This page is a draft, an attempt to document the MSN protocol used by the MSN
Messenger and Windows Live Messenger products from Microsoft.
The protocol behind the MSN products is called MSNP and is implemented in
multiple versions. The latest version is MSNP18 used in Windows Live Messenger
In this document, we will try to document this protocol as much as possible,
using multiple sources and reverse engineering made so far on this protocol.
Since October 13th 2003, The Microsoft servers will only accept versions of the
protocol equal to or newer than MSNP8.
For a history on the MSNP protocol version, read this page :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNP
The latest protocol version of MSNP uses multiple subprotocols for doing
different tasks. Mainly, it heavily depends on SOAP for most of its
transactions. It also depends on SIP and other proprietary protocols, like
* [
Protocol versions information](
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSNP)
* [
Original reverse engineering documentation. outdated.](
http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/)
* [
Incomplete documentation for multiple protocol versions](
http://msnpiki.msnfanatic.com/)
* [
Raw paste of contact list SOAP actions](
http://telepathy.freedesktop.org/wiki/Pymsn/MSNP/ContactListActions)
* [
Audio/Video conferencing protocol specifications](
http://ml20rc.msnfanatic.com/vc_1_1/index.html)
* [
ISF file format specifications (obsolete)](
http://synce.org/moin/FormatDocumentation/InkSerializedFormat)
* [
Official ISF file format specifications](
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/B/E/0BE8BDD7-E5E8-422A-ABFD-4342ED7AD886/InkSerializedFormat(ISF)Specification.pdf)
* [
Current status of MSN service](
http://messengergeek.wordpress.com/messenger-status/)
