Jingle is a set of extensions to XMPP, which is thought to be used by roughly 13.5 million enterprises worldwide for XML data transport.
Peter Saint-Andre, executive director of the nonprofit Jabber Software Foundation, said Jingle would be an easier-to-use alternative to SIP, or Session Initiation Protocol, for companies with XMPP deployments.
Some companies with XMPP have tried using SIP, which is essentially a protocol for call negotiation, initiation and set-up, but with little success.
Some large telcos in Europe have done that and were unsatisfied with the results, said Saint-Andre.
And using SIP within an XMPP deployment requires additional infrastructure, including a SIP server, and is quite complicated because it was originally developed to be a peer-to-peer technology, said Saint-Andre. So, making it wasy for system administrators to manage, deploy and lock down in terms of regulatory compliance (using SIP with XMPP) … it’s not necessarily a straight-forward task to make that happen, he said.
The value of Jingle is that it’s an open protocol that enables companies to can leverage their existing base of XMPP deployments, he said. They can use the same channel that they use for messaging and presence to do their call setup and negotiation, etc, said Saint-Andre, who also co-authored the Jingle specifications.
As an open protocol, Jingle can also be implemented in proprietary code.
Jingle has the support of and input from Google Inc. Essentially, Jingle is an open version of the protocols used in Google Talk, which was released in August.
Saint-Andre said the Denver, Colorado-based Jabber Foundation began devloping the XMPP extensions and discovered its work was similar to Google Talk. So we decided to pool our resources with Google, he said.
He said Google Talk currently is not exactly what is in the Jingle specs, but he expects the two to harmonize in the next couple of months.
The specifications published on Friday include JEP-0166 or Jingle Signalling, which is the core technology for peer-to-peer session management. This enables communication through existing firewalls and can be extended to support a range of session types.
JEP-0167 or Jingle Audio was also published, which enables one-to-one VoIP between Jabber and XMPP users.
Follow-on specifications will be published in coming months for additional session types, including video, as well as to document interoperability with SIP and IAX (protocol used in the Asterisk open-source PBX application).
In addition to Google, other companies have agreed to support the Jingle protocols, including Jabber, Antepo, Trillian developer Cerulean Studios, Coversant, Asterisk developer Digium, Gaim, Jive Software, Novamens, Psi, SAPO and Tipic.
