How does Google Talk replicate messages across devices?

Question

I'm wondering how (official) GTalk clients manage to show all messages received - even if it was originally consumed by another client. For example: I'm logged into GTalk on gmail.com on my laptop and, at the same time, via the official GTalk app on my Android device. A friend sends me a message, which is displayed on both the gmail.com client and the Android client. (I think it's originally only forwarded to one of either clients, but the second client fetches the message later on)

I recently found out that there's a very similar XMPP feature, called Carbons. However, after a quick service discovery request Google's servers didn't advertise this feature. XEP-0313 and XEP-0136 look good too, but the servers don't advertise them either.

Possibly related question: Deliver Google Talk message to all logged in clients using XMPPPY

Alex Alex · Accepted Answer · 2013-02-12T09:52:11

When you initiate a new chat then you should send the first message to the users bare Jid. This is what most clients are doing. When the GTalk server retrieves a chat message to a bare Jid it routes the message to all available resources. For all following messages in this conversation the clients normally pick up the Resource and send them to full Jids. The messages should not be replicated then.

Many other servers don't route message to bare Jids to all resources, but to the most available resource which is the client with the highest priority.

Here is a quote form the RFC:

If there is more than one resource with a non-negative presence priority then the
server MUST either
(a) deliver the message to the "most available" resource or
resources (according to the server's implementation-specific algorithm, e.g., treating
the resource or resources with the highest presence priority as "most available") or
(b) deliver the message to all of the non-negative resources.

How does Google Talk replicate messages across devices?

2 Answers