I am using Openfire server to implement XMPP communication between multiple clients, but in iOS background mode we can not afford to read useless packets. Here as I observed from iOS logs & other client logs, Openfire server is sending some kind of empty packets to client every 2-3 seconds. I have verified this with Wireshark also.
Do anyone seen this before? how can I stop this behavior of Openfire server for sending empty packets?
Setup used for openfire:
Openfire server version : 3.8.2
TLS enabled
Client ideal duration kept at 60 seconds, in Openfire server settings.
Got the issue, it was one jsp "session-summary" page of openfire server which on refresh, calls a method which in turn sends the whitespace ping to the clients. And I was using that page to check connectivity of my clients.
Related
As per https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc6120/?include_text=1 and 10.1. In-Order Processing
How is Ordered Message Delivery ensured across all items in roster?
Is it done at server or client side? If it is on any side, are newer messages being waited upon older messages with a timeout?
Does it use an incremental sequence number for ordering guarantees?
On client re-connect, how does client know what to pull from server? Does the client send last msgIds of all items in roster? or does Server keep the QOS data and client state for each device ?
First of all, As XMPP uses TCP transport protocol it ensures the server receives the data in the same order the client sends it.
As per TCP docs:
TCP guarantees delivery of data and also guarantees that packets will
be delivered in the same order in which they were sent
ejabbred is an XMPP server, the raw data received over the TCP must be compliant with the XMPP protocol and the same being verified XMPP server.
In XMPP protocol client can able to send messages after it has done with session initiation, resource bind, and authentication, etc..
These messages are being processed in the order the client sends it and routes to its recipients. If recipients are offline it push and pop to database the same order for later delivery.
Here ordering guarantees mostly ensure by the TCP network stack.
I am facing an issue with the presence status, following the documentation and XMPPframework example code. I have written a chat application.
Problem : When the user 1 & 2 are online I get the status successfully and they can chat with each other. However when the user 2 goes physically offline via (Wifi OFF / 3G Off) User 1 is not getting the offline status from XMPP and hence what ever messages are sent from that instant of time are lost when the user 2 comes online.
It seems since the user 2 is not notified or stored as offline in XMPP and hence its not storing the offline messages to push back to user 2 when it comes online.
I have tried to resolve this by explicitly writing a [goOffline] call to XMPP, however the call is shown in 'SEND log' for 'user 2' but not received in 'RECV log' in user 1 from XMPP, due to which the message are lost in between.
Also tried with other sources replies.
Set status for presence available and send XMPP
priority changed with values non-negative
XMPPArchiving work but this is not what I wanted.
Server side Mod_zero push enables but get only first message push notification sometimes.
Setting limit on ejabberd.cfg file for users and offline message limit.
request for offline message pull.
Can anyone help me with this?
This is very typical situation where client losses network but server can't detect that it is offline.
To detect status of each client, server need to send PING packets to every client and wait for response.
If client responds then fine otherwise server will mark that client as offline and every other online client will be informed automatically.
Here is PING Module implementation for ejabberd XMPP Server (hope you are using ejabberd server):
mod_ping:
send_pings: true
ping_interval: 10
timeout_action: kill
ping_ack_timeout: 10
This has to be written in ejabberd.yml configuration file.
At client side also we need to enable ping module to respond to server pings as:
private var xmppPing: XMPPPing?
xmppPing = XMPPPing()
xmppPing!.activate(xmppStream!)
This code has to be written while we setupStream() for iOS.
For detailed info, please go through mod_ping documentations.
Sounds like your problem is at server level. The server thinks that the user is online so it sends the message but nobody gets it. This does not really have a simple solution.
1.
The best solution would be delivery receipts. Where basically when the message is sent to your client, your client returns a confirmation of delivery receipt. If the server does not get that receipt it would resend the message every n time. Depending on your XMPP server you might find a already made solution, of not you would have to roll out your own.
2.
A possible hack would be to have your server always store and deliver last 10 messages and then at client side you discard repeated... This also depends on your server implementation. XMPP MUC and PubSub have resources along these lines.
For a long term scalable solution, you'll need to deal with this both at server and client level.
I have configured XMPP client (iOS) and Openfire , everything works just fine except that i am not able to handle the following situation.
iOS client disconnects because of network failure.
User is still logged in on the server because there is no way to disconnect(no network).
Further messages are not stored in server because server thinks that the user is still logged in. Hence the messages are lost.
Unable to send push notification by sender because the receiver(User) status is still online ( no network to send presence ).
How can i solve this issue?
I found a solution, not sure if it is efficient.
In Openfire admin portal, under Client Connection Settings->Idle Connections Policy, there is an option to disconnect the client if it is idle for x seconds. By default it is 360 seconds, i have changed it to 5 seconds so that the messages won't get lost.
I am not sure if its a good idea to ping the clients every 5 seconds.
i went through this question
Lost messages over XMPP on device disconnected
but there is no answer.
When a connection is lost due to some network issue then the server is not able to recognize it and keeps on sending messages to disconnected receiver which are permanently lost.
I have a workaround in which i ping the client from server and when the client gets disconnected server is able to recognize it after 10 sec and save further messages in queue preventing them from being lost.
my question is can 100% fail save message delivery be achieved by using some other way i know psi and many other xmpp client are doing it.
on ios side i am using xmppframework
One way is to employ the Advanced Message Processing (AMP) on your server; another one is to employ the Message Delivery Receipts on your clients.
The former one requires an AMP-enabled server implementation and the initiating client has to be able to tell the server what kind of delivery status reports it wants (it wants an error to be returned if the delivery is not possible). Note that this is not bullet-proof anyway as there is a window between the moment the target client losts its connectivity with the server and the moment the TCP stack on the server's machine detects this and tells the server about it: during this window, everything sent to the client is considered by the server to be sent okay because there's no concept of message boundaries in the TCP layer and hence if the server process managed to stuff a message stanza's XML into the system buffers of its TCP connection, it considers that stanza to be sent—there's no way for it to know which bits of its stream did not get to the receiver once the TCP stack says the connection is lost.
The latter one is bullet-proof as the clients rely on explicit notifications about message reception. This does increase chattiness though. In return, no server support for this feature is required—it's implemented solely in the clients.
go with XEP-0198 and enjoy...
http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0198.html
For a XMPP client I'm working on, the following mechanism is used:
Add Reachability to the project, to detect quickly when the phone is having connectivity problems.
Use a modified version of XEP-0198, adding a confirmation sent by the server. So, the client sends a message, the server confirms with a receipt. Later on, the receiving user will also confirm with a receipt. For each message you send, you get two confirmations, one from the server, one from the client. This requires modifications on the server of course.
When the app is not connected to the XMPP server, messages are queued.
When the app is logged in again to the XMPP server, the app takes all messages which were not confirmed by the server and sends them again.
For this to work, you have to locally store the messages in the app with three possible states: "Not sent", "Confirmed by server", "Confirmed by user"
Am using open fire server and iOS xmpp client with Robbie Hanson's framework. My clients runs fine in background, as i have set the voip flag and everything. But after few hours around 15-20, it automatically gets disconnected. Am not sure why it's happening and why it is taking such long duration. I am not sending any messages or receiving any. The ping interval is 360 secs to which my client responds with an error, which is acceptable form of response to remain connected to the server. Anyone got the same issue ?
Openfire server: 3.8.1
iOS version: 6.1.2
Did you try using the setting "Do Not disconnect clients that are idle" available in Server Settings> Client Connections in Openfire server?