

Google switches GTalk's VOIP protocol to Jingle - sciurus
http://xmpp.org/2011/06/the-future-is-jingle/

======
pthatcherg
My original email had more details:

We are pleased to announce that we have launched support for Jingle XEP-166
and XEP-167 for Google Talk calls to and from Gmail, iGoogle, and Orkut. We
have also added the same level of support to libjingle
(<http://code.google.com/p/libjingle>), which is used by many native clients.
From this point on, it will be our primary signalling protocol, and the old
protocol will only remain for backwards compatibility. We also plan to soon
update Google Talk on Android to speak Jingle, but we do not plan on updating
the Google Talk Windows application.

We suggest all clients that interop with Google Talk to switch to using Jingle
rather than the old protocol. We will remain backwards compatible with legacy
clients by continuing to speak the old protocol as well. If you wish to
continue working with legacy clients, such as the Google Talk application for
Windows, you may also wish to continue speaking the old protocol. But the
future is Jingle, and the old protocol will eventually go away.

Finally, we are still working on implementing XEP-176 (ICE-UDP). In the
meantime, you'll need to use our draft-06 version of ICE, which is implemented
both in libjingle and in libnice, two open source libraries.

I hope that this will be a support to the Jingle community and futher our
efforts to have open standards for voice and video communication.

~~~
car
In light of interoperability, could you please address the Google rationale
for going with XMPP rather then SIP, as there is considerable support for SIP
in existence, e.g. IMS on 4G networks, VoIP providers, PSTN gateways, Skype
Connect, etc.?

~~~
jbeda
I'm one of the authors of the XEP and was part of the Google Talk team back in
the day. I haven't been working on it in quite a while so I really don't speak
for the current team.

First off, I'm super proud of these guys finishing off this work. It was a
long time coming.

As for why we chose XMPP over SIP: The team had made the choice to base the
core IM product on XMPP before I joined. That decision was based on the ease
of implementation and interoperability. XMPP for IM is much simpler than
SIP/SIMPLE. The easiest answer here is that it was the most logical fit to the
product we had built at the time.

My personal opinion of SIP is based on a 6 year old snapshot of the
technology. Things have undoubtedly changed in the meantime. Based on that
snapshot, I wasn't a fan at the time.

\- It is an amazingly complex and confusing technology. It is worth noting
that SIP is the longest IETF RFC out there. Meanwhile, the core XMPP spec is
easy to understand and implement. It is also an IETF standard. Extensions are
well modularized and documented.

\- The security is hacked on after the fact and, at the time, was unevenly
implemented. In basic SIP, one unauthenticated UDP packet makes a phone ring.
XMPP security is based on TLS and DNS and is a required part of the core.

\- Federation was a patchy mess and showed SIP's telecom roots. You pretty
much had to get the lawyers involved to do anything. Federation in XMPP is a
DNS SRV lookup.

The world has moved forward since then so hopefully this provides some context
for the decision at the time.

~~~
grandinj
I'm curious as to why the windows Google Talk product has stalled - I always
thought Google planned to improve it to make it a worthy competitor to Skype,
but it seems to have stalled.

And now this news indicates that it appears to be AbandonWare. Which is a real
pity.

~~~
ralfd
I guess for Google the browser is the platform. No need to make dedicated
Windows/Linux/OSX programs.

~~~
culturestate
I agree. They likely still have intentions of making it a Skype competitor,
but it will be in the browser rather than on the desktop.

~~~
StavrosK
The latest inclusion of voice and video protocols in Chrome agrees with you.

------
senko
The annoucement email itself:
[http://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/jingle/2011-June/001640.htm...](http://mail.jabber.org/pipermail/jingle/2011-June/001640.html)

This is great news. Google has been one of the driving forces behind Jingle,
but as they were implementing it far in advance of being standardised, the
drafts/standards have since changed. Other implementations have to maintain
support for several close but not quite the same dialects. Google updating
their software will make interop much easier.

I've been somewhat critical of Google's attempts in this direction
([http://senko.net/en/gmail-videochat-the-good-the-bad-and-
the...](http://senko.net/en/gmail-videochat-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly/)),
and I'm very glad to see I was wrong :)

------
sthustfo
Well, I am not sure why Google went with XMPP when the rest of the telecom and
networking industry is gravitating towards IETF SIP as signaling protocol.
There are so may overlaps in both of them in the sense that they use the same
components such as SDP and ICE. Can anyone from Google or otherwise throw some
more light on

\- Why Google prefers XMPP over SIP \- In what areas XMPP is better that SIP

I am not stating that one is better than the other, but would like to
understand the core differences and advantages.

Also with Google moving on with XMPP and other major vendors converging on
SIP, where do you see the inter-operability issue heading towards?

~~~
lenni
I guess SIP has weak support for Instant Messaging, which was the primary use
case for Google Talk before video chat came along.

On the other hand the Jingle spec [1] contains many references to SIP:

"Furthermore, Jingle is not intended to supplant or replace existing Internet
technologies based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP; RFC 3261). Because
dual-stack XMPP+SIP clients are difficult to build, Jingle was designed as a
pure XMPP signalling protocol. However, Jingle is at the same time designed to
interwork with SIP so that the millions of deployed XMPP clients can be added
onto existing Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) networks, rather than
limiting XMPP users to a separate and distinct network."

[1] <http://xmpp.org/about-xmpp/technology-overview/jingle/>

~~~
car
If this had happened for email, we would have had to deal with a myriad of
different clients, servers and 'interworking' gateways.

