Comparison of instant messaging protocols

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Basic general information about the protocols: creator, version, amongst others.

Creator First public release date License Identity (not inc. alias) Asynchronous message relaying Transport Layer Security Unlimited number of contacts Bulletins to all contacts One-to-many routing 4 spam protection Supports groups or channels for members / nonmembers / nobody Audio/VoIP Webcam/Video
Cspace Cspace 2006 Jul 17 Open Unique RSA-Key No Yes Yes No No No No
Gadu-Gadu Gadu-Gadu 2000 Jul 17 Proprietary Unique number
e.g. 12345678
Yes No Yes No No Yes (simple) Yes
IRC Jarkko Oikarinen 1988 Aug Open standard Nickname!Username@hostname
(or "hostmask")
e.g. user!~usr@a.b.com 1
Yes, but via a memo system that

differs from the main system

Yes, depending on individual server support No 3 No Simplistic multicast Medium Yes (everyone, multiple simultaneous, any size)
Meca Network Meca Communications 2002 Nov Proprietary Username Yes No  ?
MSNP (Windows Live Messenger, etc) Microsoft 1999 Jul Proprietary E-mail address (Windows Live ID) Yes No Only for certified robots No Centralistic None Yes
OSCAR protocol (AIM, ICQ) AOL 1997 Proprietary Username or UIN
e.g. 12345678
Yes Yes (Aim Pro, Aim Lite) No No Centralistic client-based Yes (Multiple, simultaneous)
PSYC (Protocol for SYnchronous Conferencing) PSYC Project 1995 Open PSYC URI as in psyc://server.example.net/~nickname Yes Yes Yes Yes Custom multicast Yes Yes (multiple simultaneous, any size, programmable)
Retroshare Retroshare 2007 Mar 21 Open Unique RSA-Key No Yes Yes No No No No
TOC protocol (deprecated) AOL  ? Proprietary Username or UIN
e.g. 12345678
Yes No Centralistic paying members only
TOC2 protocol AOL 2005 Sep Proprietary Username or UIN
e.g. 12345678
Yes No No No Centralistic No paying members only
XMPP (Jabber) Jeremie Miller, standardized via IETF 1999 Jan Open standard Jabber ID (JID)
e.g. usr@a.b.c/home 2
Yes Yes Yes Yes Unicast lists Several Standardized Types Optional
SIP/SIMPLE IETF 2002 Dec Open standard user@hostname Yes Yes Yes Yes No Medium  ?
YMSG (Yahoo! Messenger) Yahoo!  ? Proprietary Username Yes No No Yes Centralistic Yes No (groups discontinued due to liability)
DirectNet Gregor Richards 2006 Jan Open standard Username  ?
Zephyr Notification Service  ? Open standard  ?
Gale Dan Egnor  ? Open standard Unique RSA key, aliased to user@domain Yes (public/private key) Yes (multiple simultaneous, any size, programmable, encrypted)
Skype Protocol Skype  ? Proprietary Username No Proprietary No Unknown Yes
Creator First public release date License Identity (not inc. alias) Asynchronous message relaying Transport Layer Security Unlimited number of contacts Bulletins to all contacts One-to-many routing 4 spam protection Supports groups or channels for members / nonmembers / nobody Audio/VoIP Webcam/Video

Note 1: In ~usr@a.b.com, the a.b.com part is known as the "hostmask" and can either be the server being connected from or a "cloak" granted by the server administrator; a more realistic example is ~myname@myisp.example.com. The tilde generally indicates that the username provided by the IRC client on signon was not verified with the ident service.

Note 2: In usr@a.b.c/home, the home part is a "resource", which distinguishes the same user when logged in from multiple locations, possibly simultaneously; a more realistic example is user@jabberserver.example.com/home

Note 3: Scalability issue: The protocol gets increasingly inefficient with the amount of contacts.[1][2]

Note 4: One-to-many/many-to-many communications primarily comprise presence information, publish/subscribe and groupchat distribution. Some technologies have the ability to distribute data by multicast, avoiding bottlenecks on the sending side caused by the amount of recipients. Efficient distribution of presence is currently however a technological scalability issue for both XMPP (Jabber) and SIP/SIMPLE.

See also

References

  1. ^ RFC 1324, D. Reed, 1992. 2.5.1, Size
  2. ^ Functionality provided by systems for synchronous conferencing, C.v. Loesch, 1992. 1.2.1 Growth

This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.


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