Chats seem to have come and go over the years both on this site and a few other places but these days it seems they are all done/gone. I've been talking about setting up & hosting a chat but don't know what to look at. I'd like a good, solid, robust chat service that's FREE that I would self-host. Users would need to register and guests welcome as well. Ideally THIN and LIGHTWEIGHT - last thing anyone needs is something else to suck up system resources. I suppose Java would be OK but if there was something purely web-based or that doesn't need an install that would be more ideal. Open to ideas if anyone has any... Thx.
Thanks! Not looking for a CLIENT... Looking to actually build and host a chatroom... Many of the sites out there 'host' on their own servers and network, etc. I'd also like to avoid that - I want to host on my own network and hardware so that it's private, records are private and I can control everything.
If he does that than its going to cost him a little money to setup the server and that's a problem because he's put emphasis on setting it up for FREE. Thus, unless I misunderstood him...he's looking to setup his own chat server without costing him a penny unless he was saying he's willing to eat the cost (e.g. purchasing the equipment/software) but it will be FREE for traders to use.
you mean so your conversations are private, not everyone else's. Hard to have confidence in privacy when you keep on insisting so hard that it must be hosted on your machines and network. You can control everything? What else do you want to control even when you are admin of a chat that is hosted on a different server? Sorry but your argument stinks, at least its pretty weird.
thats exactly where OP is contradicting himself, he wants it free but has issues to have another server host it for free for him. Hosting on his machine will ALWAYS cost him, not sure how much, depending on traffic, time and cost of maintenance, ...
Everyone of the private chat networks for traders that I know and hosted by a trader or business...its FREE to the trader (chat members) because the trader is using the service of the business (e.g. Bloomberg Professional host its own private chat network for its subscribers) or is employed by the business or is an individual professional trader communicating privately with other professional traders (usually a handful of folks) that don't want any public eyes or regulation agencies snooping around the discussions in the private chat. Unfortunately, there's been an increasing number of private trader chat room abuse lately that global regulators have been spending more time investigating the past few years that has resulted in heavy financial fines, job firings and even criminal convictions (jail time). My guess is that they were thinking its easier to hide or destroy conversations when its not hosted on someone's else server that's not their own servers/network. In fact, many well known financial institutions (e.g. JP Morgan Chase, UBS) were banning their own private trader chat network because traders were using multidealer chat rooms to manipulate prices in many global markets including insider trading. I've been reading online articles about penalties (fines) as high as 1.5 billion dollars on institutional firms (e.g. UBS) levied on them by regulators just on the issue of how institutional traders, floor traders, hedge funds were NOT doing enough to prevent the abuse by its traders that were manipulating prices after planning such with each other in these private chat rooms. Further, I was talking to a close friend that is an institutional trader in Montreal and he expressed concerned that regulators may be "snooping" in on his private chat conversations with other professional traders globally. Yeah, I already know he's under tremendous amounts of pressure to "perform" and he admitted that these private chat rooms setup exclusively for institutional traders are just seeds for "abuse". I'm not suggesting that's what you're interested in doing. Instead, I'm suggesting that if you want to "manage" you're own private chat server and network for traders...you're going to need to play big brother and monitor what's being discussed by users of your private network because you'll be liable for any abuse by those using your "private network". Being the big brother is not an easy task and you may want to think very carefully about going down that route. [Today's digital technology has allowed more and more professional traders to communicate with each other globally. Conversations that has proven to have an impact on global markets accordingly to the investigations by regulatory agencies. This puts a spin on what traders are doing to get that next big Christmas bonus and big promotion]
I think something's being misinterpreted. Winston has a gazillion servers. That's not an issue. He's looking for the platform. I suggested IRC because when I worked for Microsoft that's what we used. The client runs on the user's machine and the host runs on the server. All the host does is provide the avenue to let the two meet. Each client acts as a server but its access can be controlled by the host via little hammer (whack them out temporarily) or big hammer (ban their IP).
if he truly has a "gazillion" servers then I am the more perplexed why he is not aware of at least a dozen different chat server solutions that I can come up with having only a single server at my disposal. It just does not sound completely transparent what he is attempting to do, and if memory serves me well then he was asking the very same question couple months - a year or so ago.