Member Avatar for kentzia

I'm currently doing some research for a project about mobile devices and could only find apps that perform instant messaging, but not how they do it.

So I'd like to know what are the technologies/methods behind instant communication between mobile devices? e.g. facebook messenger app. Do the messages go from clientA-to the server-to clientB? This is the impression I got, since the messages are stored, but then how is it so fast?

Any help is greatly appreciated, thanks.

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Member Avatar for rubberman

There are a number of IM protocols that are in common use, one of which is ICMP. Look at Pidgin, a popular IM application that handles most protocols. It is open source, so you can see how each protocol it supports (almost 20 differenct protocols) is implemented.

Member Avatar for rubberman

"one of which is ICMP". Oops, I mean to say "one of which is IRC (Internet Relay Chat)"... :-)

Member Avatar for kentzia

Thanks for the reply. So from my understanding, a server is still required to pass on the message using IRC? Sorry but I'm relatively new to web technologies .

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