Free (or inexpensive) audio conferencing software for 12 or so people

Folks

I just got shanghaied to be an executive board with members
geographically dispersed throughout the province. Currently they are
using a phone patch system but permission is a bit hazy and it only
has 8 ports. A bit tricky with 12 members. Currently many of the
members who are in the same city gather at someone's house and use a
speaker phone there. But that doesn't always work.

MSN only allows four people to be in an audio conversation. Anyone
know of any software, preferably free or inexpensive, which allows up to 12 people or
so?

I think pretty much everyone would have high speed Internet.

Tony
--
Tony Toews, Microsoft Access MVP
Please respond only in the newsgroups so that others can
read the entire thread of messages.
Microsoft Access Links, Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at
http://www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm

 

Re: Free (or inexpensive) audio conferencing software for 12 or sopeople

Tony Toews wrote:
> Folks
>
> I just got shanghaied to be an executive board with members
> geographically dispersed throughout the province. Currently they are
> using a phone patch system but permission is a bit hazy and it only
> has 8 ports. A bit tricky with 12 members. Currently many of the
> members who are in the same city gather at someone's house and use a
> speaker phone there. But that doesn't always work.
>
> MSN only allows four people to be in an audio conversation. Anyone
> know of any software, preferably free or inexpensive, which allows up to 12 people or
> so?
>
> I think pretty much everyone would have high speed Internet.
>
> Tony



Get a spare PC, PIII or better with 256 megs of ram and a decent size HD
30, or 40 if you want to record the "meetings" and run Asterisk. You can
have everyone use a softphone like xlite and dial into the box
remotely and join a conference room.

If you can supply the high speed internet (1meg or better) and a spare
pc, I'll walk you through the configuration here in the newsgroup.


-sx

IM:

 

I looked on the Microsoft Reseach Labs site and found they have some
new Video Conference software. You can use it to VOIP conference if
you don't want the extra whiteboad. video and presence detection.
It's actually aimed at Education and teachers, anyone can use
it....oh and it's free And it's open source ..and it from
Microsoft.. Hmmmm Open source and free and from MS

So we may test it for the school
It better than Convoq.

It seems to be Firewall friendly too.
ConferenceXP uses the following ports:

TCP Port 80
UDP Port 5004 UDP Port 5005
--- l hope these UDP protocol ports aren't blocked. UDP portocol is
usually opened 'dynamically' by firewalls.(That means opens and closes
as requested by the appliation for example ConferenceXP.

http://www.conferencexp.net and goto Downloads to get it...have a
read first.


Cheers

*************************************************
Outback Computers
-converging communications and computer technologies

27-31 Munster Terrace, North Melbourne Australia
**************************************************


On Wed, 22 Feb 2006 21:17:14 -0500, shido xavier <>
wrote:

Tony Toews wrote:
> Folks
>
> I just got shanghaied to be an executive board with members
> geographically dispersed throughout the province. Currently they are
> using a phone patch system but permission is a bit hazy and it only
> has 8 ports. A bit tricky with 12 members. Currently many of the
> members who are in the same city gather at someone's house and use a
> speaker phone there. But that doesn't always work.
>
> MSN only allows four people to be in an audio conversation. Anyone
> know of any software, preferably free or inexpensive, which allows up to 12 people or
> so?
>
> I think pretty much everyone would have high speed Internet.
>
> Tony



Get a spare PC, PIII or better with 256 megs of ram and a decent size
HD
30, or 40 if you want to record the "meetings" and run Asterisk. You
can
have everyone use a softphone like xlite and dial into the box
remotely and join a conference room.

If you can supply the high speed internet (1meg or better) and a spare
pc, I'll walk you through the configuration here in the newsgroup.


-sx

IM:

 

Quality web conferencing services can never be free though. You may want to check GoMeetNow which costs only at $12.95/month, next to free.