Helping Military families to communicate
with each other when they're far apartMicrosoft NetMeeting
This is our favorite software for conducting live video/audio conversations. The sound and video quality is good, and the video image is much larger than what Microsoft Messenger provides.
- Here are some helpful links for understanding what NetMeeting can do, and how to configure it:
- NetMeeting seems to have a lot of problems with firewalls. You may need to lower the security setting on your firewall to get NetMeeting to work. If you are trying to run it on a corporate LAN the firewall may be set up in such a way to prevent you from using it no matter what. Here's an example where the BlackIce firewall on a personal PC is being lowered from Paranoid to Nervous to allow NetMeeting to work properly.
Most likely everyone who is connected to the conversation will need to lower their firewall settings if they aren't already lowered. We tend to set our security software to the maximum settings, so we may have more of a problem with this than others who don't. Don't forget to set the firewall back to the higher protection level when you're done with NetMeeting.
- We have never been able to get the directory function to work in Windows XP. This is the feature that allows you to look up someone's NetMeeting contact information in a Microsoft directory. Instead, we have always connected to each other in NetMeeting using the other person's Internet Protocol (IP) address. An IP address consists of four numbers separated by a period between them. For instance, 1.2.3.4.
Assuming that just two people are connecting for a live video conversation, only one of their IP addresses are needed. Whoever initiates the connection needs the IP address of the other person to do it. For people who dial in on a modem, the IP address will likely change each time you dial in. To determine what your computer's IP address is, visit this link: http://privacy.net/ipaddress. Look for your IP address just to the right of where it says "The IP Address used to download this page is". We have found that the easiest thing to do is to determine our own IP address, then cut/paste it into an instant message or e-mail and send it to the person we want to connect with. Once they have it, they can initiate the connection between the two of us using our IP address. Here's what the window looks like where the IP address is specified:
- NetMeeting comes pre-loaded with Windows XP, but it's apparently not yet certified to be used with XP. You may experience some technical glitches with it if you use XP. You can download NetMeeting from this link: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeeting/download/default.asp. When we tried to install NetMeeting 3.0 on Windows XP, it wouldn't install. We had to use version 2.11 instead.
- It works best with sound cards that have full-duplex capabilities. Click here for instructions on how to determine if you have a full-duplex sound card. You'll need a .wav sound file that's at least 30-seconds long to do the test. Record your own, or search your hard drive for all *.wav files that are at least 3500K in size to find a file to do the test with.
- If you can't get NetMeeting to work, try the Microsoft Messenger software instead.
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