About the Media Service Provider (MSP)

A TAPI 3 media service provider (MSP) allows an application considerable control over the media for a particular transport mechanism. An MSP always exists paired with a Telephony Service Provider (TSP). Just as a TSP is an abstraction layer for call control, the MSP controls media without need for device-specific coding. For an example of MSP/TSP communication, see TAPI Service Provider Overview.

An MSP enables media control through the use of special terminal, stream, and substream interfaces defined by TAPI. The diagram in About Call and Media Controls illustrates how these interfaces appear to a TAPI 3 application.

In addition, an MSP may implement private provider-specific interfaces, which TAPI will aggregate onto the standard objects exposed to an application. For example, the Microsoft IPConf MSP, which is installed with Microsoft Windows 2000, implements the ITParticipant interface, which provides controls for individual members of a conference.

The following topic briefly describes the MSPs that may be installed with a Microsoft operating system. For details on configuration and usage, see the resource kit for the target platform.

Additional third-party media service providers can be written for particular protocols or for physical devices. The Media Service Provider Interface (MSPI) describes the interfaces that must be implemented to allow an MSP to interact with the components of Microsoft Telephony.