How many people use xmpp

Naturally that's an academic exercise, nobody would actually re-shape IRC into an IM system that way. I challenge you to write a functional irc client based solely on the rfc.

IRC is a fractured protocol where the real spec is in the source code of the implementations out there. I've actually written IRC bots mostly from the top of my head.

The protocol and semantics are really simple. Type this into a console near you: nc irc. Like every protocol it has a few rough edges, but those are nowhere near the semantic nightmare that I witnessed when trying to dabble with XMPP which admittedly was more than a year ago.

I remember attempting to write an IRC bot a while back and finding that RFC severely lacking when it came to connecting to whatever irc network I had chosen to test it against. The problem was that the handshake to join the server was different in the RFC than what the server was expecting. This sentiment was mirrored by others I consulted with over IRC that were devs on the epic3 irc client.

So, while writing a IRC bot may be simple, I would imagine that writing a client isn't. Let me tackle this from a different angle: How long did it take you bring your client into a reliably working state? And have you tried to do the same with a XMPP client for comparison? As said, I didn't mean to claim IRC is perfect - nothing is. But if you think the differences that IRC networks have introduced are problematic then I invite you to try and build a most basic jabber client.

It's a lot easier to write a functional IRC client by glancing at the RFC and banging on a piece of code until it mostly works. However, I think it's a big mistake to claim IRC "scales amazingly well". The biggest IRC network today has tens of thousands of users at the moment, freenode has , undernet has , and EFNet is down in the range and the IRC networks are constantly suffering from breakdowns from overcapacity.

Compare this to Skype, Facebook, or Gmail, with tens of millions of concurrent users. Speaking as someone who spent a long time working on Undernet trying to make IRC work.

IRC scales poorly the protocol relies heavily on global state. Client's ignore the parsing rules eg the : marking multiword last arguments and kludge around them. Each network went off and did their own thing, fragmenting the protocol space, and then declared themselves as being the One True IRC Protocol.

IRC puts a lot of trust in all the server admins on the network, making it difficult to federate, and so on. There are a bunch of public servers which you can register accounts on, but many more private ones that federate run by businesses and individuals and other organisations. Here's the freenode top in this moment: linux python archlinux And it's ONLY first 3 top channels. So, the facts matters.

Could you also provide the number of chats and private groupchats running on freenode, then? Both of these are way more popular use cases for XMPP than public rooms. DygFiul on March 18, parent prev [—]. XMPP is different from Matrix. On Matrix practically everyone is matrix. The other public servers I tried are relatively slow and suffer hickups when joining rooms.

On XMPP, many people run servers in their companies, projects, or homes. Looking for a more hands-on tutorial? XML, or Extensible Markup Language, provides a framework for storing and organizing plain text data within documents so that the data can be easily interpreted by a wide variety of network endpoints regardless of their hardware or software configuration. If you need to double check specific guidelines about how to implement XMPP for your specific use case, these documents are the authoritative source.

An extensible protocol is designed to evolve, with new contributions — or extensions — contributed by the community and implemented by users as needed. The messaging part is relatively straightforward: XMPP allows two clients to exchange text messages in near-real-time. Unlike other web-based messaging services in which the client is constantly polling the server to check for new messages, XMPP conserves bandwidth and ensures fast, chronological message delivery using an efficient push mechanism initiated by the sending machine.

A protocol like XMPP establishes a standard structure or methodology for doing something, so that all involved parties are on the same page. A protocol is not code or software; rather, it sets expectations and technical baselines so that various hardware and software components can interact coherently.

These functions include:. The following core characteristics set XMPP apart from other chat and messaging services past and present. Each client has a unique name, similar to an email address, that the server uses to identify and route messages. XMPP provides a uniform way for each client to contact the server, keeping expectations consistent between machines.

It can also use up extra bandwidth. In this way, XMPP is similar to email.