[jdev] questions about gsoc: file transfer over jingle

[Yann Leboulanger]

Zhenchao Li wrote:
> Hi, Yann,
>    Thanks for your reply. Now I see one big advantage of jingle really
> is it employs much more optional transport methods. To fully utilize
> this advanntage for file transfer, we need to implement ICE-TCP . But
> there's the problem: AFAIK there isn't an XEP defined for ICE-TCP
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-mmusic-ice-tcp-08>, it's a work
> in progress. What we have is one for ICE-UDP
> <http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0176.html>. But unlike voice or video
> transmission, file transfer needs to ensure packet integrity, which
> rules out FT using ICE-UDP only. Implementing a ICE-TCP stack requires
> much design and careful implementation, and even sounds like another
> gsoc project. After some search I find that the libnice library
> implements ICE-UDP as well as a "pseudo TCP implementation"
> <http://nice.freedesktop.org/libnice/pt03.html>. Perhaps that's one
> viable way to transfer file?(At the risk of rewriting this transport
> method sometime in the furture when ICE-TCP is standardized.)
>     I've also been investigating the possibility of implementing XTLS
> for encrypting FT streams. XTLS itself is listed as a proposal on the
> xmpp ideas page, and we have a draft
> <http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-meyer-xmpp-e2e-encryption-02> and an
> "XEP" <http://xmpp.org/extensions/inbox/jingle-xtls.html> for reference.
> It's not quite complicated and there are some python libraries
> available(python binding for gnutls, tlslite). Would it be a good idea
> to add this additional feature?(After implementing and thoroughly
> testing jingle FT).

I don't know how far from latest version ICE-TCP and jingle-TLS are. I
don't know if it's worth implementing that or if it will change a lot
before standardization. Maybe some other people on the list know more
about those specifications.
One point is also to know what other clients support.
Another thing I don't know is what would be best: implment ICE-TCP or
XTLS. XTLS could be used for audio / video and FT, so yes, it's a very
nice feature! ICE-TCP is one of the reason to switch to jingle FT, but
it may be a bit too early to implement that?

BTW another reason to switch to jingle is the ability to change the
transfer method. You try socks5, you don't find a host, you fallback to IBB.

-- 
Yann