Data communications protocol for facilitating communications between a

Abstract

A data communications protocol facilitates communications between a message entry device and a messaging center. The protocol permits an operator to enter a message and transmit it quickly, efficiently, and with confirmation. In an example application to short text messaging, two-way data communications between a message entry device and a message handling center, a small set of simple transactional commands is used for communicating messages to and from cellular telephones. Both the message entry device and the message handling center may independently initiate and send messages to the other. An input message is encoded by encapsulating the message between first and second delimiters, e.g., '{' and '}', and associating a message tag with the encapsulated message. Both the message tag and the encapsulated message are in human-readable ASCII format. The delimited message and associated message tag are further encapsulated by additional delimiters to form a protocol data unit with an associated protocol data unit tag. The message handling center simply parses the various delimited fields in accordance with the associated tags. No complicated encoding or decoding procedures are necessary.