Zoosk Real-Time Communication (RTC) Infrastructure Overview
The article details Zoosk's real-time communication system, describing member presence, notifications, instant messaging, the XMPP‑based Tigase server cluster, BOSH support, monitoring scripts, performance metrics, business intelligence reporting, and future plans to extend RTC to mobile web applications.
Zoosk members experience real‑time communication (RTC) through three interaction types: presence (showing online, away, offline, or invisible status), notifications (pop‑up alerts for invites, profile views, matches, etc.), and instant messaging (live chat with message persistence for offline retrieval).
The RTC services are delivered via a high‑performance, highly‑scalable XMPP‑based infrastructure built on the open‑source Tigase Jabber server, written in Java and extended with custom Zoosk logic. Tigase runs on standard 8‑CPU Linux servers in paired clusters, with load‑balanced primary and secondary nodes handling 4,000‑8,000 connections each, supporting both socket‑based XMPP streams and HTTP‑BOSH for web browsers.
Persistent Tigase connections allow real‑time tracking of user online status, which is reflected across Zoosk products (search results, profile views, messaging). Online status is stored in the user database and cached in SOLR servers via an online‑status manager (OSM) Tigase instance, enabling search algorithms to prioritize online users.
Additional services trigger real‑time notifications by sending custom XMPP packets from PHP web applications to Tigase, which forwards them to connected clients; offline packets are stored until the user reconnects.
Monitoring and Testing
Tigase Monitoring – a cron script runs every 10 minutes, logs into each chat server, tests connections and traffic, and reports results to Nagios for alerting.
Tigase Performance Metrics – internal measures (function execution times, message counts, queue sizes, memory usage) are collected every 2 minutes via XMPP stats commands and sent to Ganglia for graphing.
Business Intelligence Reporting – hourly scripts gather active connection counts and message volumes from Tigase servers into a database, which an Excel report visualizes for trend analysis.
Tigase Test Suite – an autonomous XMPP client logs into each server and simulates real user interactions, recording functional test outcomes.
Looking ahead, Zoosk plans to launch RTC support for its mobile web application and explore additional devices and media, aiming to enhance real‑time discovery and communication as member connectivity continues to grow.
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