Implementing a chat system within an application in C# over a local network

My class was recently assigned a group project to be worked on over the next 5 or 6 weeks. It is largely complicated, but a specific item I need to work on involves a chat feature. To keep it simple, there will be about 5 workstations hard-wired together at an event, and they need to be able to communicate instantly.

Our idea is to just throw an executable on each of their computers, so the chat functionality needs to be built-into the application. In order to keep conversations clear and uncluttered, we are going to have a group chat as we开发者_如何学运维ll as individual chats. I have no way of displaying the GUI we are shooting for, but basically a window will be split in two. On one side a list of workstations as well as a group option will appear, and on the other the actual chat window.

As an aside, I would like to add a notification feature to it so that an alternate tab of the chat will blink, show a star, or something to that effect.

Long story long, I need ideas on how to implement this chat system within an application. It's got me stumped.

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Windows Communication Foundation would be a good choice for the network communication portion. There have been many WCF chat servers written - for example, see here and here. One of these examples could get you started.

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how about this for a starting point. If you need help code project is a good place to start if you have specific requirements

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/WCF/WCFWPFChat.aspx

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Heres a tutorial How to create a remote server by using Microsoft Visual C# that should get you started.