I really don't understand why the likes of Google, Apple, Microsoft and the
telcos can't agree on a standard. Guess business reasons are behind this.
After all, walled gardens are great if you are the incumbent, it's how Skype
got to be so valued.

Maybe the FCC should step in and take this on.

~~~
Hoff
_If this had happened for email, we would have had to deal with a myriad of
different clients, servers and 'interworking' gateways._

That was the networking prior to the wide adoption of IP and SMTP. There were
DECnet mail clients, and clients for various other networking protocols, and
users needed to know explicit bang-path routes and gateways.

Seeing this churn and this fragmentation is unpleasant, but it also means that
you can see rapid advances and new features and different approaches. Once the
market matures and the churn settles down, we'll see more of this sort out
toward protocol consolidation.

In general, areas with high churn are some of the most interesting parts of
the whole computer business. They're among the least mature, and often with
the most innovations.

~~~
car
I hadn't looked at it from this perspective, thank you for the enlightenment.
I'm just too impatient.

What irks me is that the IETF keeps banging away at protocols to solve issues
like the transition from PSTN to IP (e.g. ENUM), or IM interoperability, but
then nobody really implements them, or as in the case of ENUM, the incumbent
telcos, at least in the USA, sit on it forever. Or some startup cooks up their
own solution and kills it, like Skype.

I'm all for interoperability sorting itself out, but it does not seem to
happen in the messaging/real time communications space. We still have SMS, a
gazillion IM protocols, and many isolated islands of video calling. Skype,
Qik, MSN, Yahoo, FaceTime, Google, I could go on. On top of that is the
confounding issue of different audio and video codecs and whatever patent
issues surround them. A formidable gordian knot, of which it will be
interesting to see how it will be cut - if ever.

~~~
jeffool
I'm far too impatient as well, I suppose. It seems to me (from the armchair
where I quarterback) that IM interoperability isn't happening not because
companies prefer the advantages of their chosen protocol, but because they
simply want to "be the platform." I can't imagine a better advantage than
actually being able to talk with any of my friends on any other client.

If email hasn't proven a standard can be beneficial to everyone, I don't know
what would.

------
kalleboo
I find it a real shame Apple have no interest in making their iMessages and
FaceTime networks interoperate with XMPP and instead going their own way.
We're going to end up with people on different mobile OSes hesitating to
communicate with each other because they'll fall back on expensive SMSes (a
network effect much like today with discounted in-network calling).

------
lenni
Can iChat speak Jingle?

I just tried the combination of web-based Gmail <-> iChat and the web client
can see that the iChat client has a camera and I can initiate a call but iChat
never shows an incoming one.

If I go iChat<->iChat over Google's XMPP server I can make a call. Does iChat
speak yet another incompatible video call extension if it used with an XMPP
network?

Adium can't do AV either.... Can anyone recommend a OS X client? Video chat is
currently the last thing that stops me from uninstalling Flash.

~~~
sudont
<http://www.apple.com/macosx/whats-new/features.html#ichat6>

iChat in Lion will features service plugins.

~~~
spicyj
It's not clear whether this includes audio and video? It may be only for text
chats.

~~~
sudont
Lion supports Yahoo’s AV protocol, and I assume it’s integrated using the new
plugin architecture.

------
ComputerGuru
I wonder why the Windows client will officially not be updated to Jingle? If
it was just "not at the moment," they would have either kept mum or said so,
but to actually say that it won't be updated..... that says a lot.

~~~
seabee
The official client never got video chat support either. It's received very
little love over the past couple of years.

Personally I think the only native client they are interested in anymore is
Gmail in Chrome...

~~~
pthatcherg
We care about gmail on all browsers :).

~~~
sid0
What about people who don't like or use the Gmail web UI (I use it over IMAP)
but would still like to use Google Talk to stay in touch with friends? Is my
only option to use third-party clients? I like Google Talk but dislike Gmail,
and tying the two together doesn't really work out in my favour.

~~~
nl
"What about people who don't like or use the _Gmail_ web UI"

Well there is always <http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client>

Opening a webbrowser window with that and you are set. No Gmail UI, and you
get video chat.

~~~
aphexairlines
I wonder why the gadget doesn't have an option for calling normal phone lines
like the Gmail UI does.

------
sciurus
For information on support in GNOME's Empathy IM client and on Maemo/MeeGo,
see <http://blog.barisione.org/2011-06/broken-gtalk-calls/>

------
illumin8
I wonder what impact this will have on 3rd party devices like the great Obihai
that interface with Google Voice?

<http://www.obihai.com>

~~~
pthatcherg
I don't know how Obihai works, but if it uses SIP to talk to Google Voice,
this will not effect them.

------
aaronrc
Anyone know if this update applies to Google Voice? And whether it will now be
possible to initiate a standard RTP stream via XMPP? That would make SIP
interoperability with Google Voice practical. At the moment it's held back by
the fact that Google Voice requires some custom ICE packets to be exchanged on
the RTP sockets before it will commence sending RTP. Which means there are no
SIP clients that can talk RTP with Google Voice when the call is initiated
over XMPP :(.

------
JacobIrwin
Google Translate integrated with Jingle could/will be a joy to use.

I would love to talk to a college student in Greece about the local economic
sentiment over VoIP.

~~~
mayel
Check out <http://babelverse.com/> A startup coming out of Greece btw :)

------
nextparadigms
How does this play with WebRTC? Are they complementary technologies?

~~~
pthatcherg
Yes, complimentary. You could use WebRTC to implement a Jingle client.

------
riffic
Skype is dead, and Microsoft just wasted $8.5 billion for that poison company.

