| Author | Message | ||
     Mikej |
What concerns or considerations should I keep in mind if a relative staying with us wants to set up a Ventrilo server for his gaming. Near as I can tell Ventrilo is for VoIP communications, kind of like an on-line conference call. Do any of you think I need to be concerned about excessive bandwidth charges from our current ATT wireless setup which basically runs over a telephone landline. Parallel to this, a good friend of my wife's is moving overseas and she wants to keep in contact with her and is looking into Skype. Is that going to conflict with the Ventrilo server activity? One scenario I can see is with the relative doing his WOW gaming with some 25-50 player activity happening with his headset sounding like he's in the middle of some military campaign, and at the same time my wife will want to Skype-call to Norway while browsing multiple personal networking sites looking at family pictures and views of her friend's new neighborhood, and throw in me with the laptop browsing job sites and BadWeB and Erik Buell Racing, and posting bicycles and other stuff on Craigslist. I kind of envision a major bottleneck crash happening at some point. Looking for any input, advice, concerns, issues, warnings, whatever else any of you care to comment on. Thanks in advance for any input. Side note: I'm also looking at running a BLOG, or not, don't know if those generate any revenue somehow so it will probably just be hobby related (probably be something like "rode the S2 to the river, fly fished for two hours, caught nothing but a mosquito bite, here's a pic of a dead mosquito on my arm next to the fly I was using"). Anyway, any input on running a BLOG in conjunction with all the above would be appreciated as well. | ||
| Froggy |
Vent and Skype don't use much bandwidth. Both are VoIP communication programs, both do the same thing but achieve it in slightly different ways. Vent acts like a chat room, anyone with the server address can connect in, you can also password protect it. You can create rooms so you can have different conversations going on at the same time without everyone hearing each other. For WoW on my old server we had a Raid room, a General Chat, and a few private rooms. People could BS in Gen Chat without bothering the 20 people doing a raid. Skype works more like a telephone, in fact Skype can make phone calls to regular telephones while Vent can't. You manually start a chat or call with someone by clicking their name in your buddy list similar to an Instant Messenger, vs Vent being more like a chat room you have to sit and wait for them to show up. You can easily do a conference type call too with Skype. If you don't want to use someone else's Vent server, you can set one up easy, and the free license allows up to 8 people connected at the same time. Skype is also to easily setup and does not require you to make or use anyones server, but it requires you sign up for a username. As long as you have any form of Broadband you should be fine with your uses. Blogs - You would need traffic to generate revenue through advertising/shirt sales/etc. I doubt many people care about some random Bueller and his amazingly boring life.  (Message edited by froggy on May 28, 2010) | ||
| Big_red_79 |
+10 on the skype, thats how my daughter and I talk to my wife in Iraq and it works great | ||
| Orman1649 |
I don't know about Skype but you have to know a little about computers if you plan on setting up your own vent server. You'll need to do some port forwarding and such in your router. Theres also the option of paying for one, the cost usually depends on the max number of people you want on...like...50 people for 10 bucks a month or whatever. This doesn't require you to do any real setup either. But like Froggy said, you can download the server application and host up to 8 people for free. | ||
| Greg_e |
Many smart phone now have Skype, this might make it even easier for the two to communicate. Android definitely does, not sure about iPhone but probably, doesn't use any minutes. | ||
| D_adams |
Is this relative pitching in for your internet bill? If not, then tell him no. It's not going to be a huge drain on the system, figure 5-8 kbps per client, but if you've only got 512 kbps upload, then it will suffer when there's 10 people connected to it. I run multiple servers at home myself, but I pay the bill and the stuff I'm running is for me. I have a Vent server, 5 hl2dm servers, 4 left4dead servers as well as ftp, http and some other stuff. I also have a decent connection, it's only 5 mb upload, but it does well enough for me. If you don't know what he's doing or you aren't computer savvy enough to understand it, personally I wouldn't let him. Change the password on your router (the admin one) and lock it up. Actually, on 2nd thought, change the password anyway and make sure you've got as much security on it as you can. Wireless encryption, mac address restrictions for wireless clients, etc. |
