Live Communications Server 2005

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Live Communications Server 2005 (LCS 2005), codenamed Vienna, is the second version of a SIP based instant messaging and presence server after Live Communications Server 2003. LCS 2005 was first released in 2005, and was updated with new features with Service Pack 1 in 2006. LCS 2005 has been superseded by Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a signaling protocol used for initiating, maintaining, and terminating real-time sessions that include voice, video and messaging applications. SIP is used for signaling and controlling multimedia communication sessions in applications of Internet telephony for voice and video calls, in private IP telephone systems, in instant messaging over Internet Protocol (IP) networks as well as mobile phone calling over LTE (VoLTE).

Instant messaging form of communication over the Internet

Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat that offers real-time text transmission over the Internet. A LAN messenger operates in a similar way over a local area network. Short messages are typically transmitted between two parties, when each user chooses to complete a thought and select "send". Some IM applications can use push technology to provide real-time text, which transmits messages character by character, as they are composed. More advanced instant messaging can add file transfer, clickable hyperlinks, Voice over IP, or video chat.

In computer and telecommunications networks, presence information is a status indicator that conveys ability and willingness of a potential communication partner—for example a user—to communicate. A user's client provides presence information via a network connection to a presence service, which is stored in what constitutes his personal availability record and can be made available for distribution to other users to convey his availability for communication. Presence information has wide application in many communication services and is one of the innovations driving the popularity of instant messaging or recent implementations of voice over IP clients.

Contents

Overview

This product allows SIP clients to exchange IMs and presence using the SIMPLE protocol. The client also allows two clients to set up audio/video sessions, application sharing, and file transfer sessions.

SIMPLE, the Session Initiation Protocol for Instant Messaging and Presence Leveraging Extensions, is an instant messaging (IM) and presence protocol suite based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) managed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. Contrary to the vast majority of IM and presence protocols used by software deployed today, SIMPLE is an open standard like XMPP.

The product was released in two editions, Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition. The Standard Edition uses a Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) (included with the product) to store configuration and user data. Enterprise Edition uses a full version of Microsoft SQL Server (purchased separately).

Microsoft SQL Server Data Engine is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. It is a scaled-down version of Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 or 2000 which is free for non-commercial use as well as certain limited commercial use. It was introduced at Microsoft TechEd in May 1999, and was included as part of Microsoft Office 2000 Developer Edition. Its successor, SQL Server Express was released in November 2005. Vendor support of MSDE ended on April 8, 2008.

Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which may run either on the same computer or on another computer across a network.

New features to this version compared to the 2003 release is the ability to leverage SQL and remote user access.

SQL is a domain-specific language used in programming and designed for managing data held in a relational database management system (RDBMS), or for stream processing in a relational data stream management system (RDSMS). It is particularly useful in handling structured data where there are relations between different entities/variables of the data. SQL offers two main advantages over older read/write APIs like ISAM or VSAM. First, it introduced the concept of accessing many records with one single command; and second, it eliminates the need to specify how to reach a record, e.g. with or without an index.

Presence is conveyed as levels of availability to communicate. Levels of presence support by LCS:

These presence levels are controlled manually and automatically. Automatic presence changes can be triggered by the following events:

Dependencies

Active Directory (AD) is a directory service that Microsoft developed for the Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of processes and services. Initially, Active Directory was only in charge of centralized domain management. Starting with Windows Server 2008, however, Active Directory became an umbrella title for a broad range of directory-based identity-related services.

Kerberos is a computer network authentication protocol that works on the basis of tickets to allow nodes communicating over a non-secure network to prove their identity to one another in a secure manner. The protocol was named after the character Kerberos from Greek mythology, the ferocious three-headed guard dog of Hades. Its designers aimed it primarily at a client–server model and it provides mutual authentication—both the user and the server verify each other's identity. Kerberos protocol messages are protected against eavesdropping and replay attacks.

Public key infrastructure

A public key infrastructure (PKI) is a set of roles, policies, and procedures needed to create, manage, distribute, use, store & revoke digital certificates and manage public-key encryption. The purpose of a PKI is to facilitate the secure electronic transfer of information for a range of network activities such as e-commerce, internet banking and confidential email. It is required for activities where simple passwords are an inadequate authentication method and more rigorous proof is required to confirm the identity of the parties involved in the communication and to validate the information being transferred.

Client Software

Server Roles

Both editions of the server software can be installed into several distinct roles:

Home Server

In Standard Edition, this server role is designed to host data for the users. The user's data is stored in an SQL database on the backend server (on Enterprise Edition) or on the Home Server (on Standard Edition). The server stores each user's list of contacts and watchers. The contact list is the list of users the end user has added to client software in order to facilitate the sending of IM's and for the monitoring the presence. The watcher list is the list of other users that have added this user to their contact list.

Director

This optional server role is designed to be a kind of traffic cop when you have more than one Home Server role deployed or when you are setting up for remote users to connect to the Home Server. This server does not host any of the user's data, but knows which server each user is homed on, and can therefore redirect or proxy the request.

Access Proxy

This server role is required to allow remote SIP clients to connect from the internet. This server role would be traditionally deployed in a DMZ network. The server's job would be to scan the SIP traffic and only allow communication that the server had been configured to allow to traverse to the internal network. The traffic would be sent either directly to the internal Home Server or to a Director that would send the traffic to the appropriate home server, based on the user the message was destined to.

Branch Office Proxy

This role is used to aggregate connections, from a branch office clients, across a single Transport Layer Security (TLS) encrypted link, allowing many remote clients to share a single communication channel.

Application Proxy

This server role is designed to allow 3rd party developers to leverage the Live Communications Server SIP stack with a custom code running on top of it. This allows 3rd parties to make a gateway server that could be used to communicate with a PBX or other internal telephony infrastructure without having to create a fully functioning SIP stack.

Public IM Connectivity (PIC)

This is a feature that allows organizations to IM and share presence information between their existing base of Live Communications Server-enabled users and contacts using public IM services provided by MSN, AOL and Yahoo!. This was feature was introduced with LCS 2005 Service Pack 1 in April 2005.

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