Multimedia Messaging Service Encapsulation (MMSE)

The Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) allows a person to send and receive self-contained multimedia messages. The MMS service can be compared with the e-mail service where the message consists of a series of attachments. As a matter of fact, the MMS Encapsulation (MMSE) protocol uses MIME headers similar to the message headers found in e-mail messages (From, To, Cc, Bcc, Subject) plus a series of headers dedicated to MMS.

The MMS messages are encoded with the help of WAP protocols: WSP provides the compact encoding mechanism for representing the MMS headers (such as To, Cc, From, Content-Type). Note that MMSE imposes certain restrictions on the usage of the WSP header encoding rules, in order to ease interoperability.

History

The Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) initiated from 3GPP, and until now the only implementation of MMS has been provided by the WAP Forum and continued by the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). There are 3 releases of MMS implementation:

• MMS 1.0: WAP-205, WAP-206, WAP-209
• MMS 1.1: OMA release for MMS 1.1
• MMS 1.2: OMA release for MMS 1.2

Protocol dependencies

• WSP: All MMSE headers (and the multipart encapsulation) are encoded according to the rules of WSP, and MMSE is often transported over WSP. Notifications even use the WSP Push channel.

• HTTP: The MMS messages can also be conveyed over HTTP between end-user and network. The MMS proxy/relay will also use HTTP when pushing the notifications to the network, according to the WAP Push framework ("PAP").

• SMPP: When a specific MMS message is delivered over the WSP Push channel (e.g. a MMS notification), and the recipient's device has no Internet connectivity, then the message can be delivered over the GSM-SMS channel. In this case, an SMSC interworking protocol is used, e.g., SMPP.

Example traffic

XXX - Add example traffic here (as plain text or Wireshark screenshot).

Wireshark

The MMSE dissector fully dissects all MMSE 1.0 and MMSE 1.1 messages. Regarding the MMSE 1.2 messages, not all header values are fully dissected yet.

Preference Settings

There are currently no preferences for the MMSE dissector.

Example capture file

XXX - Add a simple example capture file. Keep it short, it's also a good idea to gzip it to make it even smaller, as Wireshark can open gzipped files automatically.

Display Filter

A complete list of MMSE display filter fields can be found in the display filter reference

Show only the MMSE based traffic:

 mmse 

Capture Filter

You cannot directly filter the MMSE protocol while capturing. You can still write a capture filter if you know the UDP and TCP ports over which the MMSE traffic will occur (e.g., the WSP stack settings, the HTTP stack settings, the PAP port of the Push Proxy Gateway (PPG) etc.).

External links

• MMSE 1.0: WAP-209-MMSEncapsulation-20020105-a

• MMSE 1.1: OMA-MMS-ENC-v1.1

• MMSE 1.2: OMA-MMS-ENC-v1.2

Discussion

Imported from https://wiki.wireshark.org/Multimedia_Messaging_Service_Encapsulation on 2020-08-11 23:17:04 UTC