from your phone(Your phone will use your MMSC server, then the http request will be posted to that server)....

At your MMSC server.... in the posted data, they can look at who you are going to send to(in this case, Tom's phone number)

Here is my imagination how it is supposed to work in behind scene..

Your phone --> your MMSC -> Tom's carrier MMSC -> your friend phone

1. based on Tom's phone number, is there any way that MMSC server can figure out which carrier Tom is currently in?
In order to send that MMS to Tom, your MMSC server needs to know which carrier, so it can forward to the Tom's carrier(B) MMSC server? I was curious how the carrier was going to be guessed based on the Tom's phone number... I don't think in the posted data, there is no such thing to contain the receipt's carrier information...If I am correct, there is no such reliable way to detect which carrier currently belongs to from phone number...or is this only limited to end-user? Since they are carrier, they may have accurate information they can search reliably in their network, though that doesn't disclose to end-user?

2. Say somehow, it picks up the right carrier to forward to..then they need to look up to find MMSc server to forward then..right?
Then does this mean, each carrier's MMSC server holds virtually every carrier's MMSC server information(with authentication info) possibly to find a correct MMSC to forward?

Or..my imagination was completely wrong?? Maybe there was somehow single server that every carrier is supposed to connect to find MMS message, well, then in this case, I guess, still, somehow that needs to be notified to different carrier..then anyone could explain how?

Thanks,

 

[ManiacJoe]

You have the right idea.
The carriers maintain databases of who owns what phone number. For security reasons, the carriers are not going to tell the general public how and where the data is communicated.