I own a small consulting practice and run 6-8 workstations on a wireless network. I want to use Spark to facilitate communication within the workgroup, but can’t figure out how to identify the"Server’ in Account setup. Can you help?
Spark is a peer-server-peer type of a messenger. So you need a server, installed or some public server, to communicate. With such a small userbase you can search for some other solution, without a server part. If you still want to use Spark, you should install one of the xmpp/jabber servers in your network. You can use Openfire, which is made by the same developers http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/openfire/index.jsp
Then everything will depend on your network setup. After the server is setup and running you can put in Spark ‘Server’ part server computer’s IP address or computer’s name.
You could, of course, also use one of the many public XMPP (Jabber) networks that are available on the internet (e.g: jabber.org, igniterealtime.org, etc, etc).
Yep. That would be almost the same as to use AIM, Skype, MSN and other legacy networks with their own public servers. You will depend on these servers’ reliability and also on your Internet connection. Not speaking about the security issues.