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1. If you check "Auto Find NEXT", you will be reconnected to the next available partner after the current partner is "next"-ing you. If used in combination with the SpeedChat (auto Next (sec)) feature you will be automatically re-connected after disconnecting. Auto Next (sec) disconnects you automatically from the current partner in 5, 10, 30 or 60 seconds. Manual means you disconnect when you press NEXT.
2. $BAN_TIMEOUT = 45; means the banned user won't be able to connect to other users for 45 minutes (configurable). $NUM_REPORTS_TO_BAN = 9; sets the number of reports needed to ban a user (default is 9).
3. Usually if there are only two people online, the connection is instant. With 3 or more people it can be a bit slower due to the connection-closing and reconnection settings (configurable in the source/set to minimum in v3.0). However if you pressed "Filter", you won't be able to re-connect to the same partner for $FILTER_TIMEOUT = 15; minutes.
4. Yes, Age and Sex filter wasn't changed in the latest releases and it should work fine.
5. This is the most popular question :) All releases work fine with Red5, even the latest 3.0.
The reason we don't use 2.9 and 3.0 is because configuring JDBC is giving a hard time for most non Java developers and the server administrators. Until we cannot provide a comprehensive description (with troubleshooting) on how to prepare Red5 to use Mysql connections properly, we cannot recommend using Red5.
*2.8 does not use MySQL. If you are running in Windows environment, the Red5 solution works for version 2.9 and 3.0 too.