Messaging and Chats

Dr. Lavian offers to message and chat expert consulting services involving short messages, SMS, MMS, Instant Messages (IM), chat, and chat. He is messaging and chat expert in applications, software, services, and integrations with communications systems. Messaging and chats are universal methods of communication. In 2021, there were approximately 15B mobile devices worldwide. This number is expected to grow to 16.8B by 2023. In 2021, there were about 8B people in the world. That number is expected to grow to 8B by 2023. Messaging and chats are essential to using these mobile devices and have become a part of daily life across the globe.

Messaging & Chats Technologies

  • Short messages service, SMS, MMS, Instant Messages (IM), chat, and chat applications.
  • Internet Protocol (IP), IP Sockets, TCP/IP, UDP.
  • Cloud Infrastructure: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP.
  • Authentication and Authorization protocols: SAML, OAuth, LDAP. 
  • Push Notifications technologies to include Web push, HTTP server push, Flash XML Socket relay, etc.

Messaging and chats are critical areas of the telecom Net.

Messaging and Chats Expert

Telecommunicat ons Streaming Media Expert​

The following are Dr. Tal Lavian’s areas of expertise in the area of Messaging and Chats:

  • Internet Protocol (IP), IP Sockets, TCP/IP, UDP.
  • Databases: Relational Database, Hierarchical Database, Network Database, and Object-oriented Database.
  • Databases: MongoDB, MySQL, Oracle SQL, Hadoop, Microsoft SQL, PostgreSQL and IBM Db2, and more.
  • Cloud Infrastructure: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google GCP.
  • Authentication and Authorization protocols: SAML, OAuth, LDAP, Kerberos.
  • Messaging protocols: XMPP, IP Sockets, and MQTT.
  • Push Notifications technologies to include Web push, HTTP server push, Flash XML Socket relay, etc.
  • VoIP technologies: MOS Score, Jitter, Packet Loss, and Network Delay.

The World of Chatting

Messaging and chats are great ways to connect with friends, family, coworkers, businesses, partners, and professional services. People can communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time of the day or night. These technologies make communicating with others more accessible than ever before. One can share pictures, documents, and live video conferences through messaging and chats.

The border between messaging and chats is blurring. In principle, messaging sends or transmits a message via a cell phone or application, while chatting allows continuous informal conversation. Both enable the exchange of documents, photos, and media.

Messaging and chat technologies have become a routine part of daily life across the globe. Enterprise networks have seen a similar rise in traffic, with millions of employees having real-time conversations outside their organizations’ networks and protected defenses. Segments of these conversations—spreadsheets, documents, calendars, contacts, and other sensitive files- can expose your network to threats.

When considering messaging and chats, there are three main areas involved: the client-facing application software, the messaging channel through which messages are transmitted; and the backend server and database infrastructure used to handle the messaging transactions on a large scale. Each of these areas involves a multitude of technologies.

Client-Facing App

A client-facing application is a software running on various operating systems (OS) on mobile devices, tablets, personal computer browsers, or other installable software, as well as on TV sets. This type of application must have a UX/UI, a database, device drivers, communication modules to connect with the server, notification capabilities, a state machine to help determine appropriate behavior in varying situations of accessibility to the Internet, and the ability to manage documents, media, and files communicated between the endpoints of the chat.

Client-facing apps may be standalone apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Vibe, Telegram, and others or part of Social Media applications such as Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn Chat, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, and others. Typically, the features of the apps are similar in areas such as blocking users, delivery receipts, text formatting, and audio and video calls.

Communication Channel

The communication channel typically involves XMPP, IP Socket, or MQTT technologies. Each technology is suitable for the hosting device on the client-facing application. For example, IP Socket is the more traditional method utilized for communication between server-client applications. It is a type of datagram that establishes a connection using transport layer protocol (e.g., TCP and UDP). The technology is a virtual communication interface and connection mechanism that connects a computer application to the Internet Protocol (IP) internetworking. IP Socket was not initially developed with messaging and chats in mind. However, Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) was explicitly developed for messaging and chats. XMPP is an open protocol based on XML and was specifically designed for instant messaging, presence details, contact lists, and media exchange.

Server-Side Infrastructure

The server side uses the complex infrastructure of messaging and chat applications to facilitate the communication of large numbers of people chatting online at scale. As discussed in the Network Infrastructure section, load balancers are required to enable communication scale by balancing traffic to/from server farms.

A scalable database is needed to store user details, chats, media content, etc. Furthermore, the server-side software must be able to handle notifications, authentication, and authorization of the users and surrounding situations. Therefore, It must be able to perform end-to-end encryption and decryption of the content to comply with privacy requirements. Typically, the server side is deployed in the cloud, allowing for horizontal and vertical scale and quick regional deployments to increase scale and efficiency. Protocols used on the server-side match protocols used on the client-facing application. Messaging and chat apps in the marketplace have different scales and capabilities. From a scale perspective, some apps handle north of 1 billion active users monthly. Such scale requires complex and highly robust server-side architecture.

Additional developments in messaging and chats have enabled new capabilities, such as VoIP audio conversations between the two endpoints of the chat conversation. Furthermore, group chat conversations and group audio and video conferencing are available in the marketplace. These capabilities dramatically increase users’ use and dependency on these applications, bringing them closer to people in distant locations. These developments increase the complexity of the client-facing application as well as the server-side applications. Furthermore, these developments impose additional strict requirements on the network transmitting the communication for low jitter, low time delays, and low packet loss.