[JDEV] Lurker Steps Forward

[Thomas Charron]

> From: owner-jdev at jabber.org On Behalf Of Temas
> Subject: [JDEV] Lurker Steps Forward
> Well I talked on this list for a while when it first started, and then I
> lurked for a long time mainly due to school and other projects.  A long
> while back there was talk about the AIM transport.  I work a lot with aim
> and libfaim because I code on two aim clients (gtkfaim and the yet
> released bullseye).

	Ahh..  Your exactly the type we'd need to code the AIM transport.  ;-P
Welcome to the land of the living!

<snipsnipsnip>
> 1)  Have the transport open a new connection for each users duration of
> activity.  This is possible with the library I use (libfaim) and I believe
> with the TOC protocol, but this is going to cause a lot of connections to
> open, especially on a large system.  I see this as a last ditch effort to
> get a working transport.

	This is how I had figured that it would need to be.  Unless either of the
protocols supports a 'server' connection (Which would be really bad, so if
they do, poohey on them), it would HAVE to be that way..  Here IS something
that concerns me, though..  Do they (AOL) keep track and limit the number of
AOL users from a given IP?  Anotherwards, are they going to start killing
connections when they notice 100 users from the SAME IP?

> 2)  Have the transport open multiple connections to AIM but set a timeout
> on them so that they will die off and not just idle taking up sockets ont
> he server.  There are a few things that have to be watched in this
> scenario, the connection rate cannont be too fast or AIM get's mad and
> will not let you connect for a while.  Also this would require some sort
> of password storing so that the user does not get angry and have to enter
> their password every time they wish to relogin to AIM to send a message
> (although some security nuts like myself really wouldn't mind).

	Do you have any hard numbers on the connection rate that is allowed?  This
could be a problem if hundreds of users try to connect over a period of 10
minutes or so.  We could have the transport stagger new connections, putting
new ones in a 'queue' of sorts to connect.  It could then sendsome sortof
status message to the jabber user to say they are now aliased onto AOL via
Jabber..

> It's late and my mind is kind of warped, so this is the best I could come
> up with.  The only other problem that crossed my mind (I remember this in
> old mailing list conversation) is the problem of allowing jabber users to
> create a new aim user.  This is less of a problem than is with ICQ because
> AIM does not a have a direct facility to signup other than the web page,
> so it seems that the user would have to create a user on their own to be
> able to use this.  Anyway, these are my warped thoughts and I would really
> appreciate comments and especially new ideas for the connections to AIM.
> If I'm stepping on anyones toes or others would like to help me be sure to
> contact me.

	Actually, the user creation page can be passed the data via a perl script
via an HTTP GET, which we could then parse out..  Ok, so it's a hack..  ;-P