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Federation Protocol #601
Description
Hi, first this as awesome chat, so far best I have used.
Have you considered creating Rocket.Chat so it can be decentralised but also federated with cluster of multiple Rocket.Chat servers ?
Use case:
Having branch offices offices around the world (or distributed islands of community wireless networks in our case) that each would run their own Rocket.Chat server but they would be part of one Rocket.Chat network so that any client connected to any servers sees all users and all rooms.
So if for some reason connectivity breaks (which happens more than we would like) clients at least have their own local server, and when connectivity is back then they join back with the rest of the Rocket.Chat network.
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Activity
rodrigok commentedon Aug 28, 2015
This is very complex 😄 hehe
valentt commentedon Aug 28, 2015
I would love to use Rocker.Chat instead of IRC and Jabber, and this is exactly how they are used. Probably needs a quite bit work on abstraction... and no, it definitely is not easy :)
mitar commentedon Aug 28, 2015
You can always just decentralize MongoDB server.
engelgabriel commentedon Aug 29, 2015
Maybe implement the http://matrix.org/ spec?
geekgonecrazy commentedon Aug 31, 2015
This would be pretty cool. Might be good to take a look at this while working to make it play well in cluster / load balancing situations. #520
GrahamJenkins commentedon Nov 3, 2015
I'd like to add a sub feature request, it could be moved to a separate request depending on the maintainer's opinions.
I have a use case where several geographically oriented teams need to be able to manage their own teams/servers independently, however they want to share specific content with other teams/servers. If using Slack it is possible through integrations to use services such as sameroom.io or various other bridges, but it would be very helpful if it was possible to configure independent servers to sync/share defined content with other servers, or perhaps even a level of public sharing of specified content.
A feature like this would provide some functionality and ease of use similar to that of account-based tools such as skype, hangouts, etc, but still allow for the operation and administration of independent servers. I would be glad to discuss the potential use cases in more detail if that can clarify/help this request.
engelgabriel commentedon Nov 17, 2015
I understand your request @rendezvousIY , that's exactly what I believe we will be able to do if we implement this features. We plan to start taking a look at this after we release the 1.0
engelgabriel commentedon Nov 17, 2015
Hi @ara4n any thoughts on this one? Your input would be much appreciated.
illicitonion commentedon Nov 17, 2015
Hi @engelgabriel! I work with @ara4n on matrix.org, and I've been taking a look around your Rocket.Chat world - it looks like Hubot is a great match for our node bridging library: https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge
We have a one-page example for a basic matrix-slack bridge https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-appservice-bridge/blob/master/HOWTO.md - I imagine putting together a hubot script which sends every message it sees to a Matrix room, and which sends every Matrix message it sees to a Rocket.Chat room, would be pretty trivial.
If someone put together that bridge, chats could automatically become part of the federated Matrix world which would both open up to users of the systems people are writing Matrix bridges for (we have made usable progress on bridging Slack, IRC, Skype, and a few other things).
We'd love to work with you on this; I'd suggest you take a look at the one page HOWTO above, and see if you can get a quick Hubot script able to just send raw text messages both ways. From there, we can have a chat about where we may want to go.
Feel free to reply here, drop me an email (daniel@matrix.org), or come stop by a Matrix room (I just made #rocketchat:matrix.org which you can talk at by using https://matrix.org/blog/try-matrix-now/ ) if you need a hand with anything, or want to chat!
engelgabriel commentedon Nov 17, 2015
Hi @illicitonion
Thanks for the reply, I'll take a look at your links. I think it would be a nice first step, so lets do that, but my end goal would be to create a "native" capability via meteor package. :)
18 remaining items
pierreozoux commentedon Oct 21, 2019
@Sing-Li Can we close this issue?
Also, it looks like it is matrix behind the scene, but I don't find it in the doc, nor in the code (probably didn't search enough).
Is it possible to federate with matrix too?
If yes, I'll take some time to improve the doc, and if you have some pointers, it would be amazing.
If not, is it planned? If yes where is the issue? If no issue, I still think we can close this one, and reopen one to track matrix support ;)
thanks!
geekgonecrazy commentedon Oct 21, 2019
Not currently using Matrix Protocol behind the scenes. So currently only possible between Rocket.Chat workspaces. My understanding is that we still plan to federate with Matrix.
I agree though we should close in favor of one tracking Matrix. I'm not sure if we have one. A quick search didn't yield a result
reetp commentedon Oct 22, 2019
At least somewhere to keep all the info and links together.
aWeinzierl commentedon May 14, 2020
any updates regarding that?
alansikora commentedon Sep 25, 2020
@aWeinzierl this is on our bucket list, but still not on the immediate plans. I will post a message in here when we get to this.
StEvUgnIn commentedon Oct 11, 2020
Matrix does not have any IETF draft and I won't comment on their current state of decentralization.
mitar commentedon Oct 12, 2020
Can you link to anything on this topic?
ShalokShalom commentedon Oct 12, 2020
Idk about federation, but they have launched their p2p service
https://matrix.org/blog/2020/06/02/introducing-p-2-p-matrix/
madguy02 commentedon Oct 12, 2020
Matrix and Rocket.Chat although serves the same purpose of async messaging, but are very different mission wise and hence architecture wise.
Federation Protocol of Matrix.org has gone through good amount of iterations and i think they are in a stable state now. Federation Protocol from Matrix is not gonna be a direct fit for Rocket.Chat... If we need federation for Rocket.Chat purposes, we might take some inspiration from the Federation Protocol (matrix) and develop it on our own. But if we are planning to use the Protocol without much changes then RC will have to go through good amount of changes architecture-wise before we can accommodate it.
I think @alansikora has done a good job in understanding the problem and producing a solution out quickly for people to try out (but this is no easy job)
But if we really want to build federation as a protocol for RC then that will require good research and a dedicated team to do so....
ptman commentedon May 27, 2022
#23688
geekgonecrazy commentedon May 28, 2022
Yeah: https://rocket.chat/press-releases/rocket-chat-leverages-matrix-protocol-for-decentralized-and-interoperable-communications
engelgabriel commentedon Mar 21, 2023
Closing this issue as Rocket.Chat is focused on fully adopting the Matrix.org protocol. We are planning further data model and architecture changes to fully embed the home server capabilities.