Speak-Freely is an Internet voice
application that allows you to talk (actually
send voice, not typed characters) over the internet.
Speak-Freely is undergoing new
development, ie. new documentation and
support. We will try to limit the confusion.
:) Speak-Freely was written by John Walker (read more).
Speak-Freely requires that
you meet the following conditions to
communicate:
- A _true_ Internet IP address for either
your computer or the
person's computer you wish to talk to
- A way to share to one person or the
other their real IP address, such as
63.157.141.2
- A microphone with working sound
settings. (When is the last time you used
or tested it?)
- A firewall that does not block the
assigned UDP ports (2074 or 2075
typically)
- A Pentium II class computer for CELP
and Speex compression, of at least
200-300Mhz.
- A dialup connection at least 28kb/sec.
(most of you have faster computers and
connections)
- Possibly a set of headphones instead of
your speakers for at least one person
communicating. Echo-cancellation is not
programmed into the audio codecs.
If you meet the criteria above, the
benefits are a better quality connection with
less lag time between you and the person you
are talking to. Services such as MSN and
Yahoo pipe all their communication through
their local servers and forward it to you,
which adds to the delay in network traffic.
All internet voice applications will have
some delay, depending how far apart and the
network traffic between you and the person
that you are talking to. Diagrams of the
major internet voice applications and how
they work should be forthcoming.
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