Title: MS messenger SIP session is very strange???
I have done some extensive testing with the application sharing and whiteboarding
components of the MS Messenger product (version 4.6.0082).  They indeed do some
peculiar things.  First, if you use Messenger out of the box, it is configured to
use the MSN's .NET passport. 
 
If you leave this as such, then any attempt to start a whiteboarding (or app sharing)
session starts  some non-SIP signalling (through the .NET servers) between the
initiator and recipient of the  request (Messenger in this configuration does not
listen for SIP messages on a permanent port).   This out-of-band-signalling causes the
recipient to open a port to listen for a SIP INVITE.  It also does the offer-answer
negotiation normally done in SIP via SDP, so the SIP INVITE dialog is actually pointless.
 
There is another configuration of Messenger, which uses a SIP proxy.  In this
configuration Messenger listens for invites on the default SIP port (non-configurable) and 
responds to requests for audio and video in a SIP-compliant way (within context of the
older RFC).  It does not, however, respond to appshare/whiteboard requests in the same way. 
Rather, this is the call flow for a whiteboarding session:
 
Initiator                    Recipient
    |                            |
    |---------MSG 1------------->|
    |                            |
    |<--------MSG 2--------------| 
    |                            |
    |---------MSG 3------------->|
    |                            |
    |<--------MSG 4--------------|
    |                            |
    |                            |
    |---------INVITE------------>|
    |                            |
    |<---------200 OK------------|
    |                            |
    |----------ACK-------------->|
 
Where MSG 1 through MSG 4 are SIP MESSAGEs that negotiate the
medium (whiteboarding vs. application sharing), the host IP
addresses at each end, and the SIP listen port on the recipient
end. The content type of these MESSAGEs is a proprietary text/x-msmsgsinvite,
and it is a list of name-value pairs that include Application GUID's
to determine media type.
 
The INVITE is actually quite redundant at this point, but contains
simple sdp negotiating a tcp connection using media application/msdata.
One thing to note, this INVITE is sent to the host:port obtained from
the content of MSG 4, and that this port is different from that used
in the MSG negotiation prior!  Also, if you want to add another media
to your call, Messenger starts an entirely new call.
 
Furthermore, if you attempt to initiate a session directly (by sending
an INVITE), Messenger will reject your request with a 406 Not Acceptable
error.
 
Dan Schauer
Cisco Systems, Inc.
  
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, September 30, 2002 1:48 PM
Subject: [Sip-implementors] MS messenger SIP session is very strange???

Hello my friends,
  I have found very strange SIP traffic between two MS messenger when they are trying to talk.
I need you my friends to help me out.
  I am using MS messanger Ver 4.6.
  I use Messenger A to invite Messenger B to join the talk. But in the SIP traffic between the two messengers, it is
Messenger B which sends the INVITE SIP message to Messenger A, why is that?
  Other question is: which ports are they using for SIP communications?

Thank you,

Roland

Reply via email to