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John Dvorak Hypes Skype
Eh-Wire writes "John Dvorak gets all warm and fuzzy over Skype now that 30,000,000 users have registered for the free Internet telephony service. Dvorak extols the installation as, "smooth and elegant" and continues with, "Without any tweaking whatsoever it works immediately and works better than anything else I've used." Skype has appeared on the radar without pomp and fanfare and it doesn't look like it's going off screen any time soon."
If the line is noisy then desktop-to-POTS does not work. I have tried it to my parents in South Africa from USA. Desktopto-desktop works well.
Skype was written by the original authors of Kazaa, not Sharman Networks, the company who took it over and added all the malware.
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
For businesses wanting to cut costs between satellite offices, families wanting to cut long distance charges when calling between family members, etc., Skype is the natural solution.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Interestingly enough just today a vendor of ours introduced a USB phone that works with Skype.
h tm
http://www.planet.com.tw/news/productnews/UP-100.
Sean Milheim
iDREUS Corporation
In case you wondered, I am an Estonian too and proud of our most successful international project to date.
The only problem is that the protocol is proprietary and only Skype knows how it works. This seems to offend a lot of people.
There's a good paper investigating how it all works here. Interesting stuff.
- shadowmatter
Sound quality's very good. The other nifty bit about Skype is that it's bascally untappable, being peer-to-peer and strongly encrypted. Not everybody cares about that, but a lot of the early adopters talked about it quite a bit, and I suspect this helped it to reach critical mass.
MSN used to have this facility (i dont know about now as its an advert ridden piece of shit) that was provided by dialpad if i remember correctly, they even used to bundle a free 5min phone call (anywhere in the world) a week as a taster/teaser
perhaps skype isnt popular and the "hype" is wannabe marketing, anyone can print a download number on a website but it doesnt mean its the truth
Probably because you can use skype to call regular phones and it's very cheap. Also it doesn't matter where you're calling from, the rate is the same and for many popular areas (i.e. the us, western europe, australia) it's real cheap (only about $0.02 a minute).
Finally it's cross platform (does iChat work on non mac clients?) and it works very well.
if skype is actually going open-source i might use it but until i see that happening i will remain sceptical towards skype. at least SIP and H.323 are open protocols.
The only problem is that the protocol is proprietary and only Skype knows how it works.
There has been some effort put into figuring out the protocol. The control data itself is encrypted, but packet analysis to outline the behaviour of the protocol, and try to figure out just how it organises it's overlay structure has been carried out, and is potentially ongoing.
Paper here.
First off, let's just start by saying that, reading TFA, he's just an idjit. "nobody but skype knows how skype works?" Check /. from a few months ago, and you'll find a scholarly article linked on how skype works. They ain't hiding anything. Likewise for the history lesson: a lot happened between 95 and now that didn't include Net2Phone; I remember trying to patch calls on Delta3 (which sucked).
Okay, so why _does_ skype work?
1) no malware/adware. Make all the Kazaa cracks you want, but the moment skype starts screwing with people's bandwidth, it's gone. (Note to self -- if I ever get a fat up pipe, choke the upload on the skype box so it doesn't get named a supernode).
2) secure communications: encryption matters, folks. Here's a messenger and VoIP program that doesn't send stuff in the clear; it's actually useful for business comms.
3) shady network code: by routing stuff through port 80 and NAT tricks, it bypasses the vast majority of firewalls; nobody gets a message that they can't get through. Instead, it works, but voice runs through a crappy high-latency, high-failure rate TCP connection (which, by the way, has gotten better).
4) most importantly, simplicity of installation. Most of the time, Skype requires zero configuration. Folks, this is the most important UI lesson of our time. Unless your primary market is Asia, you want installation and UI to involve the fewest steps possible. Each step you add loses about 90% of your audience. Skype works from when you hit "install".
Sure, there's the problem of "how do we pay for this?"; but with distributed networking their overhead right now is a website, some coding and a server in denmark. If they can make skypeout/in pay the bills, it will be good for all; if they can't, well, on the bright side, a lot of people turned on to the technology will start looking for FOSS solutions.
Skype has done well because it "just works". Lots of VOIP applications have significant problems tunneling through NAT firewalls, especially if both ends of the connection are hidden behind NAT. Skype always works, regardless of your NAT setup, symmetric NAT, asymmetric NAT, randomized UDP port allocation, etc.. things that normally cause significant problems with VOIP. Combine that with the cross-platform capabilities, ease of installation, simple interface, and the fact that it's free.. and no wonder they've been successful. Also, regarding Yahoo/AIM/MSN voice chat features, these are an afterthought to what are mainly text-based instant messaging applications. Skype concentrates on voice, and does it well. Regarding other voice/video chat options, I've had alot of personal success with the Trillian chat client. It's interoperable with the Yahoo/AIM/MSN/iChat systems for voice/video communication, and works quite well through firewalls. One note, however: Voice chat is available in the free Trillian client, but if you want video chat, you'll have to buy Trillian Pro.
skype only uses the middleman to connect the call, not to actually transmit the whole thing
In case you didnt know, supernodes only connect the call, they do not handle the whole thing. once the connection is made there is no work for the supernode
This article rightfully points out some very icky things about Skype. User beware.
I'm in London and I chat to my sister in New Zealand frequently via Skype. Works perfectly, latency not noticable, compared to using BT/Telstra. Sound quality is much better than land line too.
Yeah, sound quality is definitely much better than telephone.
I tried it to call friends in London, and it is pretty good, but a local call has WORSE latency than a call to europe, as each packet goes to europe and back again, instead of just once.
It's not "sky" "pee", it's "skyp" "e" ("skip" "e", i.e. "skippy")
No, they just get a very good connection directly to 1 or more LD carriers, buy the minutes in bulk, and go.
I can get $0.02/minute LD at the office, if I get a T1 to the LD carrier. I get $0.02/minute at home using VoIP and Asterisk.
^H = Backspace (control character)
http://jesus.everdense.com/
If you want real privacy, use SpeakFreely with your own choice of encryption library.
It would be MUCH better to use software like Speak Freely rather than Skype. However, my understanding is that Speak Freely is a hassle to install when you are behind a hardware firewall. Skype just routes everything over port 80; no hassles.
Speak Freely is not in active development: "News 01/04/2002 - Version 7.2 released!" That's the latest version.
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No, I don't.