Special Report: Standards Rule: Messaging

VoIP and IM are poised to become the enterprise choice for real-time communication. But consumers and businesses alike are looking to overcome interoperability problems so as to integrate multivendor communication technologies. Meanwhile, spam continues to threaten e-mail, another crucial enterprise communication tool. Finally, standards fights have erupted over Web syndication, one of the most significant changes to the Web since its creation.

SIMPLESIP for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions is an extension of SIP (which you can read more about in the Infrastructure section of this article). SIMPLE is an IETF standard based on SIP to transport instant messaging communications and presence information. SIMPLE provides interoperability between IM clients and servers, while also integrating with IP telephony systems. SIP and SIMPLE combine telephony, unified messaging, instant messaging and presence information together over a unified IP network for real-time messaging. In theory, SIMPLE should enable a user to switch from an IM conversation to a telephone call with the press of a button. However, while the presence and messaging components of SIMPLE have been finalized, chat rooms and contact lists have not.

» SIMPLE, IETF standard

» tools.ietf.org/html/3428

XMPP

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol is a competing IM standard favored by Jabber, Sun, Google and much of the open-source community. Generally, XMPP has been thought of as the better data-transfer protocol, and more feature-rich, while SIP messaging integrates more easily with IP telephony. Some of the advanced XMPP features, such as multiuser chat, publish-subscribe and offline messaging, are all draft standards by the Jabber Software Foundation and are not found in SIP/SIMPLE at this time. XMPP was originally developed by the Jabber community. Now the core XMPP features, which define the XML-based transport protocol, are IETF standards.SIP/SIMPLE will likely dominate in the enterprise because of its tight integration with telephony systems and strong vendor support. XMPP's best hope is in the consumer market, though some XMPP vendors either support dual protocols or write XMPP to SIP gateways. The next version of CommuniGate Pro will support SIP and XMPP.

» IETF standard,

» ietf.org/rfc/rfc3921.txt

» xmpp.org

DKIM and SIDFDomain Keys Identified Mail is an e-mail verification protocol to combat spam. A combination of Yahoo's DomainKeys and Cisco's Internet Identified Mail, DKIM lets domain owners cryptographically sign outgoing messages using public key technology. Recipients can then verify that the mail originated from the purported domain by using DNS to fetch the public key associated with the signing domain. Theoretically, this should make white and blacklisting domains more effective, improve anti-phishing detection and make it easier to track spam mail back to offending ISPs and domains. Unfortunately, this does nothing to stop zombie machine spammers, nor does it verify the message was sent by a particular user. The cryptography also adds computational overhead on mail and DNS servers.

Microsoft has its own framework called Sender ID, which is a merger of SPF (Sender Policy Framework) created by Meng Wong, and Microsoft's own Caller ID. Domain owners publish a record of IP addresses that are authorized to send messages on behalf of that domain. Recipients can access this record using DNS to ascertain that the mail came from an authorized IP address. However, there is a controversy over intellectual property rights. Microsoft holds the patent on Sender ID, and its license appears to be incompatible with the GPL.

The two protocols can co-exist peacefully, but enterprises are approaching both standards cautiously as they test their efficacy and evaluate the impact on their e-mail architectures.

» DKIM: IETF standard

» mipassoc.org/dkim/index.html» Sender ID

RSS and Atom

One of the major technologies driving Web 2.0 is Web syndication such as RSS. This acronym has changed over the years, but the most common usage today is Really Simple Syndication. RSS grew out of a desire to take frequently updating content from one Web site and place it on many others. RSS feeds can contain headlines, article excerpts, pictures or links to files. The feed is an XML file parsed by a local feed reader that pulls the data at a specified interval. Web-based readers can conveniently pull data for the user and place it on a Web site, eliminating the need for a local client reader or having to search for content.

Currently there are three major standards for syndication: RSS 1.x, RSS 2.x and Atom. Atom, an IETF draft standard, has the advantage of being the newest and evolving standard, as RSS 2 has been frozen. Atom came about after the creation of RSS, although it shouldn't be considered a derivative protocol. However, RSS has bigger name recognition. None of the standards have been carved in stone yet, and many aggregators support all of them. Internet Explorer 7 will have a feed reader built into it, which should greatly affect the uptake.In the enterprise, RSS can be used for distributing news, product information, press releases, bug fixes, newsletters or any other frequently updated content. A recent Network Computing Reader Poll found 55 percent of respondents agreed that Web syndication will be very important in future Web site design, with only 13 percent disagreeing (see chart at left).

» RSS Advisory Board standard, RSS 2.0.1, revision 6

» IETF standard, Atom 1.0

Michael J. DeMaria, NWC technology editor, can be reached at [email protected].