Hello Avri,
I think this is a great idea. And these days a lot of IM tools also
support jabber. I know, however, that some companies are
stict about
what they let people do on comapny laptops and from with the VPN.
Does everyone support Jabber?
Also does ICANN have its own jabber server or are they using an
external one?
Yes - ICANN does run a Jabber server.
jabber.icann.org
I would assume that ICANN could also set up Jabber ID's on the server
for those that don't have their own Jabber IDs.
There are lots of clients available for different operating systems.
E.g see:
http://www.jabber.org/software/clients.shtml
For more information about Jabber see:
http://www.jabber.org/about/overview.shtml
With respect to firewalls:
"If your firewall administrators will allow outgoing connections to
port
5222 (5223 for SSL), you can use Jabber without any worries. If not,
some Jabber clients support the ability to talk through at least
certain
kinds of proxy servers (most often SOCKS servers). In addition, some
Jabber developers are working on an http service that will enable
you to
use Jabber over the web, but it is still alpha code."
I know Jabber works within my corporate network through firewalls,
VPNs
etc - the Board members work for a diverse range of organisations -
and
most seem to have access - no guarantees of course. The protocols
used
are Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), an open XML
communications technology developed by the Jabber open-source
community
in 1999, formalized by the IETF in 2002-2004, and continuously
extended
through the standards process of the XMPP Standards Foundation.
Regards,
Bruce Tonkin