'''MRCP''' is the '''Media Resource Control Protocol''' proposed to the [[IETF]]. It(MRCP) is a communication protocol whichused allowsby speech servers to provide various speech services (such as [[speech recognition]] and [[speech synthesis]]) to its clients. Typically, this means the server software will be running on one computer and clients canClients send MRCP messages to the server over a network, usually onby topmeans of another protocol, such as [[RTSPReal Time Streaming Protocol]] (RTSP) or [[Session Initiation Protocol|SIP]] (SIP).
ItMRCP isuses ina the samesimilar style of clear-text signaling as [[HTTP]] and many other Internet protocols, wherein which each message contains 3 sections: a first-line, a header and a body. The first line indicates the type of message as well as information such as response codes. The header contains a number of lines, each in the format '''<header>: <data>'''. The body, whose length is specified by the header, contains the details of the message.
Like HTTP, MRCP has requests (usually issued by the client) and responses, which may simply acknowledge receipt of the request or give other information regarding its processing. For example, an MRCP client may request to send some audio [[data]] for processing (say, for speech recognition), to which the server could respond with a suitable [[TCP and UDP port|port]] to send the data, (since MRCP does not have support for audio data specifically, as this would have to be handled by some other protocol, such as [[Real-time Transport Protocol|RTP]] (RTP).
There are two versions of the MRCP protocol. Version 2 uses [[Session Initiation Protocol|SIP]] as the control protocol, whereas version 1 uses [[Real Time Streaming Protocol|RTSP]].
