IM Gateway - capabilities and limitations - v1.0================================================The gateway allows the message passing between SIP users and otherIM users (ICQ, AIM, Yahoo ...).IM Gateway uses for this a Jabber server which has the facility of supportingmany IM protocols (they are called IM transports). So, in fact, the gateway isbetween SIP and Jabber.Because the most of the IM protocols are not open source and they are theproperty of some companies, Jabber does not provide full support for theseprotocols. From time to time, the owner of the protocol changes the protocolstructure, and for a while, that transport is no longer available. There are some guys doing some kind of reverse engineering on these protocols. But notwhole protocol structure is discovered, each transport has its own limitations.In additions, many of the IM native clients allow only one user to be online ata moment, and IM servers could easy say that the hosts which have more than oneopen connection are not using a native client and block those addresses or theaccounts.Next, are presented the IM transports that are running on our Jabber server, orthey are wanted to be available. The capabilities and limitations are what canbe found on the net about transports.AIM transport-------------It is only one well known version of aim-transport.(web location: http://aim-transport.jabberstudio.org/)AIM-t provides basic interoperability between Jabber and AIM/ICQ network.Currently AIM-t is undergoing massive changes. It will be a standalone componentonce this is finished.* capabilities- currently supporting basic presence and messaging.- reliable messaging (via server only)- simple user info retrieval (ICQ only)  may take some time, just wait...- SMS sending (ICQ)  send "SEND-SMS:number:text" to any ICQ user, for example  "SEND-SMS:+4917012345:Test"- away message retrieval (AIM only)- offline messages (ICQ only)* limitations- NO file transfer- NO multichat- NO user search- NO incoming SMS- NO import of server buddy lists- NO handling of incoming ICQ auth requests- ICQ messages may get dropped by AOL servers if your contact uses an old  ICQv5 client.ICQ transport-------------Excepting the AIM transport, there exists another distribution for ICQtransport.(web location: http://icqv7-t.sourceforge.net/)* capabilities- messaging (through server only)- presence notification- SMS support* limitations- no file transferThe AIM transport for ICQ.- see AIM transportA new versions of ICQ transport seems to be available now. But now place fromwhere it can be downloaded - I sent a mail asking for a distribution.A short description can be found athttp://mailman.jabber.org/pipermail/jdev/2002-July/012343.htmlIRC transport-------------(web location: http://download.jabber.org/contrib/irc-transport.tar.gz)This version of IRC transport is a beta version* capabilities- It will connect to irc servers and allow you to talk to them, but it is still  in heavy development* limitations- private messaging does not yet function- transport registration/notify will not be supported- groupchat 1.0 and 1.1 will not be supported in favor of the 2.0  iq:conferenec/iq:browse protocol you will be able to log into and create  password protected groups now (although this may not work yet)- there still may be some other bugs but they aren't caught yet.- in testing, it has been fairly stable, although some functionality may  not be there yet.- requires jabberd version 1.4 several functions used, including MIO,  MTQ, and xhash functions were not available in previous jabber server  versionsMSN transport-------------(web location: http://msn-transport.jabberstudio.org/)* capabilities- provides basic interoperability between Jabber and MSN (messaging/presence)* limitations- there are memory leaks in MSN-t so is better to be run in a seperate process  and restart it from time to time- MSN-t uses TCP port 1863 for incoming connections so you have to open this  port if you use a firewall.- the other parts excepting messaging/presenceYahoo transport---------------(web location: http://yahoo-transport.jabberstudio.org/)As of 2002-07-10 this transport has ceased functioning (probably due to YIM protocol changes).The transport is being worked on - see JDEV mailing list :http://mailman.jabber.org/pipermail/jdev/2002-July/012327.html* capabilities- log into Yahoo Messenger server, and send/recv messages.* limitations