Jabber: protocol and clients

Jabber above everything else is an instant messaging protocol. As a reminder, a protocol is a group of systems and codes that allow you to send and receive messages. You should not confuse a protocol with software. We will talk about the Jabber software – called a client – later.

Jabber was created by a community of developers with the goal – other then communicating openly – of getting rid of proprietary systems managed by single companies, with their own protocols like Yahoo, AIM, MSN, ICQ, etc. Users of these protocols are totally under the control of these companies wishes, and if one day they decide that they wish to charge for their services and make their use no longer free….then you will have no other choice then to open your wallet and pay if you wish to be able to continue to communicate with your contacts. There are therefore numerous advantageous to an open source and free protocol.

Open Standards

As we have mentioned above, the fact that everyone can access the source code guarantees that the protocol will live on and evolve as well as being continually free and not owned by a private company.

Decentralized System

This is not specific to Jabber, but it functions a little bit like mail: each software client connects to a server, and each server connects to the others. In this way, it is possible to communicate with anyone connected to any server and one server being offline will not affect everyone on the network.

Interesting note: Anyone can install their own Jabber server. This is also how Google has setup their messaging service, GoogleTalk. But we will come back to this later. 

Mobile and Simple

Everything has been coded and done to make the software as simple as possible. All the difficulty is in centralizing services on the servers, with the client software having nothing else to do but call the server. This allows the client to be lightweight, simple and therefore…mobile! Actually, most software can be put onto a USB key, with software existing on all operating systems – even those for PDA’s.

Even more importantly, the majority of our information is stored on servers. Due to this, our software is a lot smaller and flexible meaning you can even connect to someone else’s software and still have the majority of your files and contacts available from your username.

Contacts

All of our contacts are also stored on the server and you can store as many as you like, as there is no limit, unlike with some other protocols. More then this, messages that are sent when your contacts are offline are stored on the server and will be received them the next time the client connects (this has been offered for years with ICQ, but is not available with MSN).

As for the management of the list itself, there is nothing simpler then sorting your contacts by groups (Friends, Family, Work).

You should also know that your account does not have a limited lifetime. You can forget about it and come back months later and nothing will be lost.

And Security

If everything is stored on the server, what about the security of my discussions' Well, Jabber allows you to encrypt your connections by SSL, PGP or GnuPG. So there is nothing to really worry about here.

Gateways and transfers

Everything has been planned to allow Jabber to perform file transfers, even across firewalls. The protocol has been well documented, so network administrators should have no problem configuring their networks.

I know some people are going to scream, saying that they have no contacts on Jabber, and therefore the protocol does nothing for them, but they would be wrong! Something that Jabber is especially good at is gateways. The majority of the servers contain firewalls that allow their users to connect to them with other protocols!

This means that with one single program, just by activating an option, we can talk to all of our contacts. More open makes things better.

A little extra

Some options in Jabber are funny and interesting. For example, it is possible to connect multiple times on the same account simultaneously. We can also see that you are connected with your Jabber at work when you are actually at home.

It is also possible to manage your status – also known as state – (online, away, busy) contact by contact. These last two options provide you with many options, but ill let you find out how ;)

More then that, there are also hundreds of chat rooms on Jabber and it is very simple to create a new one if you wish. A chat room, what is that' It is simply a place where multiple people can discuss things, a bit like the IRC protocol.