Middleware Announcements

[Lisa Hogeboom <>]

Integrated Infrastructure for Instant Messaging Working Group (I2IM)
Announcement

A new Internet2 Middleware working group, Integrated Infrastructure for
Instant 
Messaging (I2IM), has been formed to research the relationship of Instant
Messaging to campus middleware infrastructure. Chaired by Michael R.
Gettes 
of Duke University, the I2IM Working Group, will focus on issues
surrounding 
the enterprise integration of Instant Messaging services with respect to
authentication and authorization. 

Instant messaging (IM) services have traditionally not been integrated
into a campus enterprise IT infrastructure. Services like IRC and AOL
Instant Messenger have been widely used by university people for 
university-related work, raising issues of authentication, authorization,
privacy, and legal compliance. As IM becomes an increasingly popular
alternative to email, users look to campus IT services for the same level
of support and integration traditionally provided for central email 
services. Popular IM services have used proprietary protocols, and 
standards efforts have not been entirely successful at this point.
Given all this, many campuses have made initial efforts toward designing
campus-scope IM services around Jabber/XMPP technology, which has 
benefited from an open process, open-source implementations, and, 
recently, IETF-led protocol standardization.

The I2IM working group intends to address the following sets of 
issues:

(1) The WG will research the issues surrounding enterprise integration of
IM services with respect to authentication and authorization, focusing
on Jabber/XMPP technology. Where possible, it will document how to 
perform this integration and provide forums where people can learn and
help each other in addressing these integration issues within campus
contexts. Where appropriate, this working group will work with the 
Jabber Software Foundation (JSF) to consider appropriate modifications
or other techniques for achieving better enterprise 
integration.

(2) The WG will investigate current and future designs of Jabber/XMPP
regarding authorization services, and how authorization information is
transmitted and interpreted, especially between domains. It will 
consider how to integrate these methods into emerging campus and 
inter-campus authorization systems.

(3) Based on interest and technical feasibility, the WG will consider
this 
range of issues for other non-proprietary IM technologies.

(4) The WG will consider and possibly instantiate a national or 
international federated IM service. It will look at feasibility and 
applicability of leveraging technical methods like SAML/Shibboleth, 
and the policy frameworks coming from federations such as
InCommon.

There is a mailing list for the I2IM Working Group,  .
To subscribe send an email to:  with the message
body: subscribe mace-courseID FirstName LastName substituting your 
first and last name above.

A web page for the group is also available at: 
http://middleware.internet2.edu/i2im/

If you have any questions please contact either Michael Gettes
 or Steve Olshansky