ATT shutting down mms.att.net email to text GW in June

Posted by HJForsythe@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 36 comments

I don't know if you guys use mms.att.net to forward events to your phone but I have been using it extensively for years (alongside Teams). I liked it because we could assign a different FROM: address to each alert so on my phone I could mute the ones that were super low priority while still getting the ones that say we're getting a 227Gbps DDoS attack.

In teams I haven't really figured out a way unless I guess I setup like 15 channels and 15 different webhooks but I still don't know if you can control whether your phone will beep or not on a channel to channel basis or if notifications are app-wide.

I'm aware of Twilio and various other SMS gateways but man the AT&T thing was elegant and it just worked.

Bummer.

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Ok-Carpenter-8455@reddit

E-mail alerts -> Download Outlook -> Set alert rules -> Done.

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idealistdoit@reddit

At least, on-premise Exchange to AT&T mobility users uses txt.att.net under the hood with the following

extra header:
Content-Class: MS-OMS-SMS
Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
X-MS-Exchange-Generated-Message-Source: Mailbox Rules Agent,Text Messaging
Delivery Agent

to: [mobilenumber]@txt.att.net

So if you have on-premise exchange with a rule to forward to your phone, that'll stop working for AT&T phones unless Exchange changes or you set up another way for exchange to send a text message.

It has been less useful lately anyway. In an effort to prevent spam using the service, their abuse teams and rules have been getting more and more broad, banning huge IP ranges for entire colocations for a single machine problem. We all know the challenges of dealing with spam and email. It's a hard problem to solve, and, with this becoming the easiest way to get a text message to a customer, they're a target.

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

Okay that works assuming that the reason for the alert isn't your email being gone.

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Icolan@reddit

How did email to text solve that problem?

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

A different SMTP server. Not that hard.

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Icolan@reddit

That does not solve the problem, that just moves it to a different server.

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

I cant even imagine what you are saying.

If you have one or more machines running Postfix or another MTA solely dedicated to sending the alerts how does that not solve the problem of sending the alerts? Please educate me. I have only been doing this since 1997. Im sure that you have a lot to teach me.

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Icolan@reddit

Ok, you keep being absolutely sure that your email based solution to alerting is the best possible approach.

You can choose to be condescending or you could honestly discuss the problem and solutions to it.

At this point, you can discuss them with someone else because I am not interested in discussing things with someone who chooses to display an attitude about learning like you have.

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

I don't understand how you can be in IT and have the attention to detail that you seem to possess. I never said that what I am doing is the best approach. I also didn't ask for advice and I mentioned alternatives by name. I implied that it is a bummer that they are shutting it down.

You appear to be upset because you are replying to a different post than the one I made and it is a waste of time.

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Icolan@reddit

I am not upset, I replied to a comment and you decided to get condescending, so I decided that the conversation is not worth the time because you have apparently decided that ther is nothing more that you can learn.

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ultimateVman@reddit

A separate smtp relay.

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Icolan@reddit

That does not solve the problem, that just moves it to a different server.

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ultimateVman@reddit

Yes, it specifically moves your notifications from using your primary email system to a relay dedicated to sending the texts directly to your phone provider.

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Icolan@reddit

As I said, you just moved the problem to a different server. The problem still exists, you get no notifications if that server goes down.

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TheLightingGuy@reddit

"The ticket site is awfully quiet today"

- Me not realizing we're 3 hours into an email outage.

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tankerkiller125real@reddit

And this is why I wrote a little proxy program to get the Microsoft status page stuff, and bring it into our actual status page tool which can text me for significant issues.

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setient@reddit

Pagerduty would help with this.

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

Oh boy lets SaaS every single thing and take all of them public.

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setient@reddit

It is literally for having all those rules for notifications. The real solution at this point is just pay a person in a NOC. They can do that triage. It is a good entry level job. It sounds like that would be better for your use case maybe?

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

We do have a NOC they arent engineers and would just call me anyway.

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mschuster91@reddit

Jesus fuck ok that's a different problem, you need better managers. NOC staff should be qualified enough to do basic triage on their own...

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

You have no idea what the company does.

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mschuster91@reddit

Yeah but no matter what, a NOC should be staffed by engineers...

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

You really lack context about what alerts I was sending to myself.

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lostalaska@reddit

We used it for critical server alerts forwarded to our on call phone. It was a super simple solution, but most phones have email access, guess we'll discuss it at our next IT meeting and decide what changes to make to the evening alert system.

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unkiltedclansman@reddit

Pushover. It does exactly what you are looking for. Email gateway to push alert.

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lostalaska@reddit

Cool, if you have any sway with ATT please feel free to let them know we appreciate the service, otherwise we'll plan for it's obsolescence.

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

I just liked the out of bandness of it. We use a satellite SMTP server that is only used for this purpose to push the messages out so if our email is gone we still get the alerts.

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thspimpolds@reddit

You could try azure communication services (maybe via a logic app)? That can native SMA

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

Yeah as I mentioned in the post I am aware of the alternatives. It still sucks that they are taking something away and not lowering the rate.

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_RexDart@reddit

Piss, I use this all the time at home for alerts

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nybst@reddit

Does this also affect txt.att.net?

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HJForsythe@reddit (OP)

Yeah man, it's a total bummer. Can they just charge me an extra $3/month?