a tutorial on a voice communications program

can someone tell me where i can get a tutorial that can help we with some of the concepts related to making a real time (or close to it) voice communications program? i have a friend who runs a site, and this site they use to help people install things. using text would take too long, so they want to you a voice communications program, but the ones they have are no good (see below). if you know of one that meets the following criteria, then that would work too. heres what he said:

Quote:

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11-08-2003 -- 01:01:07 PM] DFSC NET: We are looking for something to provide voice communcations as real time as possible- without hogging bandwidth and that is not a program that has to be run from the server control
[11-08-2003 -- 01:01:20 PM] TzA gEo FrY: ok
[11-08-2003 -- 01:01:51 PM] DFSC NET: something in php maybe or some other html style language- even if it requires a client program on our end
[11-08-2003 -- 01:01:59 PM] TzA gEo FrY: and so the other programs you have (i forgot the names, there were 2, listed on your site) use too much bandwidth?
[11-08-2003 -- 01:03:11 PM] DFSC NET: Ventrilo and Team Speak take to much bandwidth- RW works best but it requires a server side program run from the operating system- and everytime we use a public server they reboot or shut down
[11-08-2003 -- 01:03:26 PM] TzA gEo FrY: i see
[11-08-2003 -- 01:04:05 PM] TzA gEo FrY: so you are looking for a client to client program, so it wont have to be run off the server?
[11-08-2003 -- 01:05:28 PM] DFSC NET: sort of- but one everyone can use at once- maybe bounce off of the server for linking and or connection

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i know it said in php or html style language, but i dont think that would work. so im going for c++ instead. if the php thing would work, then could someone tell me (in general) how to do it? thank you for your help.

you could do something like the server exchanges the IP between the two system and can do that only if it wants to... for this even a simple DB will do but the rest needs to be client program which can check the server for connection purpose later the connection can be direct between the 2 clients.....

if you don't want to hog the servers bandwidth, you can do it peer to peer such that all voice communication is made between the two clients but logging can be done to the server and client handshakes can be set up by the server.

This sounds like a big project! ...The kind of thing that a team of programmers would work on... And way beyond my knowledge...

I'm sure you can find tutorials on the various parts of the project... Audio compression, TCP/IP, Sockets, Interfacing speaker & microphone drivers, etc. There should be lots of info "out-there" about VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol). It's been a hot topic for awhile.

Of course, all of the users who are "installing things" would need to have a PC with speakers and a microphone (or a headset), and they would have to install the VOIP software. I don't have a computer with a microphone... The one I'm online with now (at work) doesn't even have speakers!

I'm not sure, but I think you need something like a VPN server to get an apparent direct connection between the two systems (?) Are you trying to use IRC? Because these servers are probably intentionally bandwidth limited. I don't think you can go directly peer-to-peer unless both ends have fixed IP addresses.

the peer to peer thing works great when you have a server to sync up the IPs that they'll talk to. The only REAL issue is firewalls and proxy servers. and granted, those are a big issue.

ok thanks for the information everyone, it should be helpful, i personally didnt know that much about the subject
and doug, i wasnt going to even think of doing it alone, its way over my head, im doing with some other people, but they all know a lot more than i do, so i to try and catch up a little.