[jdev] Choice of, and enhancements to, S2S Components

[ennova2005-jabber at yahoo.com]

I am interested in connecting a number (100+) of independently hosted
sites using S2S. Although each of the sites are small (< 500 users),
the requirements for inter-site IM communication are high. 

For various administrative reasons a central server will not work. 
Some of the sites have been using XMPP servers already, so the choice
has been made to use XMPP. 

Couple of questions for the community:

1. If the sole reason to pick a XMPP server implementation to deploy in
all these locations was the strength of its S2S component
(scalability/robustness/firewall friendliness/ statistics/ encryption
support), which of the various open source implementation is
recommended by the community?

2. If the choice was to pick someone's S2S component and enhance it for
additional features, which existing component is recommended as the
base by the community.  The language of choice is Java ( and I am aware
of the recent threads on available Java APIs - Smack/Echomine+Feridian,
JSO - but dont know enough to make a determination for the S2S feature
set). Java is desired, but not the only choice

3. Is there a wish list already documented for what to add next to a
S2S component ?

4. Any deployment experience with a federated community of this (100
sites) or a larger size ?

Regards

Ernest Nova