IM Instant Messaging Security
Addressing IM issues in a manner that is useful for the day-to-day operations and management of enterprise networks, this timely text presents the tools and methods necessary to embrace the IM technology securely.
TABLE OF CONTENTS IM Instant Messaging Security
Chapter 3: IM Standards and Protocols
Overview
As we mentioned earlier, there are a lot of players in the public IM space today. Many of these IM players (and many other players less known than MSN, AOL, ICQ, and Yahoo!) are vying to establish the dominant IM standard in this new arena. All of the players are continually introducing new applications and features to take advantage of all IM has to offer and to stand out from their competitors. It seems fairly obvious that having all these incompatible players is problematic at best. It appears that things will likely converge on some combination of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and SIMPLE (SIP for IM and Presence Leveraging Extensions) versus XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol). There is a question as to whether there will be just one standard or if some blend of one or more standards will prevail. Of course, this is assuming the standard comes from the IETF and is not driven by another organization, such as the mobile carrier forum called Wireless Village, which is not only pushing an architecture that's very similar to the other two architectures but is also developing and publishing a completely separate set of protocols. If it (or others) adds yet another protocol, the mix of interoperability will become even more interesting and challenging.
3.1 Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol RFC 2778
The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is the IETF's formalization of the core protocols created by the Jabber community in 1999 [1]. A brief chronology of...
Copyright James F. Ransome and John W. Rittinghouse 2005 under license agreement with Books24x7
