What is Jabber?
Jabber is an instant messaging protocol implementing a lot of useful and unique features. Highlights are:
- open and fast XML stream based protocol using server-push for all events
- wide range of client implementations for most platforms available (GNOME, KDE and other X and console clients for Unix(-like) OSes, Windows, MacOS and other platforms like mobile platforms, Amiga or platform-independent implementations (Java, Flash))
- contact lists managed and held on Jabber server (all your contacts available on every PC and every client you connect with)
- contacts may be assorted to groups
- multiple simultaneous connections/logins per account using resource identifiers
- assignment of client priorities allow message routing, a specific client can be accessed by resource identifier
- decentralized server network (server-to-server communication)
- transports for inter-service messaging (e.g. ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IRC, etc.) available
- Jabber server manages inter-service connections for very low bandwidth overhead on client<->server link
- multi user conferencing transport ("chat rooms") implementing the JEP0045 protocol
- authentication using hashed passwords
- optional: SSL encrypted client-server connection
- optional: PGP/GPG encrypted messaging (client implementation)