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DesignXMPP im » History » Revision 3

Revision 2 (Anonymous, 02/29/2012 03:32 PM) → Revision 3/29 (Anonymous, 02/29/2012 03:42 PM)

= Gateway for Instant Messaging= 

 [[TOC(DesignXMPP_im, depth=2)]] 

 In XMPP there are several types of messages which lead to different semantics when exchanging XMPP ''message stanzas'' between 2 endpoints. This section focuses only on message types that allow 2 endpoints to send instant messages to each other. 

 Message types: 

  * Normal: the default message type. A reply is not expected from the recipient. 
  * Chat: This message type implies both parties have engaged a conversation. 
  * Headline: An endpoint receiving this type of message should never reply, since it's meant to be used by servers or other entities to deliver announcements. 

 In SIP there are currently 2 ways of doing Instant Messaging: 

  * SIP MESSAGE (RFC 3428) 
  * MSRP (RFC 4975) 

 The first one is session-less and the latter is session based. 

 The mechanisms described here follow the currently available specifications for SIP-XMPP interoperability: 

  * http://xmpp.org/internet-drafts/draft-saintandre-sip-xmpp-im-01.html 
  * http://xmpp.org/internet-drafts/draft-saintandre-sip-xmpp-chat-03.html 


 == XMPP single message <-> SIP MESSAGE == 

 XMPP single messages are mapped directly to SIP MESSAGE requests and ''vice versa''. 

 [[Image(xmppgq_im_normal.png)]] TODO (image) 

 === Overview === 

 The mechanism for translating XMPP normal message stanzas and SIP MESSAGE requests is straightforward, they map one to one. However, since SIP is used mainly with UDP as a transport, if a    XMPP stanza is bigger than 1500 bytes it will be chunked into smaller pieces to avoid ethernet fragmentation related issues. 

 Since SIP MESSAGE is a non INVITE transaction, it has to be replied immediately, because there is no way to avoid retransmissions. This means that the SIP-XMPP gateway will reply on the SIP side before knowing if the message was actually delivered to the XMPP side. In order to express this a "202 Accepted" reply will be sent to the SIP request instead of a "200 OK". 

 On the other hand, when an XMPP stanza is translated into a SIP MESSAGE request the SIP-XMPP gateway is able to report back the result (in case of error) by using a message stanza of type ''error''. This is possible because of the asynchronous nature of stanza processing in the XMPP protocol.