[HN Gopher] Jami: Share, Message, Call freely and privately
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Jami: Share, Message, Call freely and privately
Author : varbhat
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-12-21 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jami.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (jami.net)
| skrowl wrote:
| How does Jami work if I have multiple devices? For example, I
| want to connect on my work PC, my home PC, and my phone, share
| the same account, and see all the messages I sent/received on my
| work PC when I log into my home PC.
|
| This is traditionally the worst UX problem with Signal / Session
| / Matrix etc. Manually handing keys back and forth is a disaster.
| Compare that to something like Telegram or WhatsApp where you can
| just log on and everything is there.
| bandali wrote:
| Jami has "Swarm" conversations, which are git-backed behind the
| scenes, and can be synchronized across multiple devices and/or
| participants seamlessly. Actually, thanks to the way Jami uses
| git, a subset of participants in a group conversation could
| enter a local network and continue chatting amongst themselves,
| and once they connect with the rest of the participants again
| their histories will automatically be synchronized and merged.
|
| You can read more about Swarm here:
| https://jami.net/synchronizing-conversation-history-with-swa...
|
| To add a new device, from account settings select 'Link another
| device'. This will create an encrypted archive of your account
| details and temporarily (for 10 minutes) put it on the OpenDHT
| network, and give you a PIN which you would use on your new
| device to have Jami retrieve and import your account. You could
| also do this manually and without going through OpenDHT, by
| having Jami create a local backup of your account on your
| current device, and then transfer the backup archive onto your
| new device yourself, and import it into Jami. After adding the
| new device, your Swarm conversations and their histories will
| begin synchronizing shortly.
| eternityforest wrote:
| Wow, that's amazing progress. All that's missing is friends
| who are interested in it!
|
| They're doing cool enough stuff that it seems like they could
| attract real attention eventually though.
| vindarel wrote:
| It worked reliably for me when other video conference software
| didn't work properly (Jitsi, Skype, Gtalk...). Also, it was easy
| for my dad to install and use, after I told him about the unique
| identifier to keep around to use on another device. With a
| previous version though, I encountered a situation when my text
| messages wouldn't be received by my friend :/ (using the desktop
| version) Annoying. Hope this is fixed in the latest releases.
| bandali wrote:
| Thanks for trying/using Jami! And sorry to hear about the
| previous issues. If you do encounter them again, please do file
| a bug report so the team could investigate and hopefully fix
| them:
|
| https://docs.jami.net/user/bug-report-guide.html
| kebman wrote:
| I wonder how a service like this would look like over IPFS. Or if
| one could somehow merge the distributive power of IPFS with
| sharing of end-to-end encrypted information. Or perhaps there's
| already one? Or perhaps Jami is already superior?
| [deleted]
| shardfree wrote:
| > Jami is completely peer-to-peer and doesn't require a server
| for relaying data between users.
|
| With p2p projects I'm always interested to see how they are
| solving 'Signaling', ie. the initial peer to peer matching.
|
| I was unable to find anything on the Jami page or FAQ.
|
| Is the above language chosen carefully for "relaying data" while
| likely using a central jami server for signaling?
| Elv13 wrote:
| It's using DHT like BitTorrent magnet links to find people
| using public keys.
| [deleted]
| jesprenj wrote:
| Are video calls also P2P?
|
| Can video conference calls be placed?
|
| If not, does there exist existing FOSS that does conference calls
| on a P2P network?
|
| Edit: It appears TURN is used.
| [deleted]
| bandali wrote:
| Yes, Jami calls are p2p whenever possible, and TURN is used
| when not (e.g. due to overly restrictive firewalls).
|
| Yes, Jami supports conferencing. One can add additional
| participants to a 1-on-1 call on the fly, effectively making it
| a conference. Alternatively, one can enable rendezvous mode
| from account settings, in which case incoming calls to that
| account will be added to a conference (similar to a Jisti
| room).
| jesprenj wrote:
| Amazing. Are there any optimizations for video conferencing
| in case one participant doesn't have upload bandwidth to
| stream his video to 10 different IP addresses at once?
|
| I was fidgeting with the tought of something like a overlay
| multicast network on top of unicast IP, since RFC 1770 was
| deprecated/never implemented.
| bandali wrote:
| Right. In Jami by default only the host of a
| conference/rendezvous-point will stream to/from all peers
| and mix their streams, and other peers normally only stream
| to/from the conference host. Also Jami can automatically
| adjust the call's bitrate on the fly depending on the link
| quality:
|
| https://docs.jami.net/user/faq.html#how-much-bandwidth-
| do-i-...
|
| Hope this helps. :)
| jesprenj wrote:
| Nice! Thank you for the link!
| dxd wrote:
| What are the benefits of this over Session, Matrix, or other E2EE
| P2P messengers?
