Groove without your own servers

I usually go climbing on Thursday, but my belaying partner is off at the IETF, so I'm making a second post here instead. Isn't it strange how schedules affect each other like that? Actually, I may be posting more on a regular basis, since team members are starting to come up with things they'd like to see out here. Today's topic, though, is my own.

 I occasionally run into some confusion (even within Microsoft) about the relationship between Groove 2007 and the Groove servers. I know both Dan and I have touched on elements of this in other posts, but it came up again recently, and I wanted to summarize. The key element is this:

 You do not need to puchase Groove Servers or contract for equivalent services to use Groove 2007.

For people who do not administer their own servers, Microsoft provisions your Groove account to a public-facing Groove Relay server that we host. You need access to the Internet (i.e., to the Microsoft servers) to initially create your account. After that, you need access to your assigned relay and the assigned relays of your contacts to use the following functions of Groove:

• Awareness of contacts not on your LAN
• Exchange of Groove data with contacts who are not logged on to Groove at the same time that you are
• Communication with Groove contacts with whom you cannot establish a direct connection.

The last point is often expressed as 'contacts not on your LAN', but if the intervening firewalls (and other traffic filtering devices) are set up to enable TCP 2492 connections in both directions, they can also be remote.

Let me know if you have any questions!