Instant messaging and Asterisk 1.4

Should native Instant Messaging support be made available in Asterisk 1.4

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

Hi everyone,

Instant Messaging;
For some time now there has been a growing need in the community for SIP VoIP clients which support Instant Messaging to work with Asterisk.

Initially this need was filled by the great efforts of the people at the following links:

voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+presence
voip-info.org/wiki/view/Aste … +Messaging
"To get instant messaging to work you have to get presence working and then patch chan_sip.so with the second link above and all should work."

There was a great deal of hope and prayers said (especially on my part) that these or similar patches to support IM would by incorporated into Asterisk 1.4.
Asterisk 1.4 has come along so far, achieved so much, and it is wonderful to see so many people contributing in what ever way they can, so I would be the last to moan about finding out that Asterisk 1.4 sadly still does not support IM!

I just wanted to start this thread to find out what the views of the dev guys are and the community.

I am lead to believe it is a fairly simple change, and I am not willing to wait for 2.6, but such a home-made change to chan_sip.so by someone (myself) who is not a genius like other members around, does not leave myself with warm feelings on a production system and so I would cheer for joy if IM were to be added to the CVS 1.4 branch.

For those that are new, Instant Messaging is a facility that allows you to send quick short messages to other people on your contacts list who are also registered on the same PABX (In this case Asterisk). This feature has been available in non-VoIP applications like M$’s instant messenger, ICQ and similar for many years. Instant Messaging has thus naturally had a great take up with VoIP clients, but is yet to be supported in Asterisk.

Just for clarity tb 2.4 was tested with XLite, eyebeam and Bria from www.counterpath.com.

Where Asterisk now provides a near ‘perfect’ product for audio telephony, it is still lacking in terms of being a complete communications suite due to its lack of presence and instant messaging features, which in today’s work place is a must.

I know of 3 accounts personally who did not take up Asterisk as it was not seen as a complete product without these features.

What do people think? In particular, Asterisk dev team, please, please comment your feelings.

Also if possible, i would like to keep this thread purely relating to the time scales of getting native Instant Messaging support on Asterisk.

There are many alternatives around (some better than others) and there have been many discussions/threads before regarding workarounds, and as such i would like to keep this purely regarding only native support.

Thanks everyone.

If NO, can you kindly explain why?

This is a simple and minor change that will add a rather significant and currently missing enterprise feature. :smile:

I agree to your think.

Now. I wanna run IM chat on Asterisk up-to-date version.

I don’t know HOW TO yet.

How I can get a chan_sip.so or a addons

Can you teach me? I am confident you.

I say: No.

There are too many good IM server applications out there, and a telephone is a poor IM client.

Since the best IM client is a PC/MAC application, and those can connect to multiple servers (say, asterisk AND an IM server) there’s no reason to add on IM.

While it’s nice to be able to manage things in one place with one application, far too many good server applications have been ruined by trying to add on every poosible feature. Even when they’re a poor fit.

In this case, the client (a phone set) is poorly suited to work with the feature. So, why add the feature to the server?

You are right. but ~

I say. but there are many people want to use a simple CHAT on their private PBX and even public.
They hope to do VOICE, CHAT, SMS, FAX and so ons by using one their client PHONE.
Then PBX must become a good PBX server, IM Server and handshake with the other SMS Server, FAX Server…

Already the IETF published SIP/SIMPLE protocol for chat

In Asterisk1.4.17, Asterisk 1.6.1, subscription_type “application/simple-message-summary” ??? but it’s not SIP/SIMPLE.

I agree the IM is a really good idea, for my point of view have one programs to talk (VoIP), one o many to talk with the different service of IM, in other way the idea of unified communication is really nice. I am waiting for Asterisk stable version with IM.