Hello.

I have 3 XMPP clients: One 'Psi+', one 'Gajim', and one 'Conversations'. They are respectively installed under Linux, Linux, and an Android emulation called 'Waydroid'. I don't usually keep them all connected. It's mainly Psi+ that I leave idling.

Yet, after about 6 hours or so, the connection may just get dropped.

Is this to be expected? And if not, what can I do about it?

I'm relatively new to XMPP, and one fact that I noticed is that the U.S.A. is quite far away from my native Canada. Could the distance of the connection have something to do with it?

-Dirk

As a frequent XMPP user who uses Psi+ I notice no disconnections or connection issues of any kind. It is most likely your Internet connection, perhaps relating to your distance as you said. It's possible the other clients don't disconnect is because Psi+ while still maintained is a bit behind in terms of support and features, so the other clients might support better stream management that can workaround the hiccups while Psi+ doesn't.

Okay. Well, one thing I just tried yesterday was to disable the use of OpenPGP. When that was enabled, the client would use OpenPGP as an additional layer of encryption between itself and the XMPP server. With that disabled, I've noticed no more disconnections since yesterday.

-Dirk

(Sorry to bump.)

I think I have an explanation for how this works, which now has context.

As long as users use 'OMEMO' encryption for the messages to other users, because that's E2E-encrypted, it's also 'secure', over the connection which exists between the client and the server. However, things like the password one uses to connect to the server are not secure - they're in plaintext.

So, because users have sought a solution to this a number of times, specific clients will try to secure their connection to the server as well. Psi+ offers this with 'OpenPGP'.

However, these added means of encryption are not part of XMPP in any standard way. So, their support may be spotty.

Further, if there is just 'an open client socket' across international boundaries, idling for 6 hours, and if that's fully encrypted, there's also the possibility that some of the infrastructure nodes will preferentially kill that socket.

-Dirk

OpenPGP and OMEMO do not control the connection. They are simply for messages/uploads. There are standards for XMPP C2S (Client-to-server) connections. It's more likely it is just coincidence because you do not use OpenPGP or OMEMO to connect to the server, that is handled by TLS (which is enabled regardless).