Book Image

Openfire Administration

By : Mayank Sharma
Book Image

Openfire Administration

By: Mayank Sharma

Overview of this book

<p>Openfire is a free, open-source and full featured Jabber-based Instant Messaging server.<br /><br />This book is a guide to setting up Openfire, tweaking it, and customizing it to build a secure and feature-rich alternative to consumer IM networks. The features covered include details about setting up the server, adding and handling users and groups, updating, and extending the service with plug-ins, connecting with users on external IM networks, connecting with external voice over IP solutions and more, with user-friendly instructions and examples so that you can easily set up your IM network.<br /><br />The book deals with several features of Openfire to streamline communication within an enterprise and beyond. It shows how to configure Openfire to allow only secured connections. It then explains how Openfire complements other existing services running on your network. Managing and fostering IM as a real-time collaboration and communication tool is what this book is about.</p>
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Openfire Administration
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface

Linking Two Branches


To better understand this type of remote interaction, let's assume we have two offices, one based in Mumbai, and the other based in Birmingham. Both offices run Openfire servers. Now, it would be a great idea to connect users from both of the offices with each other seamlessly and securely:

  • From their own office

  • When they are in the other office

  • From anywhere else in the world

This set up isn't very difficult to implement. But you need to make sure the Openfire servers have a DNS-resolvable name. Openfire servers make a DNS lookup to work out the actual IP address and port to be used to connect to the remote server. If you don't have one, you can use one of the free DNS services on the Web such as DynDNS (see http://www.dyndns.com/).

Why Use DynDNS

If you are a multinational corporation, you would probably have more than a handful of DNS names. But if you are a nonprofit or charitable organization and don't have much load, you can make your own Openfire server publically...