MU-Jingle

When a meeting between a scattered group of people needs to take place, a phone conference is a popular solution, especially in a business context. These calls can become costly especially when participants have to make long distance or international calls to participate. With the advent of cheap and abundant Internet connectivity, there is an opportunity to lower costs by transmitting call data over Internet connections. Additionally, the increasing ubiquity of webcams allows video as well as audio to be transmitted. The proprietary Skype service has become very popular for this purpose.

Jabber's extension for audio/video conferencing is limited to communications between two users. Extending Jabber further to support multi-party audio/video conferences will allow it to match the functionality of proprietary offerings, whilst still providing all the benefits of XMPP.

It is intended that Multi-User Jingle improves over three existing solutions:

• Jingle: by supporting more than two participants.
• Skype: by being an open standard with a free software implementation.
• SIP: by supporting reliable peer-to-peer connectivity, as opposed to requiring dedicated media relay infrastructure, thereby allowing a video stream from each participant without the need for multiplexing.

In general, by adding support for multi-user audio/video to XMPP, users do not have to give up the benefits of XMPP in order to make a multi-user call.

Deliverables

• A prototype client, using a Jabber-based protocol to negotiate an audio conference between at least three people.
• An updated prototype client able to negotiate multiple streams (simultaneous audio and video).
• First draft of XMPP extension document, based on the experience developing the prototype.
• First draft of Telepathy API allowing creation and management of multi-user calls.
• A version of Gabble able to negotiate a MU-Jingle call according to the draft standard.
• The final draft of the MU-Jingle protocol description, incorporating implementation experience.
• A version of Gabble corresponding to the nal draft of the protocol.