XMPP Standards Update
Peter Saint-Andre
stpeter@jabber.org
2007-06-06

History
• 1999: Jabber open-source projects
• 2000: Jabber, Inc. (they pay me)
• 2001: Jabber Software Foundation (JSF)
• 2002: XMPP Working Group @ IETF
• 2004: XMPP RFCs (3920-3923)
• 2006: JSF => XMPP Standards Foundation

Source + Standards
• Not a typical open-source project
• Focus on wire protocols (XMPP)
• Multiple codebases (clients, servers,
libraries, components, plugins)
• Open source and commercial
• A plethora of implementations
• Interoperability via open standards

XMPP Standards Foundation
• Core XMPP standards formalized in IETF
• Many extensions not appropriate for IETF
• XSF: nimble, developer-driven standards
organization for XMPP extensions (XEPs)
• Not an industry consortium! Open like IETF
• Focus on rough consensus and running code
• Interop network, intermediate CA, etc.

Core Protocol (RFC 3920)
• Streaming XML over TCP/IP
• Client-server architecture
• Transport Layer Security
• Simple Authentication and Security Layer
• Strong identity (hard to spoof addresses)
• Full internationalization

Core Extensions
• HTTP Binding (XEP-0124 + XEP-0206) for
intermittent connections
• Stream Compression (via TLS or XEP-0138)
reduces bandwidth usage up to 90%
• Link-Local Messaging (XEP-0174) for
serverless communication mode
• Service Discovery (XEP-0030) and Entity
Capabilities (XEP-0115)

IM + Presence (RFC 3921)
• Contact lists
• One-to-one messaging
• Ubiquitous presence
• Authorization required to view presence
• Presence pushed out as changed (no polling)
• Lightweight formats for presence and IM

IM Extensions
• Chat State Notifications (XEP-0085)
• XHTML-IM (XEP-0071)
• Data Forms (XEP-0004)
• Advanced Message Processing (XEP-0079)
• Extended Stanza Addressing (XEP-0033)
• vCards, bookmarks, avatars, etc. etc.

Rich Presence
• Activity
• Location (GPS etc.)
• Mood / state
• Other personal “events” (e.g., Atom feeds)
• Publish-subscribe transport
• Extensible via XML

Jingle
• Lightweight extensions for one-to-one
multimedia session management
• Content: voice, video, app sharing, etc.
• Transport: UDP, TCP, etc.
• IETF’s ICE technology for firewall traversal
• Not a full telephony application!
• Google Talk, OLPC, Nokia 770/800, etc.

Chat (XEP-0045)
• Group chat “rooms” similar to IRC
• Stronger identity and authentication
• Superior ownership model (no takeovers)
• Room hosted at single service
• Working on distributed rooms
• May take to IETF for publication as RFC

Roadmap
• RFC revisions in progress (Draft Standard)
• Finalize Jingle core this summer
• Further strengthen security profile (spam
prevention, end-to-end encryption, require
channel encryption)
• Collaborative editing / whiteboarding
• Use chat rooms for multimedia control?

Collaboration
• XSF works with organizations interested in
extending XMPP
• Apple (Link-Local Messaging)
• Google, Nokia, OLPC (Jingle)
• JFCOM/SPAWAR (Distributed Chat)
• Join the conversation (standards@xmpp.org)
• Ping me (stpeter@jabber.org)