Speak-Freely (original) (raw)

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.