IBM® Lotus® Sametime® Gateway lets your users communicate with external instant messaging communities, including public instant messaging networks. You can get connected to some of those communities today with the IBM Lotus Sametime Provisioning Application. Find out more here!
IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway lets you connect your IBM Lotus Sametime instant messaging community with external communities, including other Lotus Sametime and public instant messaging communities, such as AOL® AIM®, ICQ®, and Apple® iChat™ as well as Google Talk service and the Yahoo! Messenger community. Lotus Sametime Gateway provides server-to-server interoperability between disparate communities with conversion services for different protocols, presence awareness, and instant messaging. You can connect your Lotus Sametime community to AOL through the IBM Lotus Sametime Provisioning Application (see the following section for more details). Lotus Sametime Gateway replaces the Lotus Sametime Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Gateway from earlier releases of Lotus Sametime.
When Lotus Sametime Gateway receives an instant message, it validates the legitimacy of the message. If the message is valid, the gateway translates the message protocol, if necessary, and forwards the message to the recipient. In addition to instant messaging, Lotus Sametime Gateway has presence awareness, blacklisted domain filters, user access control, and event logging.
Lotus Sametime Gateway is a platform based on IBM WebSphere Application Server, which provides failover, clustering, and scalability for your Lotus Sametime Gateway deployment. WebSphere Application Server V6.1 is part of the Lotus Sametime Gateway installation package. Protocol connectors allow your instant messaging community to connect with other communities. Lotus Sametime Gateway ships with several protocol connectors, including a SIP connector that works with AOL and an External Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP) connector that works with Google Talk, so you can connect with other communities immediately. You can add more protocol connectors to Lotus Sametime Gateway to extend your community even further.
Lotus Sametime Gateway V8.0 supports federation with Jabber-based and XMPP-based instant messaging communities. Transport Layer Security (TLS) support is available when connecting to XMPP communities, if supported by the XMPP server, and you can add an XMPP proxy server to your cluster configuration.
Lotus Sametime Gateway V8.0 is easier to install, and enhancements, such as automatic-enabled administrative security, proxy server setup, and simplified and wizard-based LDAP configuration, help you to get started quickly.
In addition, community connection status is available from the admin UI. You can specify server reconnect interval or frequencies via custom properties. New, consistent logging across components using the same log levels improves logging (for example, the host name of the Sametime servers logged). PMI request/response time statistics are now available in version 8.
Lotus Sametime Gateway uses IBM DB2 for storage. You must have DB2 installed and configured prior to installing the gateway. See the Lotus Sametime V8.0 system requirements for supported DB2 versions. Your Lotus Sametime license includes the necessary licenses for DB2.
Prior to connecting to the AOL instant messaging network, you must first register with AOL using the IBM Lotus Sametime Provisioning Application, an online application that validates your entitlement and gathers and submits the required information to the instant messaging provider. After you configure Lotus Sametime Gateway, you can use the Lotus Sametime Provisioning Application to register your Lotus Sametime Gateway server. After the provider processes your information, you are granted access to the provider's network. The provisioning application also allows you to register your Lotus Sametime Gateway server with the Yahoo! network, although this connection will not be activated until connectivity with the Yahoo! network is made available in the near future.
If you have more than one Lotus Sametime Gateway server, you must register each server separately. The following information is required for registration:
Gateway name. The name of the Lotus Sametime Gateway server in your environment.
Gateway hostname. The hostname of the Lotus Sametime Gateway server. The hostname is used by the provider to direct instant messages to your community.
Provider name. AOL or Yahoo!
Contact email. The email address of your organization's contact, such as the Lotus Sametime administrator, who will receive email notification of provisioning events.
Domain names. One or more domains for your Lotus Sametime servers. Include domains of all Lotus Sametime users in your community.
More information about Lotus Sametime Gateway is available from these resources.
For Lotus Sametime V8.0 product documentation, including Administrator's Guide, Quick Start Guide, Installation Guide, and Release Notes, see the developerWorks Lotus Sametime documentation page.
For Lotus Sametime Gateway documentation, see the Lotus Sametime Gateway V8.0 information center. See the "What is Sametime Gateway?" topic for information about Lotus Sametime Gateway.
Lotus Sametime Gateway is available at no charge to all active maintenance Lotus Sametime Standard V8.0 customers through the IBM Passport Advantage Web site. For information about downloading Lotus Sametime Gateway V8.0 from Passport Advantage, see the Lotus Support technote, "IBM Lotus Sametime Gateway 8.0."
