Military deployments make extensive use of text chat services, mostly for multi-user chat (MUC). A vast majority of new deployments use the XMPP (eXtensible Messaging and Presence Protocol) standard but there are significant legacy text chat installations using IRC (Internet Relay Chat).

Communication between IRC and XMPP networks is often problematic. In the next major release of the Isode product set, R16, we’re introducing an IRC gateway into our M-Link XMPP Server product. We are doing this because we believe that existing gateways do not include functionality appropriate to our target markets.

Existing gateways allow individual XMPP users to connect into IRC channels (where they adopt a username derived from their XMPP JID). In this model the XMPP user is downgrading to IRC capabilities. The Isode gateway associates an XMPP MUC room with an IRC channel, giving a number of benefits over existing approaches:

• The involvement of IRC is totally transparent to the XMPP user. The user will see a normal MUC room which just happens to be connected to an IRC channel.
• Full MUC functionality is available locally, for example MUC access control and affiliation management.
• There is no downgrade of security for XMPP users with XMPP traffic. XMPP users are still authenticated and connections are protected with TLS.
• M-Link security label support is available, including translation to IRC users as FLOT (First Line of Text) labels in the IRC messages.
• The XMPP administrator has control of MUC room naming, which does not have to match IRC channel naming.

Chat from the perspective of IRC and XMPP

We’ve released two whitepapers today which talk about IRC, XMPP and the new capabilities in M-Link R16.

In [Interconnecting XMPP and IRC] we describe the operation of both XMPP and IRC and then look at the different approaches to gateways between these two services, comparing the existing approach with Isode’s solution.

In [Deploying IRC, Federated MUC and XMPP Guards] we look at how IRC would operate with a Federated Multi-User Chat (FMUC) deployment. FMUC is a new standard, more information here. The paper also looks at how the solution would work in a cross-domain environment using XMPP Guards.

R16 is currently in late beta and will be released in June 2013.

In R15.2 we added a new transactional in-memory database to M-Vault as an alternative to the on-disk database which uses the old Sleepycat database technology. In our next release, R16.0, this new database becomes the only database supported by M-Vault, offering:

• Significantly higher performance
• Higher resilience
• Smaller on-disk footprint

We have now released a new [M-Vault R16.0 Benchmarks] whitepaper which goes into more detail about the rationale behind this change as well as giving performance statistics for the new R16.0 M-Vault.

The paper shows significant increases in search and modify times as well as decreases in startup times compared to R15.1 (the last “Sleepycat only” version of M-Vault).

A new evaluation guide, looking at Email for Constrained Link Environments, is now now available from this website.

This is the second guide in a series looking at Isode capabilities for constrained link environments. The first looked at XMPP Instant Messaging and Multi-User Chat, the next will look at Directory Synchronisation.

The guide will enable evaluators to set up a messaging system running over constrained links using ACP 142 to carry X.400 traffic (according to STANAG 4406 Annex E) and SMTP traffic (using BSMTP encoding and STANAG 4406 Annex E compression). It covers setting up a two-node ACP 142 system but can also be used to connect two or more nodes over a multicast network.

We’ve added a new evaluation guide to the website, covering use of XMPP in constrained link environments. This is the first in a series of guides looking at constrained link communications, an area that is proving to be of great interest to our customers and prospects.

This first guide shows how to set up Isode’s M-Link XMPP server to operate efficiently over SatCom (using an IP link) and over HF Radio (using STANAG 5066). A general introduction to this area can be found in the whitepaper “M-Link Support for XMPP over Constrained Networks”.

Using M-Link Console to setup a STANAG 5066 Link

In addition the guide shows how to filter traffic sent over the link and how to Federate a multi-user chat room (MUC) between two servers operating over a constrained link, in accordance with ‘XEP-0289 Federated MUC for Constrained Environments”. Further information on Federated Multi-User Chat can be found in the whitepaper “Federated Multi-User Chat: Efficient and Resilient Operation over Slow and Unreliable Networks“.

You can view the evaluation guide, which assumes some existing knowledge of M-Link and general XMPP concepts, now.

We’ve just added a new evaluation guide to our collection.

The latest addition is our M-Link XMPP Server + Active Directory Evaluation Guide. It is intended for those beginning an evaluation of Isode’s M-Link XMPP Server and wanting to use Microsoft’s Active Directory for user account provisioning.

The guide can be found at http://www.isode.com/Documentation/XMPPEVAL-AD.pdf.
If you would like to evaluate our M-Link server please contact us using this form.