[jadmin] Can Jabber replace IRC for an educational institution's distance ed program?

[Peter Saint-Andre]

Shane Beers wrote:
> I apologize if this question is redundant, but I have not found any
> archive of the mailing lists discussions.
> 
> I am an employee at one of my university's distance education
> programs. We currently use an IRC server for student chat during
> synchronous class sessions, available to them via a tradtional IRC
> client or, more commonly, a java-based web frontend (WebMaster
> ConferenceRoom 2.0).
> 
> Unfortunately, due to the lack of security of IRC, federal educational
> policies are forcing us to examine other options.

Yes, I've heard about that. :-)

> We are aware that some departments are licensing/purchasing Jabber
> servers for this application. However, I have no real idea where to
> start looking to accomplish our goals. Essentially we would like our
> users to notice as little of a change as possible.
>
> Can Jabber be accessed for IRC chat-room-like conversation via the
> web, preferrably through an existing java client? I would imagine that
> this has been accomplished in some fashion, somewhere.

In general you should be able to do this. There are many different
server codebases available, you might look at Wildfire and ejabberd
(both contain built-in support for JEP-0045, our IRC-like protocol for
multi-user chat rooms) or also jabberd 1.4 (with an add-on module such
as mu-conference or palaver). Then use a client like JWChat for the web
integration, see the Muckl code that's part of or built on JWChat.

Peter

-- 
Peter Saint-Andre
Jabber Software Foundation
http://www.jabber.org/people/stpeter.shtml

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