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New VOIP App. Profiled
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."
Skype sounds so much like hype.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
Pop-up ads and spyware! Now when you mention the right world, it'll be replaced with an ad. "I'm going to go drink a soda" becomes "I'm going to go drink a refreshing ice-cold Coca-Cola."
Which, since it's from the same guys as Kazaa, I would certainly expect it to be.
Color me uninterested until accounts of user experiences pop up all over the internet with an overwhelmingly positive response.
I wonder how long til there's a Skype Lite out there..and how long before Google removes links to it. Grr.
The next wave of bell propaganda will be "If it's not copper, it causes terrorism".
Sounds like a good idea, after all Apple's trying to make video chat easy to use for the mases... Maybe Kazaa should also implement the same specs that Apple is with their iChat.
Now it's "Value-Added User-Profiling Ware"
use teamspeak: teamspeak.org
has excellent sound quality, is free, has windows and linux clients and servers...
Does Skype contain any advertising or Spyware?
No.
Link
If Kazaa is running this will my conversations be tapped into and downloaded to thousands of PC's in dorms across the nation?
the telecom industry still hasn't figured out that VOIP is going to take more and more $$$ away.
I wonder just when their lobbyists will get the US congress to outlaw or at least hamper the use of inter/intrastate VOIP?
I'd like one with vorbis and/or speex <ducks>
Belief is the currency of delusion.
According to their FAQ there is no spyware. However it suggests that there is an Skype to fixed landline phone / mobile phone feature on the horizon. So they're marketing plan is probably, create a viral product, get everyone to use it, add a valuable service ( make a cheap call to your friends mobile on the other side of the globe ). So I don't think they need the spyware this time, and the apps quality is quite good also, although I would like to see conference calls implemented. Just hope we'll get a linux client soon.
The 911 argument is and will come every time that VoIP is mentioned mostly due to the huge effort that went into building the system by alot of players. Getting the physical addresses changed and databased was big and kudos to those involved. This 911 effort is now built out and everyone is mapped so now all voice services can take advantage. Do not forget that every cell phone and telephone in the USA is required by federal law to be usable to call 911 out of the box and that no service activation or account holder is required.
Disclaimer: I use Vonage, turned off Bell South, and am a Geek.
There are several similar applications out there, the oldest I can remember off-hand is Speak Freely which does secure p2p.
Right now we use Ventrilo internally at work - it's not secure, but we can do conferencing in super quality with VERY low bandwidth! It's excellent!
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
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.
I've found that after the initial interest passes however, few people really want to use it to talk, but it is a nice replacement for MS Messenger (actually I use Trillian, but that might be kicked from the MS Messenger servers soon).
The only problem(?) I've found so far is that initially a bunch of total strangers felt the need to talk to me, but I found the privacy options and set the app to only accept calls from people in my list, after that it was much quieter.
Issues like 911 and power cuts are fairly trivial and are mainly being used as an argument against VoIP from the entrenched players.
while emergency calls are fairly rare, one still wants to have the ability to make them in the event of an emergency. getting rid of that capability would be a really dumb idea.
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Windows only beta client available."
Yes, I have karma to burn. :-)
VOIP!!
Arrowed!
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
Q1. key exchange?
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?
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.
So long as it is non-free you'll never know the complete story on what it's doing on your computer. For all we really know, it could have spyware that goes undetected by the masses for a long time. Proprietary encryption is inhererently untrustworthy. Yet again, on practical grounds and on freedom grounds you want Free Software.
But I would not be surprised to learn that reporters are uninterested in talking about free replacements for this. They appear to be uninterested in talking about the groundbreaking GNU Radio project which has been doing interesting things for a while now. So, if there is a free VoIP app out there (perhaps one with strong encryption too), I wouldn't wait for mainstream news to catch up to it.
Digital Citizen
Skype doesn't appear to have free VoIP->POTS (The ability to call regular phones from the VoIP product), so I fail to see how it's different from any of these other VoIP-only products. There's hundreds of them already...
With this we are likely to see a new telemarketting trend if it takes off. Think about it, there's a no call list, but there's certainly no such regulations regarding this technology yet.
Agreed. They probably establish some sort of grid routing, such that machines that do have ports open will accept the connections from those that don't and somehow forward packets. I'm quite pessimistic about that though, since transmit capability is always small compared to the download channel of most home broadband connections. And unlike Kazaa where throughput is the only thing that matters, here latency is a very big concern, and throughput not so much. I'd think that one of the biggest challenges with this whole routing scheme would be ensuring that packets go to where they need to within a certain timeframe, otherwise it just doesn't sound natural.
