eISY Default Notifications (default email)

[johnjces]

Good evening!

Over the past several days, actually since I migrated from ISY to eISY, have noticed that both of my eISY's, which currently use the default notification settings via UDI email, have been very very slow! Prior to migrating to the eISY, notifications were very quick... within a couple minutes anyway and sometimes almost instantaneous. Not so; especially tonight, 8/29 at 2020 hours PST and on. Notifications via gmail took about 10 - 15 minutes and I am still waiting 30+ minutes for verizon (@vtext.com) to come through. Again usually a lot quicker.

I worry that with instant notifications being rolled out through UD Mobile that there might be some 'issues' with the default notifications. I  have a group of people who are to get certain notifications that won't have or install UD Mobile and text is the best way to reach them. I have yet to 'play' with or install the instant notification system as I have been very satisfied with the default system.

Maybe something else is amiss? ya know, I would even pay for the default system as it took care of my needs exceptionally well.

Thanks for any insight!

John

 

[DennisC]

What version firmware are you running? If not on v5.6.4 with the patch that was released about a week ago to fix sluggishness, try updating followed by a reboot.

[johnjces]

@DennisC

Thanks so much for the reply! Both my eISY's are on 5.6.4 and the one that really brought this issue to my attention was  updated just before I migrated it from the ISY. It has had several reboots and iOX reloads after the update and migration..

The other eISY is/was just as slow and it too has had several reboots and iox reloads.. At least they, my test messages, came in this AM! Not sure at what time they actually hit the phone as I turned it off last night!

Possibly the bug missed the fix in the latest release?

John

[DennisC]

7 minutes ago, johnjces said:

@DennisC

Thanks so much for the reply! Both my eISY's are on 5.6.4 and the one that really brought this issue to my attention was  updated just before I migrated it from the ISY. It has had several reboots and iOX reloads after the update and migration..

The other eISY is/was just as slow and it too has had several reboots and iox reloads.. At least they, my test messages, came in this AM! Not sure at what time they actually hit the phone as I turned it off last night!

Possibly the bug missed the fix in the latest release?

John

Follow my advice above and run upgrade packages again. There was a patch issued that fixes sluggish systems but does not update version number. Let's make sure it's not the problem.

[johnjces]

@DennisC

Gotcha and fully understand!! Will report back later!

One of my eisy's after clicking upgrade packages shows correctly the dialog "Your system is being upgraded..." My other eisy when doing the same thing, no dialog pops up! Argh. Always something it seems. SO... I will wait a while... reboot the eISY that did not show the dialog and try again.

OR... if that dialog does not show up, does that mean the eISY is fully up to date?

John

Edited August 30, 2023 by johnjces

[johnjces]

Alrighty... things are still not going through in a timely manner! vtext is hours and gmail is somewhat faster, maybe 5 to 10 minutes which is a lot longer than with my ISY. I did in fact run update and did a reboot. I had an issue with my eISY in that the reboot dialogs didn't appear and sent in a ticket regarding that and Michel stated we are fully up to date. 

Both eISY's just don't want to send default notifications in any kind of a timely manner. using the test button or running that portion of my program or having that program run. They, my programs, are enabled.

Time to submit another ticket? Man I hate to be "that guy".  Has Verizon blacklisted UDI?

Anything else I should check? Thoughts, suggestions?

John

 

[DennisC]

I also have Verizon and moved away from using default notifications because of delays. This was back on my ISY.

I moved to using the Notification node server and Pushover. Very fast delivery of all notifications and many options you can set.

I also use the native notifications built in to UD Mobile. That uses a free Notification node server arrangement, so you could try that for no charge. If you like it and want some extra features, you can move up and buy the Notification node server.

Many have experienced delays through Verizon, you are not unique.

