Fwd: [OTR-users] OTR on aim and multiple logins

[Paul Wouters]

On Mon, 20 Mar 2006, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> I believe the AIM server's multicast algorithm is something like:
>
> - If Bob is logged on exactly once, send the message to him.
> - If he's logged on more than once, and exactly one is non-idle, send it
>   to only that login.
> - If he's logged on more than once, and zero, or more than one, is
>   non-idle, send it to all of Bob's logins.  [Maybe this is really "all
>   of Bob's non-idle logins, if more than one".]
>
> So in your friend's case, you should only be seeing a problem once both
> of his logins go idle.  But in that case, how do you know which computer
> he's more likely to be sitting in front of?  If one's been idle for 2.5
> hours, and one's been idle for 3 hours?  I don't think you can make a
> decision based just on that information.

It is worse. Sending an OTR packet to a client that is idle that causes an
OTR session to start, makes it appear that user is no longer idle. So if
multiple copies are idle, and the OTR message is send to all instances,
all instances 'unidle'.

This is also a problem in general, if I am logged in once, and someone
sends me an OTR packet causing my one client to respond. Now all my
friends think I've unidled. The only way out of this is a difference
between attended and unattended messages, and I think the IM networks
will rather die to facilitating this. Or rather, they'll die of p0rn
if they allow that :)

Paul