Feel the presence

Presence technologies – which let users or devices quickly find each other, no matter their physical location –  are rapidly becoming an important network component.

This week’s Technology Update takes a look at one of those technologies that’s garnering attention: the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), an XML-based protocol for server-to-server near-real-time instant messaging.

According to our author (jhildebrand@jabber.com.) the core of XMPP routing is the Jabber ID (JID), a logical addressing scheme such as node@domain/resource. The domain portion can be looked up in the DNS, similarly to an e-mal address and servers connect with one another on behalf of users. The node portion can denote an IM user, an application, or a service.

While IM interoperability is currently a hot topic, our author says XMPP can enable real-time communication of presence information across applications. For instance, by using XMPP a line of business application can appear as a client to an XMPP server. At the discretion of the administrator, other entities can know the presence and availability of that application to receive and process specific data – basically allowing transactions to take place from any location at any time.

You’ll certainly be hearing more about this one.  For more on our story, see: https://www.nwfusion.com/news/tech/2004/0308techupdate.html