XEP-0117: Intermediate IM Protocol Suite

This document defines a recommended suite of Jabber/XMPP protocols to be supported by intermediate instant messaging and presence applications.

NOTICE: The protocol defined herein is a Draft Standard of the XMPP Standards Foundation. Implementations are encouraged and the protocol is appropriate for deployment in production systems, but some changes to the protocol are possible before it becomes a Final Standard.

Document Information

Series: XEP
Number: 0117
Publisher: XMPP Standards Foundation
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Version: 1.0
Last Updated: 2005-07-21
Approving Body: XMPP Council
Dependencies: XMPP Core, XMPP IM, XEP-0045, XEP-0071, XEP-0073, XEP-0096, XEP-0115
Supersedes: None
Superseded By: None
Short Name: N/A
Wiki Page: <http://wiki.jabber.org/index.php/Intermediate IM Protocol Suite (XEP-0117)>

Author Information

Legal Notice

This XMPP Extension Protocol is copyright 1999 - 2007 by the XMPP Standards Foundation (XSF) and is in full conformance with the XSF's Intellectual Property Rights Policy <http://www.xmpp.org/extensions/ipr-policy.shtml>. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Creative Commons Attribution License (<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/>).

Discussion Venue

The preferred venue for discussion of this document is the Standards discussion list: <http://mail.jabber.org/mailman/listinfo/standards>.

Relation to XMPP

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) is defined in the XMPP Core (RFC 3920) and XMPP IM (RFC 3921) specifications contributed by the XMPP Standards Foundation to the Internet Standards Process, which is managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force in accordance with RFC 2026. Any protocol defined in this document has been developed outside the Internet Standards Process and is to be understood as an extension to XMPP rather than as an evolution, development, or modification of XMPP itself.

Conformance Terms

The following keywords as used in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119: "MUST", "SHALL", "REQUIRED"; "MUST NOT", "SHALL NOT"; "SHOULD", "RECOMMENDED"; "SHOULD NOT", "NOT RECOMMENDED"; "MAY", "OPTIONAL".

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

The Basic IM Protocol Suite [1] introduced the concept of a "protocol suite". This document extends the basic support specified in XEP-0073 by specifying an Intermediate IM Protocol Suite.

2. Requirements and Approach

This document follows the same approach as XEP-0073. By design, the Basic IM Protocol Suite does not include more advanced instant messaging functionality; the present document fills the need for a protocol suite that addresses such functionality.

A protocol is deemed worthy of inclusion in this protocol suite if:

• It addresses common needs of instant messaging users that are addressed by virtually all other popular IM services or systems.
• It is more advanced than basic IM and presence.
• It has achieved a status of at least Draft within the XMPP Standards Foundation's standards process (as defined in XMPP Extension Protocols [2]).

3. Definition

We define the Intermediate IM Protocol Suite as follows:

Table 1: Required and Recommended Specifications

Note well that the foregoing protocols apply to clients only (i.e., they do not introduce new requirements for servers). In addition, these protocols have their own dependencies, which include the following XEPs (as well as various IETF RFCs and W3C specifications):

• Data Forms [7]
• Feature Negotiation [8]
• In-Band Bytestreams [9]
• SOCKS5 Bytestreams [10]
• Field Standardization for Data Forms [11]
• XMPP Date and Time Profiles [12]
• Stream Initiation [13]

In addition, because the intermediate suite builds on the basic suite, by definition all protocols required by XEP-0073 are also required by the intermediate suite (refer to XEP-0073 for details).

4. Security Considerations

This document introduces no additional security considerations above and beyond those defined in the documents on which it depends.

5. IANA Considerations

This document requires no interaction with the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) [14].

6. XMPP Registrar Considerations

No namespaces or parameters need to be registered with the XMPP Registrar [15] as a result of this document.

Notes

Revision History

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