[JDEV] Videoconferencing with jabber

[Carsten Breuer]

Hi Bart, hi all,


>> Between two endpoints there are many things like firewalls, routers and
>> the like, this leads to the only solution: a relay or a server. 
> Which of course has some obvious drawbacks. First thing is that someone 
> needs to provide a server (for free) and a _lot_ of bandwidth, 
> especially if you're going to do video.

Yes, that is true, but my point is more that the software, the protocol
and the servers should be open source. If you are not happy with a 
server, you are able to create your own. Richard Stallman say's long ago
that freedom means that you must have the right to copy, share and 
modify the sources. If you want you CAN run your own server perhaps only 
for your family. I feel that this is a bigger issue then ever, with 
software patents at the door of europe and globaly controled standards. 
As you know, one of the reason to doing this is that M$ doens't support 
Win98 anymore.

There are perhaps enough people outside willing to run such a server.
And if not, perhaps we have to think about other ways.
I have A-DSL with a flatrate, so i can stay connected 24 hours a day.
That is perhaps enaugh to let some people connect. The problem is more
how the administartion camn be done.

> Other problem is logistics. If I'm talking to my girlfriend (who lives 
> in the same city) then it's kind of wastefull if that connection goes 
> through some server in the US. This will also add at least 100ms of 
> latency.

That's note Realy a issue. If i be as good as Netmeeting, im happy
with that. Videoconferencing is nothing really new.

> So yes, from a technical point of view using a relay/server is the way 
> to go, it solves quite a bit of firewall/routing problems. But from the 
> user point of view using intermediate servers just sucks :D Especially 
> if those servers go down or can't handle the load.

Yes, that is a problem.
But i dont see another way to allow connections with more the two people.

> Same thing goed for filetransfer BTW.

That's true. But timing is not so important here.

> Hmm, isn't http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0065.html (SOCKS5 Bytestreams) 
> supposed to handle all this? If I understand this JEP correctly it first 
> tries do open a direct connection between two clients. If that doesn't 
> work it reverts to using a proxy.

I have to read that. Thank's for the info.

Best regards,



Carsten