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New VOIP App. Profiled

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the vaguely-useful dept.

sniggly writes "Cnet News.com has an interview with Kazaa co-founder Janus Friis about their latest product Skype. Skype is a p2p VOIP technology that quote '... is addressing all the problems of legacy VoIP solutions: bad sound quality, difficult to set up and configure, and the need for expensive, centralized infrastructure.' Windows only beta client available."

3 of 199 comments (clear)

  1. teamspeak by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    use teamspeak: teamspeak.org

    has excellent sound quality, is free, has windows and linux clients and servers...

  2. Very Misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I went to the Skype page. It says you can "Make free phone calls - all over the world!".

    So I gleefully download the client and setup an account.

    Wrong. No capability to actually call anyone's telephone.

  3. Two questions, and a suggestion for an alternative by General_Corto · · Score: 5, Informative
    Quotes relating to the two questions here are from the Skype help FAQ.

    Q1. key exchange?

    What type of encryption is used?

    Skype uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), which is also used by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive, information. Skype uses 256-bit encryption, which has a total of 1.1 x 1077 possible keys, in order to actively encrypt the data in each Skype call or instant message.

    And the key exchange is handled by... ? AES is a symmetric cypher, so there has to be some kind of key exchange. I'd like to know what that mechanism is, or if there's just one key and they can listen in on anything. After all, who'd need spy-ware if the whole thing was insecure by design? Oh, and if they've reinvented a bunch of cryptologic libraries, look out - there will most likely be fresh exploits to be had.

    Q2. Why the lock-in?

    Which protocols does Skype use?

    Skype uses a proprietary protocol which we have developed. We looked at many available protocols when designing Skype and none were good enough for us. We hope you agree!

    Okay, so they're trying to make a buck or two here eventually, but touting a proprietary protocol as being a good thing is usually not a good sign. People buy Microsoft Office though, so I guess it's not that big a deal for the average person.

    Suggestion. Would someone (or some group) restart development on Speak Freely?

    Okay, so this is a bit of a sidetrack, but it's a valid point. There is a large body of tested code available for doing most of this kind of thing, and it's called Speak Freely. However, on the downside, John Walker (Mr. AutoCad to you) has decided to cease development, as of August 1 2003 (yes, that's in the past). All the code is at SourceForge, (both Unix and Windows) so you can go wild with it.

    Something to think about.