3 ms·

They have - e.g. http://vector.im/beta http://vector.im/beta on top of the Matrix.org protocol. [disclaimer, I work on Matrix]

zokier 11y ago
Not to be too negative but based on quick glance it would seem like the Matrix protocol is really "noisy" if compared to something like IRC (which admittedly is ridiculously spartan). How much data ends up flowing down the wires for a simple "hello world" message?
- vvpan 11y ago
  But why does it matter? Bandwidth is super-cheap.
  - chetanahuja 11y ago
    "But why does it matter? Bandwidth is super-cheap" If this comment is serious (and I have my doubts), I'm left speechless... Don't even know where to start. I'll just leave it here http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625062/facebook-2g-tuesdays-slow-internet-developing-world http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625062/facebook-2g-tuesd...
    - vvpan 11y ago
      > I'm left speechless... Oh please. Without even knowing much about the protocol, I am almost positive that it's bandwidth requirements are well below even a relatively light modern webpage and likely well within 2G range.
      - chetanahuja 11y ago
        It's not about the particulars of this protocol. It's about the statement "bandwidth is super cheap". I would have called it super-oblivious first-world thinking but that statement is absurd anywhere on a mobile connection.
      - chetanahuja 11y ago
        > "Without even knowing much about the protocol" > "I am almost positive that it's bandwidth requirements are well below even a relatively light modern webpage and likely well within 2G range." I'm pretty sure this this is almost certainly the least, or at least within range of, quite likely the least definitive statement I might have ever read (or at least one of the lesser definitive of statements I've read within the past year, or at least the last few months, or so).
        aklemm 11y ago
        We see what you did there.
    - kibibu 11y ago
      You just linked to a 3.5 MB web page. That's more than the complete Shareware DOOM
- Arathorn 11y ago
  Good question. The data you send in Matrix when transmitting and receiving a message is just the event (message) type, the room ID, and the appropriate key value data for the contents of the event. For an m.room.message event this is msgtype and body - e.g m.text and "hello world". The raw data is therefore only a handful of bytes. Now, Matrix allows arbitrary transports to actually put that over the wire - but mandates only the most comically simple (and inefficient) as a mandatory baseline. This is a plain HTTP PUT request of the above data encoded as JSON and a few URI parts. The reason for this is that HTTP is insanely ubiquitous and well understood; any random device or language these days can trivially send and receive messages. However, there is nothing stopping you from using a more efficient transport for the data between your client and your server - we've been experimenting with everything from boring old JSON over WebSockets to COAP or MQTT and even capnproto. We haven't specced any of these yet, but we'll probably add them as optional profiles to the spec in future. Meanwhile plain old REST actually works pretty well in practice :) The fun stuff in Matrix is all about the eventually consistent decentralised conversation history between servers rather than obsessing about the most efficient way to shove some key value pairs between a client and a server.
zanny 11y ago
Any reason not to have openid or persona signup? Its just annoying nowadays to encounter a site where it still wants only plain old username / password.
- Arathorn 11y ago
  Matrix as a protocol supports arbitrary login mechanisms; Vector + Synapse can hook into CAS, SAML2, LDAP and OAuth flows already. Patches more than welcome to hook it into OpenID or Persona :)
  - jsilence 11y ago
    Persona support would be great!

zokier 11y ago

Not to be too negative but based on quick glance it would seem like the Matrix protocol is really "noisy" if compared to something like IRC (which admittedly is ridiculously spartan). How much data ends up flowing down the wires for a simple "hello world" message?

vvpan 11y ago
But why does it matter? Bandwidth is super-cheap.
- chetanahuja 11y ago
  "But why does it matter? Bandwidth is super-cheap" If this comment is serious (and I have my doubts), I'm left speechless... Don't even know where to start. I'll just leave it here http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625062/facebook-2g-tuesdays-slow-internet-developing-world http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/28/9625062/facebook-2g-tuesd...
  - vvpan 11y ago
    > I'm left speechless... Oh please. Without even knowing much about the protocol, I am almost positive that it's bandwidth requirements are well below even a relatively light modern webpage and likely well within 2G range.
    - chetanahuja 11y ago
      It's not about the particulars of this protocol. It's about the statement "bandwidth is super cheap". I would have called it super-oblivious first-world thinking but that statement is absurd anywhere on a mobile connection.
    - chetanahuja 11y ago
      > "Without even knowing much about the protocol" > "I am almost positive that it's bandwidth requirements are well below even a relatively light modern webpage and likely well within 2G range." I'm pretty sure this this is almost certainly the least, or at least within range of, quite likely the least definitive statement I might have ever read (or at least one of the lesser definitive of statements I've read within the past year, or at least the last few months, or so).
      - aklemm 11y ago
        We see what you did there.
  - kibibu 11y ago
    You just linked to a 3.5 MB web page. That's more than the complete Shareware DOOM
Arathorn 11y ago
Good question. The data you send in Matrix when transmitting and receiving a message is just the event (message) type, the room ID, and the appropriate key value data for the contents of the event. For an m.room.message event this is msgtype and body - e.g m.text and "hello world". The raw data is therefore only a handful of bytes. Now, Matrix allows arbitrary transports to actually put that over the wire - but mandates only the most comically simple (and inefficient) as a mandatory baseline. This is a plain HTTP PUT request of the above data encoded as JSON and a few URI parts. The reason for this is that HTTP is insanely ubiquitous and well understood; any random device or language these days can trivially send and receive messages. However, there is nothing stopping you from using a more efficient transport for the data between your client and your server - we've been experimenting with everything from boring old JSON over WebSockets to COAP or MQTT and even capnproto. We haven't specced any of these yet, but we'll probably add them as optional profiles to the spec in future. Meanwhile plain old REST actually works pretty well in practice :) The fun stuff in Matrix is all about the eventually consistent decentralised conversation history between servers rather than obsessing about the most efficient way to shove some key value pairs between a client and a server.

zanny 11y ago

Any reason not to have openid or persona signup? Its just annoying nowadays to encounter a site where it still wants only plain old username / password.

Arathorn 11y ago
Matrix as a protocol supports arbitrary login mechanisms; Vector + Synapse can hook into CAS, SAML2, LDAP and OAuth flows already. Patches more than welcome to hook it into OpenID or Persona :)
- jsilence 11y ago
  Persona support would be great!