Re: AW: MICROSOFT PATENT

On Mon, 2004-02-23 at 14:08, Xavier G=C3=B3mez Velasco wrote:
> Peter:
> Thanks for your reply.=20
> Can you tell me, if possible, how does Jabber works to
> detect when a user is online, if the user continues to
> be online, and when the user is no longer online?=20

First, "Jabber" is a protocol, it is not a specific implementation.
Different people can implement the protocol in different ways. Most
implementations are client-server systems that use XML streams over TCP
connections, but it is possible to use an HTTP binding or some other
method for client-to-server communications, or even to implement a
peer-to-peer system. Most of the client-server TCP systems detect
network availability based on opening or closing the XML stream, but
that is not enough because a user must also set their presence to
available or unavailable (i.e., the mere existence of an XML stream is
not enough to determine whether the user is online or offline when it
comes to availability). Continued availability is usually determined by
the existence of the stream, although the stream can continue even after
the user sets their presence to unavailable. This is all described more
fully in the XMPP Internet-Drafts, which were recently approved by the
IETF:

http://www.jabber.org/ietf/

HTH,

Peter