Standard SIP-based instant messaging and presence APIs for networked devices

With the growing demand of instant messaging and presence services for both wireless and wire-line networks, we have seen the emergence of a number of standard protocols for instant messaging and presence such as SIP [M. Handley, et al., (2002)] for instant messaging and presence leveraging (SIMPLE) [J. Rosenberg, et al., (2001)], presence and instant messaging (PRIM), wireless village protocol and vendor dependent protocols (Yahoo!, MSN, etc.). With the advent of these protocols there is also a need to develop standard set of APIs (application programming interface) to enable application developers implement instant messaging (IM) and presence applications on top of these protocols. We address the standardization work being undertaken at the Java™ community process (JCP) to build such APIs. Our work at JAIN™ forum of JCP will provide a set of standard APIs for instant messaging and presence based on Internet Engineering Task Force´s (IETF) standard protocol SIP and its extension SIMPLE (SIP for instant messaging and presence leveraging). The proposed standard will provide a portable and secure interface to exchange instant messages and presence information for SIMPLE protocol based clients on mobile devices such as PDAs, mobile phones etc.