[Geddy]

8 hours ago, johnjces said:

vtext is hours

This has been "documented" (i.e. commented on the forums) a ton of times. It's well known that alerts using the SMS/MMS systems are being filtered by many mobile service providers. Thus the draw of the notification system that has been developed. VZW is found to be one of the worst for delaying email to text alerts. 

On 8/30/2023 at 12:01 AM, johnjces said:

currently use the default notification settings via UDI email

While I expect that it could be your receiving side or something between point A and point B know that if there is high amount of traffic coming from the UDI "default" email system that it could be considered spam by some relay servers and therefore delayed in processing or even bounced anywhere along the way. It's long been suggested that people setup an extra free email (i.e. gmail, yahoo, outlook.com) and use their servers for sending. Even some have setup an extra account on their ISP and sent to the same domain so not to have an account with a free provider, but be careful doing that because you might forget you have that setup and change ISP and suddenly not get notices (again...the great advantage of the notification node server system)

Steps for setting up a Gmail account are in the UDI Wiki and are updated to reflect the current process for additional security that Google requires. Just note that Google/Gmail also has a requirement that the account be active so make an effort to log into that account a couple of times a year.

8 hours ago, johnjces said:

Time to submit another ticket?

It's not really. The issues are self inflicted. Either search the forums for delayed text messages or even search Google for delays sending email to text alerts. On an individual test basis (i.e. if you sent from personal email to #@vzw) it might be instant, but consider the volume coming from a "default" mail server and how providers are filtering such alerts you get the picture that it's the cell provider that's causing the delay, not the sender. 

Further, email to text is a large target for spammers. Cell providers are trying to stop junk texts and email to text is one way they've tried to limit such abuse of the system. 

On 8/30/2023 at 12:01 AM, johnjces said:

I  have a group of people who are to get certain notifications that won't have or install UD Mobile and text is the best way to reach them

This might have once been the best way, but it's clearly NOT the "best" method now. An alternative some have commented using here is sending to an email that only gets ISY notices. Using a 3rd party app (like Spark email) that you can trigger for alert sounds and allow during "do not disturb" or "Focus" times so alerts are still received and it is ONLY an ISY/UDI alert. This is somewhat clunky (IMO), but if your "group" is not willing/able to get UD Mobile alerts and if you want them to continue to get alerts email is still fairly quick, and IMO acceptable option. 

 

[johnjces]

Everyone,

Thank-you for the replies and suggestions to STF, which I do try and sometimes get that right combination of search terms! And I do understand that UDI has a lot of traffic to handle and maybe more filters on end point providers systems but the crux of all this is:

Why all of a sudden? Very acceptable on old ISY, not so acceptable on my new eISY's. Was I just lucky? Fo...r a long time? This is what is  unusual and sudden.

I swear my old ISY994 was in fact very much acceptable.  Again, received some of my tests last night this AM! That has never happened before.

@DennisC Notifications with pushover, does that also require UD Mobile installed on all phones? I will see if I can go to the store and find the differences. I know that there is a notifications beta version and another notifications version already installed, sort of, just need to do a set up. Lot's to learn again!

Thanks!

John

[Geddy]

48 minutes ago, johnjces said:

Why all of a sudden? Very acceptable on old ISY, not so acceptable on my new eISY's. Was I just lucky? Fo...r a long time? This is what is  unusual and sudden.

Yeah, you might have been "lucky" for a long time. It's not just UDI though, it's industry wide. And why you were "immune" to it longer than others is simply luck of the draw. What's strange is most seemed to report the issues during season changes (i.e. they had notifications when temp got too low (or too high) and realized they weren't getting alerts anymore). Sounds like you get alerts all the time and they just recently slowed. 

The update that @DennisC mentioned in the first was an patch that UDI released (no official announcement was made...just a comment in the IoX support thread. 

When local to the eisy please use this URL and look for "ISY-" and make sure it says at least 5.6.4_7 (as of today)

https://eisy.local:8443/WEB/sysconfig.txt

It's very possible that the eisy was sluggish and delaying the broadcast of alerts. If you do feel that it's still laggy and you've attempted other methods of not using the UDI default mail system and/or not sending email to text then you could attempt a support ticket to see if there is a way to test if it's the sending or receiving of the notification.

