4 ms·

Apparently Messenger does link with Facebook and Yahoo, but I don't see anything indicating a general federation. It occurs to me that IM services have establi

by nknight 15y ago

Apparently Messenger does link with Facebook and Yahoo, but I don't see anything indicating a general federation. It occurs to me that IM services have established a twisted, mutant, incompletely-routed version of an IRC network amongst themselves. And as far as I can tell, they still haven't gotten group chat right...

zokier 15y ago
What's wrong with XMPP multi-user chat? And I don't understand your argument of "incompletely-routed", especially if compared to IRC. imho XMPP federation is much more powerful concept than IRC networking.
- darklajid 15y ago
  His argument seems to be that MS ties into Facebook Chat, but not using XMPP federation (since that seems to be disabled on FB's side). So - it's behind the scene. It's (by a stretch) comparable to IRC links, maybe. The complain about group chat was, as far as I understand the GP, not about XMPP multi-user chat, but about the inability to _use_ that if you're not using real XMPP federation. In other words: How do you start a group chat from GTalk with your MS Messenger / Facebook friends? The technology would support it, but 'they still don't get it right'. I agree.
- nknight 15y ago
  > What's wrong with XMPP multi-user chat? I was speaking more generally than XMPP. I don't know the fundamental causes, but I haven't seen group/multi-user chat work reliably in years -- I think the last time I did, everybody was on ICQ using official clients. The problems I have encountered are: 1) Group chats just don't start. 2) Not everyone can see/"hear" everyone else. 3) Rarely, #2 starting and stopping randomly for people. I've seen these behaviors on chats with as few as 3 people, up to 8ish (don't think I've ever gone higher than that). I doubt the protocols are fundamentally broken in this regard, I assume I'm encountering implementation bugs, but they seem to be pervasive. > And I don't understand your argument of "incompletely-routed", especially if compared to IRC. "incompletely-routed" may not be a good phrase to use here, least of all because not many people "get" IRC anymore. IRC networks eventually stabilized into a model whereby there was network-wide coordination of routing. Every server on a network can talk to every other server, and there is no leakage outside of the network. You know what you're getting when you connect to one of the major networks. With IM, links may be established between A and B, and B and C, but not A and C. > imho XMPP federation is much more powerful concept than IRC networking. I would absolutely agree in so far as the intent of XMPP federation goes. In practice, there are two problems: 1) Some IM providers intentionally cripple it (e.g. Facebook). 2) Not all IM providers use XMPP in the first place. Even some of the ones that make available a limited XMPP interface don't actually base their services off of it (Facebook, Microsoft). It's important to realize that IM is not the same as XMPP, so when I say "IM", I mean "IM", not the XMPP subclass. :)
Splines 15y ago
I work at MS and we use Lync Communicator a lot. Group chat seems to work well (as far as I can tell). Then again, who knows what server they have us connected to - it's probably v.latest. I've read that there is an XMPP federation service [1], although having never touched it I don't know if there are any caveats. [1] http://ocsguy.com/2010/11/29/deploying-lync-for-xmpp/ http://ocsguy.com/2010/11/29/deploying-lync-for-xmpp/

by nknight 15y ago

zokier 15y ago

What's wrong with XMPP multi-user chat? And I don't understand your argument of "incompletely-routed", especially if compared to IRC. imho XMPP federation is much more powerful concept than IRC networking.

darklajid 15y ago
His argument seems to be that MS ties into Facebook Chat, but not using XMPP federation (since that seems to be disabled on FB's side). So - it's behind the scene. It's (by a stretch) comparable to IRC links, maybe. The complain about group chat was, as far as I understand the GP, not about XMPP multi-user chat, but about the inability to _use_ that if you're not using real XMPP federation. In other words: How do you start a group chat from GTalk with your MS Messenger / Facebook friends? The technology would support it, but 'they still don't get it right'. I agree.
nknight 15y ago
> What's wrong with XMPP multi-user chat? I was speaking more generally than XMPP. I don't know the fundamental causes, but I haven't seen group/multi-user chat work reliably in years -- I think the last time I did, everybody was on ICQ using official clients. The problems I have encountered are: 1) Group chats just don't start. 2) Not everyone can see/"hear" everyone else. 3) Rarely, #2 starting and stopping randomly for people. I've seen these behaviors on chats with as few as 3 people, up to 8ish (don't think I've ever gone higher than that). I doubt the protocols are fundamentally broken in this regard, I assume I'm encountering implementation bugs, but they seem to be pervasive. > And I don't understand your argument of "incompletely-routed", especially if compared to IRC. "incompletely-routed" may not be a good phrase to use here, least of all because not many people "get" IRC anymore. IRC networks eventually stabilized into a model whereby there was network-wide coordination of routing. Every server on a network can talk to every other server, and there is no leakage outside of the network. You know what you're getting when you connect to one of the major networks. With IM, links may be established between A and B, and B and C, but not A and C. > imho XMPP federation is much more powerful concept than IRC networking. I would absolutely agree in so far as the intent of XMPP federation goes. In practice, there are two problems: 1) Some IM providers intentionally cripple it (e.g. Facebook). 2) Not all IM providers use XMPP in the first place. Even some of the ones that make available a limited XMPP interface don't actually base their services off of it (Facebook, Microsoft). It's important to realize that IM is not the same as XMPP, so when I say "IM", I mean "IM", not the XMPP subclass. :)

Splines 15y ago

I work at MS and we use Lync Communicator a lot. Group chat seems to work well (as far as I can tell). Then again, who knows what server they have us connected to - it's probably v.latest. I've read that there is an XMPP federation service [1], although having never touched it I don't know if there are any caveats. [1] http://ocsguy.com/2010/11/29/deploying-lync-for-xmpp/ http://ocsguy.com/2010/11/29/deploying-lync-for-xmpp/