>> For presence and IM, XMPP is one of the best open open protocol today. >> It does >> voice and video, but, I don't believe there are any physical dedicated >> devices > > XMPP (Jingle) is used as a control channel, not for exchanging the media > traffic. The actual voice/video capabilities depend on the client or > device. e.g. Psi and Pidgin now have rudamentary p2p voice capabilities.
I agree, BUT, when you need to implement a working solution, a protocol is only as good as the best client. For example, I do not know of any client that does voice and video well over XMPP on MS Windows (I believe the gmail client only works with the gmail servers). For what it is worth, as much as I prefer pidgin for IM and dislike empathy altogether, I find that empathy does XMPP voice and video much better than any other client on Linux. > No client compares to Skype that I'm aware of. My understanding is that this is for two reasons: -skype pools network bandwidth with your network neighbours (they use a p2p system where if somebody close to you (in network terms) has their skype client idling, they use it to augment their network capacity) -their client is much more sophisticated than anything done in foss so far. For example, I don't know of any foss client, be it for XMPP or SIP, that is able to cancel echo sufficiently that you can talk without a headset. I am told the proprietary gtalk and skype clients do that very well. >> for it, so it'd be pc to pc only. You mention openfire, I have been very >> impressed with openfire, but I have only used it in small setup so I >> don't > > I'd be wary of openfire. VC pressures have forced them to slow > development of the free version. > > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/technology/start-ups/08sequoia.html?_r=1 Interesting, I was wondering why there was rarely any new version. Now, Do they have a commercial offer? Might be something worth looking at for a corporation. > > Beyond their friendly management GUI, I found the server lacking when I > evaluated it a couple years ago. It might be good for small shops however. Again, I have only used it in a very small setup, but what has impressed me beyond their nice web gui are: -I've never had to "clean" anything up, even when my server comes down hard, openfire just comes up -I just moved it to a new server. I tar'red it accross, started it, and bang it worked. -no complicated dependency beyond a fairly recent JVM. I want to look at the other XMPP server, but things that don't work tend to creep up at the top of my todo list, and openfire does do the job for me! -- Yves. http://www.SollerS.ca/ http://images.SollerS.ca/ xmpp:[email protected] _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