Incidentally, Nullsoft's WASTE has a similar feature. Not voip, but rather the fact that only one person in the "group" needs the ability to accept incoming connections. THe traffic supposedly will route its way through the peer group in such a way so that A and B can still communicate directly even if they are both connected only to C (due to NAT of whatever.) Or something like that.
I just downloaded and set it up, and had a quick chat with a friend down in California. The quality is very nice and it's super easy to get working. Especially nice is the fact that, although we're both behind NAT connections, we were able to get connected with no problems at all - no configuration was necessary.
Personally, I'd be prepared to pay a fairly reasonable amount for a tool like this, if they decided to go down that route. I live in the US but my family is all back in the UK. I currently spend in the order of about $50/mo on international calls (and that's with a low rate international plan) so something like this could save a lot of money if it was priced reasonably. I've emailed my folks back in the UK to have them download it as well so I can test the latency and see how well it works.
The basically zero effort setup is what really makes this rule though. No worries about forwarding ports, etc. It Just Works[TM]. This may well turn out to be the killer VoIP app. Time will tell!
Having been born with the renegade gene myself, it's just hard to hate a company that admits one of it's main goals is to create "a major disruptive impact."
computerlady - a brand new Slash-daughter - alone, but no longer invisible, in the
SourceForge has an amazing feature called CVS that stores source code.
Just guessing here (well, I did sniff some packets with Ethereal) but I think that the negotiation is done using an open (3rd party) host -- so the call setup is not necessarily P2P. But, the RTP packets flowing between me and my callee were definitely end-to-end, P2P.
This is probably counting on the fact that most home firewalls use fully conic NATting.
I'm also guessing that the signaling and media are using the same port, unlike most (all?) other VoIP protocols. This saves the desginers from having to worry about keeping two NAT bindings alive.
Once critical mass in telecoms has been achieved companies might start setting up gateways for this; they wouldnt want everyone be able to call just everyone within their company. Also they'll want conference and call forwarding. The whole shebang. Theyd pay good money for that if it means no more long distance charges.
If this does happen to skype (with its proprietary protocol), and it can easily happen because it's easy to use, spyware would poison a large portion of the virality of the marketing campaign, people wouldn't trust it. The very fact that kazaa's revenue model is ad- and soyware driven doesn't mean they'll port that pathetic model to their next venture. But the stench clings.
And if its not the next killer ap, well, they can always consider their options :)
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
I've been using this app for about 2 days now, and initial thoughts... this thing kicks some major ass. I've played with the MSN voice thing, and the yahoo one, and the quality of this is astounding.
I spent like 3 hours chatting with a friend in England yesterday. Other than a couple of program crashes (and it is beta software remember) we were able to talk as easily as being on a telephone.
This is astounding to me considering she's on a crappy dialup connection.
I'd be intersted to hear how dialup-dialup connections work. Oh, and if there is any ad or spyware included, its brand new stuff Ad-Aware doesn't know about it.
An interesting editorial regarding this CNET story run yesterday on Voxilla.com.
Being one of the people singled out in the story the good news is that since the story ran, I spoke with Janus and Free World Dialup will be working with the Skype team in interconnecting our respective networks.
What concerns me more than this story is that last Friday it was first reported that Wisconsin
joined the growing list of US States that is taking action against VoIP.
VOIP will always be just a toy without having a seamless way to answer and make regular telephone calls.
/mo for unlimited internet, anyone tried to do VOIP with a smartphone?
I've been looking around for some open source gateways for voice modem to h323. Is there really nothing like this out there and were stuck with this?
Alot of cell providers are doing $30
Give me one single robust protocol and the apps to run on it can be many and slendid. Just make sure it has everything useful from all the other IM apps out there. Even if the execution quality is poor, lay out the groundwork.
a) decentralized
b) secure
c) video and audio
d) messaging
e) file transfer
f) file browsing
g) open protocol
h) whiteboard
i) multiple logins j) basic multiuser functionality(a la IRC)
I am certain I am missing something. But I really didn't expect things to take this long... I know hypertext took a long time to turn into the www, but that was a bit more pioneering. This is largely a technical issue, since every feature above is offered by On of the big IM's, Skype or Waste.
Obviously, the Major businesses are not intersested in developing an interoperable standard. However, it is the technophiles and pedestrian Internet Users who would benefit from this. So it should be seen to by us to create one protocol to implement such an awesome app. And even if you couldn't call POTS from it, it would catch on. Hell, if it was open, the major IM providers would probably build gateways to access it or eventually leave their existing systems to jion it, increasing it's already immense value.
At least then I wouldn't need to have Trillian, ChatZilla, IIP, Waste and Shareaza all at once (and Y! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM and ICQ installed) just to share a few annecdotes and family photos with friends!
Please, coder people! Help us out!
Looks good for your age..