Ultimately, there are different (most consider better) options than what you have "always used". It's just a learning curve to how to implement the changes.

57 minutes ago, johnjces said:

Thank-you for the replies and suggestions to STF, which I do try and sometimes get that right combination of search terms!

I find that if I don't get the results I expect from the forum search bar I use Google Site search. Searching like this would give a lot of results for your issue. Even just using site search for "vtext" gives a good idea of the issues others have had.

[johnjces]

@Geddy

 

Thanks again. It s in fact 5.6.4_7 .

I attached a vtext that was sent last night and received just a few minutes ago just to show this MAJOR lag. Note the times and just for info. A ten hour lag give or take.

[DennisC]

1 hour ago, johnjces said:

Notifications with pushover, does that also require UD Mobile installed on all phones? I will see if I can go to the store and find the differences. I know that there is a notifications beta version and another notifications version already installed, sort of, just need to do a set up. Lot's to learn again

No, Notifications with Pushover will not require UD Mobile. However, while there is a trail period, there is a charge for Notification node server.

Using UD Mobile with the free Notification node server has no cost.

[DennisC]

27 minutes ago, johnjces said:

@Geddy

 

Thanks again. It s in fact 5.6.4_7 .

I attached a vtext that was sent last night and received just a few minutes ago just to show this MAJOR lag. Note the times and just for info. A ten hour lag give or take.

As we already indicated, that's an issue with Verizon. The only fix has been explained by myself and @Geddy.

[johnjces]

Not to be argumentative, but I can send a vtext email from gmail, my business domain, comcast or other email addresses and it gets to me in less than a minute. 

It is in fact an issue!  There is no doubt about it. 

[Geddy]

1 hour ago, johnjces said:

Thanks again. It s in fact 5.6.4_7

Sure thing. Looks like you've done almost all you can do to eliminate issues from the eisy side. Now you've just got to modify your future notification process to get timely notifications. Or modify your expectations of using antiquated options. 

1 minute ago, johnjces said:

Not to be argumentative, but I can send a vtext email from gmail, my business domain, comcast or other email addresses and it gets to me in less than a minute. 

And as I said above if you're experiencing that currently it might not always be that way. And everybody is encouraged to use an external account setup rather than the UDI Default account as a step to avoid such "volume" type delays if VZW imposes such. You've got to temper your expectations when it's a known issue and not just a sudden issue that you just happened to have been impacted by "recently". 

Good luck!

[DennisC]

2 hours ago, johnjces said:

Not to be argumentative, but I can send a vtext email from gmail, my business domain, comcast or other email addresses and it gets to me in less than a minute. 

It is in fact an issue!  There is no doubt about it. 

Yes, but how often do you do this? As @Geddyexplained above, when there are repeat notifications, the provider picks up on it and starts throttling the delivery time.

[johnjces]

33 minutes ago, DennisC said:

Yes, but how often do you do this?

Well, normally maybe a few times a week. Somedays it could be a few times a day. I've been testing vtext.com all day from my comcast account and my old business email with maybe a dozen tests from each domain in short succession and in less than a minute it's there in my android messaging app. 

I suppose that with the 100's+ that UDI relays, that it could be in issue. I still feel that it is very suspect to have this extremely lengthy delay happen all at once after months of very acceptable service and corresponding to my migration from ISY to eISY. 

We can close this forum post as I set it up to go through my old work mail server and so far so good. Not sure why I didn't do that years ago other than it was easier to check [ ] Default!

Now I will endeavor to learn more about the pg3 nodes available on the store and move even more forward!

Thank-you all. I did in fact learn a lot. Hopefully you all can appreciate where I am/was coming from. 

John

Edited August 31, 2023 by johnjces
added some text