Battle for Mobile Instant Messaging
I have been doing some reading on 3G Instant Messaging. There are a number of contending protocols and standards that want to take the spot as the de facto standard for 3G instant messaging. Of course, this is - over and above - the closed-proprietary protocols used by the big IM providers like Yahoo, MSN and AOL (Gtalk is not quite big yet and it does use an open standard XMPP).
The battle seems to involve these three (3) standards:
- IETF’s SIP/SIMPLE - In the spirit of all IETF protocols, this is another clean and simple protocol on top of the immensly popular voice-over-IP protocol, SIP. Gaim even has a client plugin that supports SIP/SIMPLE (sponsored by Google’s Summer of Code program).
- OMA/Wireless Village IMPS - This protocol was initially developed as the original standardized solution for mobile instant messaging. However, it does not have as wide a community support as the others. Also this is designed as a walled garden approach which is favored by the celcos.
- IETF/Jabber’s XMPP - This is currently the most popular of the three (3) mentioned here. This is also the protocol that google talk is using for its instant messaging service. This is a big seal of approval for this protocol. It was originally designed by the Jabber community and has been recently accepted by the IETF.
Which standard will be it? Wireless Village, which has been renamed OMA Instant Messaging and Presence service (OMA IMPS), seems to be the favorite of the current wireless working group, OMA. And thus is the favor of incumbent celcos. Aside from the JAIN initiative, which also supports XMPP and SIMPLE/SIP, there are no other major implementations or frameworks for Wireless Village. This can potentially be a community support problem for this protocol.
I have always been a sucker for simple HTTP like protocols. Remember SOAP? So I would like to bet on SIMPLE/SIP. Also there are a large number of SIP implementations out there (from servers, APIs to frameworks). Also SIP has been accepted as an official part of the 3gpp standards suite. However, a problem is the lack of popular SIMPLE/SIP implementations (same with Wireless Village). But, Mobicents looks like a good project to build on top of. Mobicents is a JAIN/JSLEE project too. But, as the name (SIMPLE) implies, it is not as featureful as the rest.
On the other hand, Google’s stamp of approval for XMPP gives it a pretty big lead. Also XMPP’s poster boy implemention, Jabber, has a pretty big support community around it. This protocol might have a big lead compared to the rest.
Who’s your bet? I prefer to go with a framework-based solution such as supporting the JAIN/JSLEE initiative. This way you can just plugin support for any of the major IM protocols (and others that might emerge in the future). And then again, I could always be wrong.
March 6th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
[…] While browsing the Internet, I bumped into a Google Ad saying, “XMPP versus SIMPLE/IP”. This ad was sponsored by Jabber.com (which sells a commercial Jabber XMPP server). This is basically in relation to an article I wrote about Mobile Instant Messaging. […]
April 3rd, 2006 at 7:22 am
Hi Hip2b2,
Our team have made the same study on what to use for our own Mobile IM implementation and decided to use XMPP on the server side. The system is versatile that it can also accomodate SIP/SIMPLE. While the client side on the mobile is our own protocol, this is due to the text that SIP generates for the signalling and XMPP is also a bloated protocol (XML). Since the mobile is using GPRS it will be expensive for the user, until the mobile operators decided to have gprs buffet meal, we’ll stick to our protocol.
April 3rd, 2006 at 1:13 pm
hello,
i have heard you guys in the news before. so i presume that you are extending the Jabber open source XMPP server for your application? or are you using JAIN? or writing one from scratch?
i have yet to see your client but i presume that you use XMPP for communications between the mobile and the messaging and presence server? how do you implement file transfers? SIP/SIMPLE and OMA WV do not provide IM file transfer. however, XMPP might since you can embed MIME content on it. is this accurate?
do you have plans of supporting OMA WV to allow most phone’s built in presence and messaging clients to work?
April 4th, 2006 at 3:24 am
Hi,
we have implemented extensions/plugins in the open source XMPP. We have looked at JAIN before and we see future services for it and it is still in the concept stage.
You can check out our mobile IM in this site, www.yehba.com. The one in the download site doesn’t have the file transfer feature but in our lab and for the enterprise version we have it, yup it can MIME or just plain packetized payload.
We are still studying the OMA IMPS specification and it will be good to have support on it.
April 4th, 2006 at 4:30 am
plain packetize as in BASE64 encode the data? that is interesting. but how do you do this and still keep XMPP compliance? or this portion is non-compliant?
also for OMA IMPS, how do you intend to support this? via JAIN or Parlay?
April 14th, 2006 at 4:02 am
I have a theory on why OMA IMPS is favored over XMPP by some vendors.
It uses HTTP, which is well-supported by mobile data gateways and is request/response based.
XMPP on the other hand uses a different TCP port and keeps the connection open - not wire(less)-friendly.
April 14th, 2006 at 7:11 am
good case against XMPP.
but, SIP/SIMPLE is also a clean protocol based on HTTP. actually, it is even simpler than OMA IMPS (formerly WV). why not SIP/SIMPLE? since push-to-talk is probably VoIP’sh already.
May 23rd, 2006 at 12:57 pm
Now that I’m reading through the IMPS spec, more inputs:
1. IMPS is very flexible in specifying client capabilities.
2. IMPS can degrade to low bandwidth conditions.
3. IMPS (in my opinion) has a revenue environment in mind, while the others assume a “free” scheme.
October 18th, 2006 at 1:23 am
[…] So with these three (3) simple reasons (of course, there are more) alone, it is pretty clear that support OMA IMPS is still important if an IM provider would like to penetrate the mobile phone network market. For more discussion on the existing open standards IMPS protocols, check out this previous blog of mine. I also did a comparison between SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP. […]