Set up "internal" chat client for home use?

Question

Are there any programs that can be used to chat between Windows and Mac OS machines without a central server?

Perhaps something like Pidgin exists that can be configured for this?

I'd like to set this up at home so that everyone can talk to each other but I want it to be an "internal" chat system run through our router.

Answer 1

Pidgin can do this via the Bonjour (or "ZeroConf") protocol. read more about that at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_(software)

On the Mac your IChat has support for Bonjour built in, on Windows / Linux you can use Pidgin or other clients which support Bonjour.