Actually, the latest version of Trillian Pro supports the new MSN Messenger protocols and they're updating the free version very soon, too.
Woo! Hooray for Trillian!
sig:- (wit >= sarcasm)
The Hacker's Guide To The Kernel: Don't panic()!
Granted there are still situations where this may work well for some; calling someone who is already on-line, a co-worker perhaps, or quickly calling someone overseas and asking them to get on-line.
When they have the ability to connect you to a "regular" telephone there will be charges -- some local telco will want their termination fees after all... And now, suddenly, without ads and spyware, they need billing systems, support, etc. And they are suddenly competing with folks like Vonage and capturing the attention of regulators, again like Vonage.
On the whole, however, the *masses* don't care that their calls are carried via P2P VOIP or some other technology. They'll put up with a little work or invonvenience to get a deal on rates so long as the quality is there (and I'll give these folks the benefit of the doubt on that) but most folks generally aren't at their machine 24x7 to make and receive calls.
On the other hand, they already have a service that is always on, requires no waiting for a system and software to start, requires no presence awareness/coordination, that works well, and has a very simple interface. (i.e. Their existing landline or mobile phone.)
You may have to pay for services like Vonage, but it's a good deal and once it's set up it "just works" from what I understand. It looks like AT&T is going to affer a similar service as well.
Thus, in the end, I think this this will be mostly used by folks avoiding expensive international tolls, or co-workers from time-to-time, but not much beyond that.
The OSS community already has developed an IM protocol that is decentralised, secure, open, free, does messaging and file transfer, etc. etc., known as Jabber.
Check it out. Sure, it doesn't yet have audio/video support as part of the main standard, but it's based on XML so anyone can extend it with their own "many and splendid" apps, and uses transporst to connect to other messaging systems like ICQ or IRC. I recommend Exodus as a good basic Windows client, the Jabber website lists many more.
As we've seen with the impending MSN shutout, we use proprietry IM systems at their owner's leisure. The sooner there's an open and decentralised IM standard the better, regardless of whether it's Jabber or not.
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NAT and Firewalls are the two fundamental problems in making things like this work - they both interfere with SIP and Speak Freely and other peer-to-peer applications in ways that are fundamentally hard to solve, and since the Skype protocols are undocumented, I'm skeptical about how useful they are at home and more skeptical about how useful they are at work, and I don't know how to set up my firewalls to let their connections through.
As you say Key Exchange? - it's nice to know they're doing 256-bit AES, but how are they setting the keys? Microsoft's original PPTP had about seven things wrong with it, several of which were key-exchange related, rendering it totally insecure, as did 802.11's WEP. Diffie-Hellman with no authentication? D-H with some kind of SSH-like authentication persistence (User "Bob" has a different key than last time - are you sure?) Kerberos-like secret key server? How does it prevent man-in-the-middle attacks? Strong encryption doesn't help you if the keys are known.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Is it a standard codec family or not? The standard telephony codecs start with 8000 samples/second and 8 bits/sample (companded from a ~12-bit range, so it's better than a linear 8 bits), which gets you 4kHz audio, and then use compression algorithms that shrink this either by using simple predictive models or using complex models of human speech sounds which let you get much tighter compression at the cost of lots of CPU. It's easy to get better-than-telephones sound with no CPU horsepower if you use enough bandwidth, an 11kHz sample rate for 5.5kHz audio (natural for PC sound cards) instead of 8kHz, or 16kHz samples, or (less important) more bits per sample, and you could knock the bit rate in half with simple ADPCM compression, or you could get somebody to do a fancier voice compression model if you wanted. Silence Suppression typically cuts average bit rate by about 50%, but your upstream bandwidth needs to be big enough for the maximum rate.
Transmission overhead turns out to be an annoying problem for low bit rate codecs - IP plus UDP plus RTP is about 40 bytes of header, which if you really transmitted 8000 1-byte samples per second would kill you. The common codecs typicall accumulate a string of 10ms or 30ms of sound samples, compress them to a shorter string, and therefore put out 33-100 packets per second, but this still means that if you're not careful, that 8kbps codec will really need 22kbps to transmit (and if you are careful, it'll usually need about 10.5kbps) - so using it on modems is tricky.
A note about encryption overhead - if you take the simple approach and just use IPSEC, you not only have to wrap a layer of IPSEC headers around your packets, you also don't get to use the Compressed RTP (at least on Cisco routers), and you sometimes have to add another layer of headers to make NAT Traversal work. It's really ugly. On the other hand, if you've built encryption into your voice protocol, it's essentially zero overhead - you've got a few setup messages at the beginning of a session to do key exchange, and then the encryption just changes the compressed-voice bits to different encrypted-compressed-voice bits, but doesn't change the number of bits.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks