[jdev] TINS implementation in PSI and Jabberd2 started

[Jacob Bunk Nielsen]

Hi

Just to let everyone know.

My friend Sebastien Yerly and I are working on implementing TINS
(JEP-0111) in PSI and jabberd2 as a project at our local university.
The implementations will not be production stable implementations, but
proof of concept. We hope to release any code we write for others to
use, if they should wish to do so.

OK, jabberd2 already supports TINS as it complies with the last part
of section 2.4 of RFC 3921, that says it must pass on anything it
doesn't understand. However, we are also writing a proof-of-concept
transport for SIP. In addition to performing voice chat between PSI
users, our plan is to be capable of calling a regular SIP phone from
within PSI before we finish.

We have investigated other options for voice chat and transporting
voice to other networks, and have decided that TINS is the best way
for reasons We're not prepared to discuss here. You are of course free
to agree or disagree with this as you please, but commenting on it
will not change our decision, so please do not flood the list with
comments on this. It has already been discussed on the
standards-jig-list.

Our goal with the project is to show that it is possible to make a
good integration of instant messaging and voice chat with open
protocols. We believe we can do this by showing that TINS will work,
and that it is easy to handle and relatively easy to implement.

We currently ignore the whole problem about NAT/firewall-traversal,
which is of course also quite essential to it's usability in the long
run, but not relevant to what we want to show at the moment. Since it
is possible to solve the NAT/firewall-problem when working with
IP-telephony based on SIP/SDP/RTP (e.g. by use of a STUN-server) we
believe it is also solvable with our approach if one should wish to do
so.

In the course of our project we might come up with additional examples
to put into JEP-0111, as it urgently needs this. Whether we have time
to write some nice examples or not will probably be decided by the
amount of time we have left over by the end of our project period.

We are both relative new to the concept of XMPP, but as we are to hand
something in by the end of July we hope to have something ready a
little before then ;-)

Should you want to contact us directly, we are reachable both by XMPP
and email. Sebastien can be reached at s031039 at student.dtu.dk and by
XMPP at seb at jabbernet.dk. Jacob can be reached by email at
jacob at bunk.cc and by XMPP at jacobbunk at jabbernet.dk

-- 
Sebastien and Jacob