Question

Looking for the best XMPP Server Solution

Asked by: davisadmin

Greetings experts!

I'm looking into installing a Video/Audio/Chat collaboration solution exclusively for users on my network, and those with valid Active Directory credentials.  I do have a mix of Mac & Windows users so ideally something XMPP compliant will be best.  This should allow me to video conference, share files, and even present and should have an after-effect of reducing the utilization of our mail server for communications that may not necessarily need to be stored and archived...

I'm wondering who out there has had experience with the various XMPP Solutions out there and if they would recommend one over the other...  I have already tried Mac OS X's implementation of Jabber which was a failure so perhaps a Windows based solution will more easily interface with my Active Directory.  All of my macs will be using iChat as their client software but I haven't yet established which client the PC's will use.

I've begun looking into openfire but didn't want to get too far into research if there were some strong opinions out there.

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Asked On
2009-05-12 at 13:41:39ID24402817
Tags

iChat

,

Mac OS X

,

Video Conferencing

,

Windows Server

,

Active Directory

Topics

XMPP

,

Windows 2003 Server

,

Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger)

Participating Experts
3
Points
500
Comments
5

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Answers

 

by: Perry_IDITCPosted on 2009-05-12 at 13:49:21ID: 24369265

Hi,

Have you looked at Microsoft Office Live?
http://www.officelive.com/

or Microsoft Communitator 2007?
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/communicator/FX101729051033.aspx
it can do everything you are wanting to do.

Cheers,
Perry

 

by: slicer123Posted on 2009-05-17 at 22:21:37ID: 24409155

Openfire is a great jabber server, the disadvantages being that it is not being quickly developed (version: 3.6.4, released: 05/01/2009), and JiveSoftware open sourced the project, so support is left on community forums (or here).  The official chat channel meeting is in a multi-user conference chat channel every Weds, 10am PST (open_chat@conference.igniterealtime.org). There was always a question about scalability, but if you get past these questions, it is possible to integrate with Active Directory and is by far the friendliest to administrate due to the web based GUI console. Note too, it was developed in Java, with Jetty based .jsp server

The services work great, and supports video (via Red5 plugin), VoIP (via Asterisk plugin), and many other exotic features (including desktop sharing). IM chat gateways (kracken plugin). I don't know that is true of other jabber servers.

Jabberd14 is another possibility, but the support is worse, and is more difficult to admin, unless you're and XMPP spec guru, highly competent C++ programmer, and network wizard. They too have a support MUC chat channel. Otherwise stability seems solid. I don't know about scalability thou.

ejabberd is based on Erlang iirc. Jabberd2 (?) seems to be an actively developed project.

 

by: slicer123Posted on 2009-05-18 at 07:59:19ID: 24412722

For the windows chat client, suggest Miranda or Psi. Miranda works very will with OPF.

 

by: davisadminPosted on 2009-05-19 at 10:07:17ID: 31580725

INCREDIBLY helpful!  Thanks so much!

 

by: -MiragePosted on 2009-06-08 at 11:55:19ID: 24575148

I have recently implemented an Openfire server available at: http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp

Adding to what Slicer said, Openfire is cross platform on both the server side piece, and the end user piece (spark). There is also a compatible iPhone app called OneTeam which will integrate beautifully into that solution. Results are fantastic. Our setup involves 4 T1 lines at separate buildings (non point to point). Sending traffic to and from locations is almost instantaneous. Sending broadcast messages is a breeze and the Spark client offers the ability to broadcast and IM or a notification depending on how intrusive you want the message to be.

While Openfire does have many plugin options, I have not seen a remote desktop option. It does have the ability to screen capture very effectively, but I haven't seen the equivalent of a logmein or gotoassist type plugin to hit this platform yet.  

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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