Improving the performance of the in-band byte stream file transfer XMPP extension

Abstract

In looking at the XMPP protocol as an alternative to the ordinary way of transferring files within a health network setting, namely e-mail, performance and security are important factors to consider. For security reasons we preferred to use in-band over out-of-band file transfer. The tradeoff is that this method puts a higher strain on the XMPP server and is significantly slower than its counterpart, out-of-band. In researching a specific XMPP implementation, the Openfire XMPP server, and looking into how it deals with in-band file transfers, we have found some ways to increase in-band file transfer performance, but not in the originally intended way, which would be through improvements in the Openfire source code concerning in-band file transfers.