Need direction in creating a voice chat application

Question

I want to create a voice chat application as a part of a project. However, i am totally lacking direction regarding the programming language to use, the technologies involved.

Can somebody please guide me as to how i should proceed ?

Here are the features that i require :

• user to user voice chat
• ability to chat in conference (more than 2 users)

How do i connect one user to another ? How to handle voice transmission ? How to effectively route packets in a conference ?

I'm thinking the most probably langauge to develop this in would be Flash. Any suggestions are welcome.

Answer 1

There are a few things to research:

• APIs for this were added to AIR 2.0 ( http://cookbooks.adobe.com/post_SimpleAudioRecorder___Microphone_Access_API_AIR_2_-16746.html ). I believe you can combine them with socket classes for Peer to Peer communication to create a Skype like chat app.
• Look into a tool like Ribbit ( http://developer.ribbit.com/ )
• Look into using a server side software to handle audio. Red5 is a popular open source one. ( http://red5.org/ ). Flash Media Server is an Adobe Option ( http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediaserver/ )

Answer 2

To get a good video chat, you should use UDP P2P communication. There is only few solutions ready for that, but Adobe Stratus 2 is one.