Looking for a recommendation for an App or bit of SW. Currently the kids play online games on PCs located in different parts of the house. This results in them either shouting instructions across the house at each other or using skype on their IPads. I do not want the shouting nor using all my data allowance so I am looking for a VOIP that will just go across the WIFI and not the internet. Is there anything out there as I can’t seem to find anything.

As I understand it Skype should try and connect directly between the two machines rather than go across the internet. You will need the internet to maintain the connection but not for the bulk of the traffic. And in any case, if they are playing online games I would suspect that the traffic for the game itself it quite large. Skype itself should only use about 1MB/minute on a good connection and less on a poor one

edit: or of course…

Search for P2P or Peer to Peer messaging or chat. Should find lots of options.

Skype data packets aren’t big, how low is your data allowance?

Just realised you mean video calls not just instant messages, d’uh. Too early for me.

VOIP – so I understood mostly voice chats rather than video.

What is your data allowance ? If you have multiple kids with tablets then I doubt that Skype is using massive amounts of data compared to downloading films/etc.

If they are playing online games, can they not talk to each other on headsets ?

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/3279450.htm

Edit: too slow 🙁

[edit]Removed suggestion of disabling 3g because after my second swig of coffee I realised what you were actually asking.

I think Ventrilo does this; you can install a server locally on your LAN for them to connect to. I think. Or try Teamspeak.

Thanks all. Seems Skype is supposed to go peer to peer as someone suggested. Anyone think of a way of checking this? Just to clarify the games they are playing are not internet games, just across the LAN. ie Minecraft and another called Terarria.

What’s your data allowance? This is the important part.

FWIW I seriously doubt they will be coming anywhere close to doing in your data unless you have a ridiculously low limit.

Thanks all. Seems Skype is supposed to go peer to peer as someone suggested. Anyone think of a way of checking this?

you can use wireshark but it will be painful if you’ve never used it before. If I get a moment this afternoon I’ll take a look, but I would really take a look at what your data allowance is as if you are give only it would take 100s of hours to run up a large amount of traffic

Something using wifi direct.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.androidintercom&hl=en_GB

for example. (never used this btw)

it means using an android phone like a walkie-talkie

Data allowance? Are you still on dial up?

Yup ventrilo can be setup for LAN hosting.

Just checked and the bulk of the Skype traffic appears to stay within your local network as far as I can see assuming that you have some sort of broadband router in your house. For me that was going between my desktop computer and my phone running Skype over WiFi

ymmv as they say so if you are concerned about how much of your allowance you are using take a look at how much you have used then let them use Skype for a bit but as far as I can see nearly all the traffic is local

Holy thread resurrection Batman. Just to let you know Ventrillo is the way ahead and very easy to setup..Thanks for the pointers.

Anyone have any experience of the bluetooth peer to peer apps?