<BLOCKQUOTECLASS="quotation"><FONTCOLOR="#921700"><I>I can thoroughly recommend ejabberd for ease of setup –
Kevin Smith, Current maintainer of the Psi project</I></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
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<H2CLASS="section"><ANAME="intro">Introduction</A></H2><!--SEC END -->
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<BLOCKQUOTECLASS="quotation"><FONTCOLOR="#921700"><I>I just tried out ejabberd and was impressed both by ejabberd itself and the language it is written in, Erlang. —
Joeri</I></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<TT>ejabberd</TT> is a <B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">free and open source</FONT></FONT></B> instant messaging server written in <AHREF="http://www.erlang.org/">Erlang</A>.<BR>
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<TT>ejabberd</TT> is <B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">cross-platform</FONT></FONT></B>, distributed, fault-tolerant, and based on open standards to achieve real-time communication.<BR>
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<TT>ejabberd</TT> is designed to be a <B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">rock-solid and feature rich</FONT></FONT></B> XMPP server.<BR>
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<TT>ejabberd</TT> is suitable for small deployments, whether they need to be <B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">scalable</FONT></FONT></B> or not, as well as extremely big deployments.<BR>
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<H3CLASS="subsection"><ANAME="keyfeatures">Key Features</A></H3><!--SEC END -->
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<BLOCKQUOTECLASS="quotation"><FONTCOLOR="#921700"><I>Erlang seems to be tailor-made for writing stable, robust servers. —
Peter Saint-André, Executive Director of the Jabber Software Foundation</I></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE>
<TT>ejabberd</TT> is:
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<B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">Cross-platform:</FONT></FONT></B><TT>ejabberd</TT> runs under Microsoft Windows and Unix derived systems such as Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD.<BR>
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<LICLASS="li-itemize"><B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">Distributed:</FONT></FONT></B> You can run <TT>ejabberd</TT> on a cluster of machines and all of them will serve the same Jabber domain(s). When you need more capacity you can simply add a new cheap node to your cluster. Accordingly, you do not need to buy an expensive high-end machine to support tens of thousands concurrent users.<BR>
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<LICLASS="li-itemize"><B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">Fault-tolerant:</FONT></FONT></B> You can deploy an <TT>ejabberd</TT> cluster so that all the information required for a properly working service will be replicated permanently on all nodes. This means that if one of the nodes crashes, the others will continue working without disruption. In addition, nodes also can be added or replaced `on the fly'.<BR>
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<LICLASS="li-itemize"><B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">Administrator Friendly:</FONT></FONT></B><TT>ejabberd</TT> is built on top of the Open Source Erlang. As a result you do not need to install an external database, an external web server, amongst others because everything is already included, and ready to run out of the box. Other administrator benefits include:
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Comprehensive documentation.
<LICLASS="li-itemize">Straightforward installers for Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.<FONTCOLOR="#FFAA00"><SPANSTYLE="font-variant:small-caps">improved</SPAN></FONT>
<LICLASS="li-itemize">Web interface for administration tasks.
<LICLASS="li-itemize">Can integrate with existing authentication mechanisms.
<LICLASS="li-itemize">Capability to send announce messages.
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<LICLASS="li-itemize"><B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">Internationalized:</FONT></FONT></B><TT>ejabberd</TT> leads in internationalization. Hence it is very well suited in a globalized world. Related features are:
<LICLASS="li-itemize">Support for <AHREF="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3490.txt">IDNA</A>.
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<LICLASS="li-itemize"><B><FONTSIZE=4><FONTCOLOR="#001376">Open Standards:</FONT></FONT></B><TT>ejabberd</TT> is the first Open Source Jabber server claiming to fully comply to the XMPP standard.
Compressing XML streams with Stream Compression (<AHREF="http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0138.html">JEP-0138</A>).
<LICLASS="li-itemize">Interface with networks such as AIM, ICQ and MSN.
<LICLASS="li-itemize">Statistics via Statistics Gathering (<AHREF="http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0039.html">JEP-0039</A>).
<LICLASS="li-itemize">IPv6 support both for c2s and s2s connections.
<LICLASS="li-itemize"><AHREF="http://www.jabber.org/jeps/jep-0045.html">Multi-User Chat</A> module with logging.<FONTCOLOR="#FFAA00"><SPANSTYLE="font-variant:small-caps">improved</SPAN></FONT>
<LICLASS="li-itemize">Users Directory based on users vCards.
