Jabber

An open instant messaging (IM) standard. There are thousands of Jabber servers on the Internet, most of which are privately run within a company or college campus. There are also hundreds of public Jabber servers that users can register with.

The XMPP Protocol

The Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) was developed for Jabber, and any client program supporting XMPP can communicate with any other XMPP client, providing the sender is in the recipient's contact list. Multi-protocol IM clients support XMPP along with proprietary IM services such as AOL/AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo!; however, an IM account must be opened with each service. In addition to the original Jabber, there are numerous open-source implementations of Jabber clients and servers. See XMPP.

Jabber Is an English Word

The word "jabber" means to talk excitedly or effusively, sometimes not making sense; for example, "he jabbered away about his trip."

Instant Email

Like email, Jabber users communicate from a Jabber server in one domain to a Jabber server in another. Jabber also supports access to non-XMPP systems by connecting a gateway to that IM protocol. However, if a public Jabber server with thousands of users employs a gateway, the proprietary IM service might eventually block its IP address because a huge amount of traffic coming from one IP is generally not tolerated.

Cisco Jabber

There were commercial implementations of Jabber, the most notable of which was from Jabber, Inc. founded in 2000, soon after Jabber was developed. In 2008, the company was acquired by Cisco, which also offers Jabber desktop videoconferencing. See instant messaging and XMPP.