standalones interacting over the web

[Alex Tweedly]

Nicolas Cueto wrote:
>> but Chatrev also runs from my LAN.
>>     
>
> Doesn't this require purchasing a permanent IP address from your  ISP?
>
>   
No. Your IP address will not change during a single connected session, 
only when your DSL (or equivalent) line drops and restarts. So you can 
use dyndns ( www.dyndns.com ) or equivalent services to register a 
domain name and have it automatically track your *current* IP address.

Or you can simply use their service to find your current IP address, and 
keep that updated yourself on your web page (not sure why you'd want to 
go to this extra effort, other than to keep everything under your own 
control ....)

If you're not familiar with port forwarding, you can get info from 
http://portforward.com/

What it does require is an "always on" (or mostly always on) machine to 
use.

Note - depending on what you're going to use this for, you should be 
aware of the possible issues. What you will have is the server 
replicating the packets, so every packet generated by the client will 
cause the server to echo it back once per other client (or perhaps once 
per client for every client - your choice). You need to consider the 
bandwidth usage and latency induced by this - especially if you have an 
ASDL connection, where your upload speed (and allowed bandwidth for some 
ISPs) is restricted.

There is also a chance you can appear like a file-sharing user (hardly 
anyone else will use as much upload bandwidth as they do download 
bandwidth), so you may trigger alarms in your ISP.

The other option for your overall problem is to use a freely available 
chat-like server, such as jabber.org
Unfortunately, there isn't a jabber protocol library available for 
RunRev - though I know someone on this list had implemented a version of 
this, and was hoping to find time to get it polished enough to release.


-- Alex.