Welcome to Networkers 2010, Barcelona. Lets start with an easy session - level three techtorial (optional, paid for, day before the main conference begins) - probably the most intensive day of the conference. This session was an intense immersion into the world of presence. Session 1 (post breakfast - pre-coffee break), a detailed look at the two presence camps - SIP/SIMPLE and XMPP (Jabber). Both protocol stacks were compared and contrasted - SIMPLE - not simple, but very chatty, lots of tcp connection setups and teardowns, very much a response, acknowledge, response, acknowledge conversation - versus XMPP(Jabber) – let’s setup a streaming connection and pump XML stanzas down the pipe. Which is best? Cisco takes the agnostic approach and (in Cisco Unified Presence Server - CUPS - version 8 - released any day now - now we understand why Cisco acquired Jabber!)) does both.
This detailed protocol discussed was followed by sessions on CUPS 8, how to configure it, how to federate it (link to other presence repositories) with the likes of Microsoft OCS by either SIP/Simple (the tested and proved method) or the new XMPP gateway, or Google Talk (via XMPP). This is to note regarding this federation, its only Inter-domain federation, rather than intra-domain federation (e.g. two sets of users within an enterprise - one using Cisco presence, the other using Microsoft OCS).
The highlights of this session were XMPP related - which given that the new version 8 CUPS server's biggest new features all revolve around XMPP should not be a surprise - the demos showed that the enterprise desktop does not belong only to Microsoft in the presence and unified communications space. Demonstrated was Apple desktop to Windows desktop, full presence client on both desktops, with status updates coming from Blackberry devices, and then calls between the users using video, hmm - does it get much better! CUPS client on Windows, Apple open source XMPP client on Macbook - call established, job done.
The presenters of the content were excellent, there were supposed to be three, but only two made it. Thanks Richard, Vanessa and Toby were brilliant. This was not my first networkers, but this was by far the best session (all be it a day long session), I have been to. Can this be topped with the rest of the week?
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