| Dnguyen wrote:
| and Jitsi (https://jitsi.org/)
| dima55 wrote:
| I can "apt install jami" is a huge benefit
| kevincox wrote:
| Jami is more or less completely peer-to-peer. Other than
| initial bootstrapping all conversations are synced between
| participant devices without any central servers. I don't know
| much about Session, but Matrix requires a homeserver that is
| basically always running to operate which provides a single
| point of failure for any particular user (as opposed to Jami
| where each of a user's devices can sync independently) and is
| easier to use (you don't need to find and pick a homeserver,
| all you need is your device).
|
| Jami has also been around a long time. It had other names in
| the past like SFLphone and Ring.
| bandali wrote:
| This. Jami is truly distributed, and there's no need to set
| up and manage any server(s) in the sense that one would do
| for Jitsi, Matrix, BigBlueButton, etc.
|
| Also, thanks to Jami's distributed nature, it can also
| function in local networks without internet connectivity:
|
| https://docs.jami.net/user/lan-only.html
| Yoric wrote:
| Well, there is Matrix p2p, but it's not ready for prime-time
| yet.
| Arathorn wrote:
| arewep2pyet.com. making progress tho!
| zakki wrote:
| Here is my first experience with it. I installed the app on iOS
| and Android. After account registration I added from Android my
| account in iOS. iOS get the invitation immediately then it shows
| a status that said waiting for Android to connect or something.
| It stayed like that for 10 minutes until I tried the voice call.
| I don't think my voice in Android heard in may iOS phone, but
| after that we can chat each other.
| filereaper wrote:
| I just downloaded the client and created my "JamiID".
|
| How does this JamiID work?
|
| Is this JamiID that I created forever mine?
|
| If my friends create their JamiID, will the search just list
| them?
|
| Do I need to import any JamiID's? How does discovery work for
| these JamiID's?
|
| I'm seriously looking into Jami for "conference" calls with a
| small set of family members, it should be just point and click.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Are you looking for Jitsi? That does let you do browser-based
| video without signup.
| bandali wrote:
| > How does this JamiID work?
|
| If you register a username for your Jami account, your JamiID
| will be that username, otherwise it will just be the account's
| infohash (public key fingerprint). A Jami username is a mapping
| between a unique human-friendly name and an account infohash.
|
| > Is this JamiID that I created forever mine?
|
| With the default Jami name server, https://ns.jami.net,
| username registrations are permanent, and cannot be changed or
| deleted. Also, if you delete or lose your account without
| having backed it up earlier, you will lose that username and it
| cannot be recovered. This is one of the reasons why it's really
| important to back up your account.
|
| > If my friends create their JamiID, will the search just list
| them?
|
| Yes, you can search others by their JamiID, whether it's their
| username or the longer account infohash.
|
| > Do I need to import any JamiID's? How does discovery work for
| these JamiID's?
|
| You would search for their JamiID and add them as contacts,
| similarly to how you would with other messaging applications.
| When you search a username, Jami will query the name server to
| get the account infohash and send a contact request. For
| example, with the default name server, to look up 'bandali'
| Jami would make a request to https://ns.jami.net/name/bandali
| to get the associated account infohash.
|
| You can read more about this on the Jami user FAQ and the 'name
| server protocol' section of the developer manual:
|
| https://docs.jami.net/user/faq.html#how-does-the-username-re...
|
| https://docs.jami.net/developer/name-server-protocol.html
|
| > I'm seriously looking into Jami for "conference" calls with a
| small set of family members, it should be just point and click.
|
| Pretty much. :) Jami should be able to fit that use-case
| nicely.
| m3adow wrote:
| If someone else thinks the logo looks familiar, it's because
| [Jami was previously named Ring](https://jami.net/ring-becomes-
| jami/) which I actually used years ago. Can't remember anything
| about it though.
| jtvjan wrote:
| I've recently tried Jami to chat with a friend using the new(?)
| Qt client, and it wasn't a very good experience. Scrolling feels
| terrible. When I scroll up, it keeps going for a moment even
| though I let go of the scroll wheel. When I scroll down, the view
| jumps around as images load in.
|
| After we filled up the chat a bit, opening it again takes about
| six seconds. And sometimes, it starts using 60% CPU doing
| apparently nothing.
|
| There is a "reply to message" function, but it's useless on
| images because it only shows the first part of the path to the
| image (you just see "/home/me/.local/share/jami/8fd7...") and
| clicking it doesn't bring you to the message in question.
|
| I also tried the Android client, which was usable enough, but it
| could only receive messages if I had the desktop client too. But
| that might be because of my NAT.
| bandali wrote:
| Thanks a lot for the feedback, and sorry about the issues.
| Would you please report them on the Jami bug trackers per
| https://docs.jami.net/user/bug-report-guide.html if not
| already? This would help the team keep track, look further into
| them, and hopefully fix them.
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(page generated 2022-12-21 23:01 UTC)