Re: Thinking about a new decentralized/serverless IM protocol

Wouldn't everybody who's logged on need to know the IP of everybody on 
their contact list at all times? What if the IP changes?  Is 
communication without going through a 3rd party server safe?  I suppose 
people can run their own servers, but then what if they meet a friend 
who uses a different server, are they going to be forced to have a 
repository of a dozen servers to connect to and poll?

What about spoofing? If there's no centralized user registry, what is 
stopping somebody from logging in as "Ron" (or whatever account I choose 
to make) and chatting to people I know?  That could be solved with sound 
cryptography and/or message signing, I suppose.  But it's something to 
look out for.

You know, this is beginning to sound somewhat like IRC.  IRC uses a very 
simple, text-based protocol, plus a SSL layer frequently.  You should 
have a look at the IRC protocol if you haven't, it's very slick.

Hope that some of this helps :)
- Ron

Eduardo Pérez wrote:

> I'm thinking about a new decentralized/serverless IM protocol but
> I don't want to reinvent the wheel so I'd like to base it on some
> already working IM protocol.
>
> The main goal of the protocol would be:
> - no centralized user registry
> - no centralized servers
> - end-to-end cryptography & security
>
> If you were to choose an IM protocol to base this new protocol, what
> would be it?
>
> Is there some IM protocols comparison where I can find some information
> about problems of the current protocols to avoid them?
> (A comparison of all the features of the protocols would be great!)
>
> Since the protocol is serverless I'll need status to be polled from
> every user (instead saving the status and having each buddy poll the
> server)
> What protocols are the most serverless?
>
> I'm mainly asking for things to avoid and things to reuse.
>
> If anyone knows references to some not centralized IM protocol it
> would be appreciated.
> (I already saw http://instantp2p.jxta.org/ but that still needs a
> centralized user registry and my protocol won't need that)
>
> Eduardo
>
>
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