A study of SIP based instant messaging focusing on the effects of network traffic generated due to presence

The increasing usage of Instant Messaging(IM) applications worldwide continues to grow year on year. However, larger numbers of users creates problems with greater network traffic, interoperability and proprietary protocol dependence. Network traffic due to presence information being exchanged between users and servers needs to be considered, but is it possible to estimate or measure this traffic? There have been very few studies performed on the impact of presence traffic. The purpose of this research is to implement a SIP/SIMPLE network environment that will allow the evaluation of key metrics such as the latency and throughput of the network under a number of scenarios. It will be shown that the amount of network traffic generated due to presence subscriptions can grow large, and the effects of this on the network performance will be analysed. From this analysis, it will be shown that SIP/SIMPLE presence traffic has a steady, predictable impact on the performance of the network. It will also be demonstrated that other nodes on the network that are transmitting non SIP/SIMPLE traffic do not suffer significant throughput degradation due to SIP/SIMPLE presence traffic.