Instant Messaging Information Site
Instant messaging has been a hot technology for years, with standardization activities ongoing now for nearly a decade. But, the fruit of that labor is starting to pay off as the world begins to converge on interoperable instant messaging standards. The two popular standards that have emerged are XMPP and SIMPLE, with XMPP clearly well in front of SIMPLE in terms of deployment and breadth of client and server support.
Instant Messaging Standards
XMPP-related Standards
- RFC 3920 - Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP): Core
- RFC 3921 - XMPP: Instant Messaging and Presence
- RFC 3922 - Mapping XMPP to CPIM
- RFC 3923 - End-to-end signing of object encryption for XMPP
- RFC 4854 - A Uniform Resource Name (URN) tree for use in XMPP extensions
- RFC 4979 - IANA registration of an Enumservice (see RFC 3761) for XMPP
- RFC 5122 - A Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme for XMPP (this specification corrects several errors in RFC 4622)
- XMPP Standards Foundation (list of XMPP extensions)
- RFC 7590 - Use of TLS in XMPP
- RFC 7622 - XMPP: Address Format
- RFC 8284 - LDAP Schema for Supporting XMPP in White Pages
- RFC 8600 - Using XMPP for Security Information Exchange
XMPP-Related Papers
SIP-related IM Standards
- RFC 3428 - SIP Extension for Instant Messaging
- RFC 4479 - A Data Model for Presence
- RFC 3863 - Presence Information Data Format (PIDF)
- RFC 4480 - Rich Presence Extensions to PDIF
- RFC 4481 - Timed Presence Extensions to PDIF
- RFC 4482 - Contact Information for the Presence Information Data Format
- RFC 4489 - Location Types Registry
- RFC 4975 - Message Session Relay Protocol (MSRP)
- RFC 4976 - Relay Extensions for the Message Sessions Relay Protocol (MSRP)
- RFC 6914 - SIMPLE Made Simple: An Overview of the IETF Specifications for Instant Messaging and Presence using SIP
- RFC 6993 - Instant Messaging and Presence Purpose for the Call-Info Header Field in SIP
- RFC 7081 - CUSAX: Combined Use of SIP and XMPP
- RFC 7106 - A Group Text Chat Purpose for Conference and Service URIs in the SIP Event Package for Conference State
- RFC 7247 - Interworking between SIP and XMPP: Architecture, Addresses, and Error Handling
- RFC 7248 - Interworking between SIP and XMPP: Presence
- RFC 7572 - Interworking between SIP and XMPP: Instant Messaging
- RFC 7573 - Interworking between SIP and XMPP: One-to-One Text Chat Session
- RFC 7701 - Multi-party Chat Using the Message Session Relay Protocol (MSRP)
- RFC 7702 - Interworking between SIP and XMPP: Groupchat
- RFC 7977 - The WebSocket Protocol as a Transport for the Message Session Relay Protocol (MSRP)
- RFC 8048 - Interworking between SIP and XMPP: Presence
Instant Messaging Links
- Instant Messaging (IM) Clients:
- Cisco Jabber (XMPP, SIP)
- Cisco WebEx Messaging (Proprietary with interfaces to H.323, SIP, and XMPP)
- Trillian (XMPP, IRC, Google Talk, Facebook, Twitter)
- Psi (XMPP)
- Miranda IM (XMPP)
- Digsby (XMPP, Yahoo, ICQ, Facebook)
- Spark (XMPP)
- Exodus (XMPP)
- Skype (Proprietary)
- Yahoo Messenger (Proprietary)
- WebEx Connect (XMPP)
- Instant Messaging Servers:
- Hosted/Enterprise IM Services:
- Trillian (Trillian offers enterprise messaging, both hosted and on-prem)