The ProFaNE Jabber Network

The ProFaNE Community proudly hosts Chat and Online Conference facilities. Use this powerful technology to communicate with your collegues, more immediate than email, perfect for discussing work, group meetings or just keeping in touch. Pandion is the client of choice for windows. Adium is an excellent client for Mac OS X.

Full instructions for installing the Jabber client are available from the respective web sites.

The ProFaNE Jabber server address is jabber.profane.eu.org please make sure you specify this address when creating your account.

Once you have installed your client you need to add contacts to your 'roster' which is just a list of people you would like to talk to. If you add steve.richardson@jabber.profane.eu.org and/or dawnacercomputer@jabber.profane.eu.org we will be able to help you find the rest of the people you wish to talk to.

Help is available in the form of Powerpoint presentations on the ProFaNE Help Pages

If you need any more help at all with this or have any questions please do get in touch with either myself (Steve) or Dawn. Either one of us will also 'talk' you through the installation and set up if you need us to do so.

Known Issues and Frequently Asked Questions

Email Address?

Although JabberID's look like email addresses - they are not - by all means try sending an email to any JabberId - but don't expect to get anywhere ;-)

Operating System

Windows; There are known issues with running Pandion on Windows 98 and Windows NT; Basically unless your machine has been religiously updated with all the latest Operating System updates from Microsoft and you have the latest version of Internet Explorer installed you will most likely experience a problem where Pandion will not install properly and you will be unable to make the connection to the Jabber Server. There are several options to solve this problem: a. Update your current system. b. Upgrade your Operating System (e.g. Windows XP) c. Use an alternative Jabber client e.g. JAJC or Exodus - for more details visit http://www.jabber.org I will support any Jabber Client in any way I can, however, if you choose any other client than the ones listed above I cannot guarantee that you will be able to access all the planned services.

Firewalls

Pandion requires a connection to the internet - just like your web browser and your mail program - and because all the data that these programs exchange travels down the same wire there needs to be a system that makes sure the right data goes to the right program. To this end each program runs on a specific port - in the case of Pandion this is port 5222. This is a little like a hotel that has many rooms and one big telephone connection to the outside world - when a call comes in for a particular room (port number) the switchboard in the hotel directs the call to the right room... Easy huh :-) Failure to connect to the Jabber server may be down to two things, one: that the hotel (or university) switchboard has barred all calls to the required room (port 5222) and/or two: it may be necessary to explicitly set up Pandion to use the switchboard. Unfortunately there is nothing I can personally do about this and it does require a call to your local friendly IT staff who I'm sure will be pleased to help you resolve the problem. What to ask your IT staff : "I am trying to run a messaging/conferencing client (Pandion) using the Jabber protocol on port 5222 - is this port blocked in the University firewall and will I need to specify a proxy server to make this work?" If the answer is yes to the firewall then you need to explain that you need this port open to be able to do your work and ask them to open it. If the answer is yes to the proxy server then you should ask them for the details so that you can set up Pandion to use it. This will typically be a server address, a port number and a server type (SOCKS, HTPP etc...). When you have this information - open Pandion and click 'Tools > Settings' this will open a new panel - on the left hand side there is a option for 'Connection' click on this and you will be able to enter the settings there. If in doubt please ask your IT staff to help you. As always I am available to offer any support to either you of your IT staff. Hope this helps Kindest regards Steve