Comparison of instant messaging protocols Telecommunication Engineering 464 pasar.pts-ptn.net

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

Protocol	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	Group, channel or conference support	Audio/VoIP support	Webcam/Video	Batch file sharing	Media synchronisation
Gadu-Gadu	GG Network	2000 Jul 17	Proprietary	Unique number e.g. 12345678	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Centralistic	Yes ⁵ (simple)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
IRC	Jarkko Oikarinen	1988 Aug	Open standard	Nickname!Username@hostname (or "hostmask") e.g. [email protected]¹	Yes, but via a memo system that differs from the main system	Yes, depending on individual server support	No³	No	Simplistic multicast	Medium	Yes (everyone, multiple simultaneous, any size)	No	No	No	No
Windows Messenger service	Microsoft	1990	Proprietary (Discontinued)	NetBIOS	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No	No	No	No
MSNP (Windows Live Messenger, etc.)	Microsoft	1999 Jul	Proprietary	Email address (Microsoft account)	Yes	No	Only for certified robots	No	Centralistic	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
(Mumble)	Thorvald Natvig	1999 Jul	Open standard	?	Yes	Yes	Only for certified robots	No	Centralistic	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
OSCAR (AIM, ICQ)	AOL	1997	Proprietary	Username, Email Address or UIN e.g. 12345678	Yes	Yes (Aim Pro, Aim Lite)	No	No	Centralistic	client-based	Yes (Multiple, simultaneous)	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
RVP (Windows Messenger, etc.)	Microsoft	1997 Mar	Proprietary (Discontinued)	Windows Active Directory Login	No	No	?	No	Centralistic	None	No	?	?	No	No
SIP/SIMPLE	IETF	2002 Dec	Open standard	user@hostname	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Medium	?	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Steam Friends	Valve Corporation	2003 Sep 12	Proprietary	SteamID/Username or Unique Number	Yes	Proprietary	No, although rising	Yes	?	No	No	Yes	No	No	No
Skype	Skype	?	Proprietary	Username	No	Proprietary	No	No	?	?	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
TOC2	AOL	2005 Sep	Proprietary (Discontinued)	Username or UIN e.g. 12345678	Yes	No	No	No	Centralistic	No	paying members only	?	?	Partial	?
XMPP/Jingle (Google Talk)	Jeremie Miller, standardized via IETF	1999 Jan	Open standard	Jabber ID (JID) e.g. [email protected]/home²	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Unicast lists	Several Standardized Types	Optional	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
YMSG (Yahoo! Messenger)	Yahoo!	1998, March 9	Proprietary	Username	Yes	No	No	Yes	Centralistic	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Zephyr Notification Service	MIT	1987	Open standard	Kerberos principal e.g. [email protected]	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Unicast lists	No	Yes	No	No	?	No

Note 1: In [email protected], 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 [email protected]. The tilde generally indicates that the username provided by the IRC client on signon was not verified with the ident service.

Note 2: In [email protected]/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 [email protected]/home

Note 3: Scalability issue: The protocol gets increasingly inefficient with the number 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 number of recipients. Efficient distribution of presence is currently however a technological scalability issue for both XMPP and SIP/SIMPLE.

Note 5: There have been reports from users that the antispam filter is used to censor links to other IM programs and some websites.

References

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

Instant messaging

Protocols
(comparison)

Services

Comparison of instant messaging protocols

See also

References