BeNet Communication

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Network Address Translation (NAT) is commonly used technology by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and home network routers to direct the Internet traffic to machines on your network without having to assign them each a unique IP address.

BeNet - Communication

Contacting someone with BeNet

There is two ways of contacting your friends or buisness partners, by Using Personal Information or Using IP Address.

Using Personal Information is similar to starting a chat from the buddylist in BeAIM. The information is registered in an address book can be accessed by choosing it's entry in the Bookmarks menu:

By choosing to connect through this menu, you must have filled in the fields Name, First Name and Email for at least one person:

All Bookmarks are shown in a window. From the File menu you can add, edit and delete bookmarks. By clicking the tabs Name, First Name or Email, you can sort your entries alphabetically.

The other way of connecting to a person, was by Using IP Address. This means that must know the his/her computer's IP address, something you normally don't know!

Connections are established eighter by pressing the Connect button, the connection icon in the left bottom corner or through Tools -> Connect.

If the person you are trying to connect to is not online, you will get a message telling you Connection timeout. The same message will appear if there are firewalls or NATs between you, that haven't been configured to let through this kind of communication.

Once you have chosen how to connect to the person you want to talk to, you must choose over what protocol you want to contact the person. BeNet supports two protocols: OpenH323 and BeNet/RTP-RCTP.

Accepting a connection / dial-up

When someone initiates an audio chat with you, BeNet will display an Accept call window. You can choose to accept the incoming call or decline it, by pressing Yes or No buttons.

After having accept the incoming call, a simlar window to the main window will appear on you screen. If the caller is someone you have registered as a bookmark, this window will contain information about who is calling you:

Making use of the Sound control

You can adjust the volume of your microphone by using the slider bar.

Once you are connected, you can use the slide bar of the remote to increase or decrease the volume of the other party's voice.

Also, you can mute those controls by checking the boxes. (It could be useful to mute your microphone if you talk to another person at home and you don't want the other party to listen to what you say!)

Troubleshooting your connection - firewall and NAT settings
Many networks are set up with firewalls to prevent unauthorized access to the local network and it's computers. The firewall will then block incoming and outgoing network traffic except from the data that you (or your system administrator) allow. These traffic points are called ports, and BeNet uses several of them:

- Port .... to signal and initiate chat invitations
- Ports .... to .... are used for transferring video and audio data.

If any of these ports are blocked, you will not be able to establish a connection. To solve this problem, open the ports or ask your system administrator to do it. The administrator can have his reasons for keeping them closed.

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