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Setting up Pidgin for Google Talk behind an http proxy (web proxy / corporate firewall)

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I use Google Talk at work mainly to post to social networks (army.twit.tv, identi.ca, twitter.com, yammer.com). It is possible to receive notification using Google Talk (which is just a Jabber/XMPP instance), but I find that too intrusive to what little work I get done.

  1. Run pidgin (if not already) and select Accounts->Manage

  2. Select Add to add another account:

  3. Select XMPP for the protocol type:

  4. Fill out the form as follows with gmail/gtalk username & password; domain is gmail.com; Resource is (optionally) Work:

  5. Click advanced button. Select old (port 5223) SSL. Select 443 for port number. Server is talk.google.com. Fill out http proxy (for example, wwwgate0.example.com, port 1080) & http-proxy username & password (not likely the same as your gmail username/password):

This works because http proxies generally allow ports 80 (http) and port 443 (SSL/https) through. They generally disallow other ports. Luckily, google’s jabber server (talk.google.com) accepts connections on port 443–and they are SSL (encrypted) connections, so that’s good, too.

Written by PoojanWagh

October 13th, 2008 at 3:11 pm