XMPP is streamlined compared to SMTP's bloat? Please elaborate on that opinion.

Rantenki · on Jan 5, 2011

Sure; XMPP's actual standard calls for a bunch of extraneous XML to get a basic message sent, no argument there. Also, a basic SMTP message calls for very little additional info (ie: to, from, subject, body), however, the reality is that an smtp message from almost any real world provider contains a ton of extra crap. I am not saying that SMTP is inferior in some way, just that in the real world, reliable message delivery isn't as streamlined as we would like. Here is a basic email from shapeways PR:

Delivered-To: derek@foodomain.com

Received: by 10.216.159.146 with SMTP id s18cs544645wek; Wed, 5 Jan 2011 11:11:57 -0800 (PST)

Received: by 10.150.158.4 with SMTP id g4mr22888707ybe.38.1294254716497; Wed, 05 Jan 2011 11:11:56 -0800 (PST)

Return-Path: <bounces-1e89d88424-b62849dacd@b.cts.vresp.com>

Received: from mkt4-sc.verticalresponse.com (mkt4-sc.verticalresponse.com [74.116.89.111]) by mx.google.com with ESMTP id l18si3840529ybn.44.2011.01.05.11.11.54; Wed, 05 Jan 2011 11:11:55 -0800 (PST)

... redacted another 2055 bytes of crap ...

Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="__________MIMEboundary__________"; charset="UTF-8"

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

--__________MIMEboundary__________ Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

And here is where the actual message started...