[Juser] GameTap, PubSub/PEP, and missed opportunities.

[Jason Salaz]

On 7/21/06, Peter Saint-Andre <stpeter at jabber.org> wrote:
> Jason Salaz wrote:
>
> > Now that I think about it, I seem to remember hearing that Time Warner
> > is the parent company of GameTap, and *AOL* Time Warner would have a
> > lot of pull when it comes to a mass messaging/communication method for
> > one of their products.
>
> There's the reason.
>
> I agree that there is so much more we could do with Jabber technologies.
> But that's why we keep working away...

This is quite an old post/thread, but I had to bump it, for a VERY good reason.
My roommate was recently doing a connection audit / network traffic
audit, and he mentioned that one of my computers was sending/recieving
XMPP (or at least port 5222) traffic.
I looked at him strangely because I don't have any Jabber clients
installed on that particular computer.

We ran a few tests, and then I decided to have a go with WireShark to
see what was going on, and sure enough, there were XMPP IQ stanzas
being thrown around to a Wildfire server.

Before I go on, I'd invite anybody (even you Peter) to read/re-read my
original post on the matter:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.network.jabber.user/1767/focus=1767

All I have to say is...
I TAKE EVERY SINGLE THING BACK.
GameTap's communication is 100% XMPP, using a Wildfire XMPP server.

Not only that, but there ARE PUBSUB CAPABILITIES.
I was so shocked when I set up Psi to connect to the server manually,
and I ran some disco#info and other commands against the server.

I can't say enough about how surprised I am.
Multiplayer signalling is done so via nothing more than specially
crafted XMPP messages (all of which I have logged with WireShark <3).

And all their public chatrooms are straight up MUC rooms.
Essentially, GameTap is an XMPP client.

It is interesting to note though, that it is also an AIM client.  I
could not find an AIM transport using Psi's service discovery, so I
can only assume that it is a fully integrated AIM client as well.

I'm SO happy to find out that GameTap uses XMPP so much.  This (in my
eyes) is a VERY good thing, and is quite an accomplishment to gloat
about if I may say so myself.

Anybody interested in any other details?
I have WireShark logs, Psi XML Console logs, and of course an account
to do all this with.