Jabber is an open instant messaging system. The main idea behind it is that one company should not be in control of the protocol (language) and servers that people rely upon for vital online communcations. See Jabber Australia for more details.
As you are reading this guide, you presumably already have a Jabber account on one of the many servers. Since you are looking at this page, you are most likely interested in talking to some of your friends who have, for whatever reason, yet to switch to Jabber.
Firstly, some definitions. In reference to Jabber, the words transport and gateway are used interchangeably to refer to a piece of software running on your Jabber server which allows you to talk to people who are not using Jabber. If you register your details with this software you will able able to talk to friends using, say AIM, ICQ or MSN.
This registration process is very simple. When you go to the Jabber Transport Registration Form page you will be asked to enter a few pieces of information, click a button, and then wait for a little while. Then it's done
Some things to note:
An example of registering using the Jabber Transport Registration Form.
If you click the Register button and there is an error, please notify the administrator of your Jabber server. You should be able to find contact details for your server administrator on your server website.