Presence and IntComm WG

[Deke Kassabian <>]

--On November 13, 2007 4:17:00 PM -0800 Ben Chinowsky 
<> wrote:
> [ACTION] (11/8) Deke will draft a "why you should deploy PIC.edu"
> document.

Here's a first draft:

----------
The Presence and Integrated Commuinications Working Group (PIC-WG) 
invites you to participate in a project intended to

(1) make campus IM deployments easier,
(2) make interoperability among Internet2 member IM services easier,
(3) make experimentation with advanced presence possible,
(4) enable eventual inclusion of advanced communications services
and advanced presence.

As a first step, PIC-WG is distributing a "package" that includes a 
jabber IM&P (instant messaging and presence) server with which members 
of our working group have had positive experiences.  To help get you 
started quickly and easily, we are also including a basic cookbook on 
getting it up and running and some guidance on the readily available 
clients that users on common operating systems can use to access the 
service. Based on our initial experience, this is a low cost and low 
overhead undertaking that can bring real value for communications on 
your campus, giving you a controlled alternative to commodity services 
like AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and Google Talk at the server side, while 
still preserving access to those services in many cases from the 
client side.

** Identity Assurance.
A local IM service such as this one can use your local campus 
namespace rather than the almost-random namespace in use on commodity 
IM services.  It also can likely be configured to use your campus 
authentication systems, as it has at Penn and MIT.  Together, these 
steps provide Identity Assurance (allows users to be easily and 
reliably identifed) for your local users in a way not possible with 
commodity IM services.

** Dataflow Security.
IM streams are sent through your campus network to your 
locally-operated server, providing data security and privacy that is 
not available through commodity IM services. Instant messages move 
only between your IM clients and the locally operated IM servers. This 
means that the data associated with IM for two local users need never 
be stored and handled by a third party server. Additionally, data (not 
merely the password) can be encrypted.

** @domain.EDU Addressing.
IM users on other Jabber servers outside your institution (such as 
other PIC.edu servers, Google Talk, and other jabber servers) will be 
able to communicate with you and your local users using an address of 
the simple format made popular by SIP.edu. That is .

** IM Clients
There are many IM clients which support the Jabber protocol. Rather 
than specifying particular clients, we have elected to make 
information about a range of clients available so that you can make 
locally appropriate choices.



-------
Deke Kassabian,  Senior Technology Director
Information Systems and Computing, University of Pennsylvania