Hello,
NetMeeting will support multi-party connections.
I've used NetMeeting before and thought it was a good and
basic way to confrence. Here is additional information;
http://www.meetingbywire.com/NetMeeting101.htmDingotel and SkyPe do VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocal).
Slow connections (dial-uppers) will experiance delayed signals
for several seconds, so if your on a dial-up it will not be
worth the investment. I have not used Dingotel or SkyPe so I
can't provide any experianced insight. Doing P2P conferenceing
is much better than using a relay server, such as yahoo or
MSN (as you pointed out using realy servers are "horrific").
I would be carefull with some of these VoIP software packages
however, you never know what they have hidden in their
software code - adware, malware, etc., but again I have not used any of the forementioned software packages.
I hope this helps.
Jim