[K12OSN] a nice lan communicator program

[Barry R Cisna]

Hello List,

Thought Id throw this out. If you'd like to have a good LAN communicator
program that sets up very easily, over a lan and works with both Linux &
Windows you should try Windows Communicator.
You can download both a Windows or Linux based server piece, as well as
a client for either Windows or Linux.
The Linux based server is absolutely free,:)
We did run the Windows server based WC for a short time just to try it
to see how it worked for us..
I wound up using the Linux based server piece ,due to the fact you can
connect unlimited number of clients. With the windows based server you
can only connect 20 client machines. If you buy a license for the
Windows server which is not much you can connect unlimited clients
depending on your license pack.
In running the linux Communicator server you simply create a folder.
I done /usr/lib/wclinserver... then you simply copy the single
executable into the folder ,then start the executable, and you now have
a working communicator server. I also after a while made up a very
simple startup script into the /etc/init.d folder to start the ex each
time the server is rebooted for convenience.
The Linux server piece only allows for simple text communication,as well
as a "public message board" which is nice. With the Windows based server
you can do file transfers,and even some games,,which i didnt think was
needed anyway.
We also use it to our two remote school buildings 15 miles away so
administrators can communicate this way if they choose to. Simply open
up port 5400 on each firewall and provide the public ip address of your
machine running the WC server.
Another upside to this setup is it simply "finds" whoever is online on
your server. there is no adding,, so and so,, and again,& again.
The only clug in this setup is on Linux thin clients using this you have
to make a "kill" script,very simple as in ' kill -9 Communicator  'to
close the client running program,when you are ready to log off,
otherwise the client hangs and never logs off.
The linux client has not been updated for almost 2 years so it seems
outdated but does work as we have used it from FC1 through FC4. Dont
know about FC5?

Sorry for the loooong post.

You can check it out here: 

http://www.communicator.pl/

Hope this might help someone .

Barry Cisna