Skype Courts Businesses With "Skype for SIP"

Skype has made a new foray into the business front with their announcement of "Skype for SIP." This allows businesses to migrate to Skype without having to move off of their old PBX systems. "Skype has long had a business unit, but that version of its service required computers and software, which is how most users make their Skype calls. With Skype for SIP the company seeks to lower the pain barrier by requiring no hardware installation whatsoever, and the re-configuration of a SIP-enabled PBX to an established codec that presumably is within the skillset of whoever maintains it already."

Comments

Questions on Supernoding & Security

[eldavojohn]

1. Are they going to give you the option to turn off supernoding (I think this was included in version 3.0 but I don't use Skype) instead of having to work around them destroying your bandwidth?
2. Will it still punch holes in the company's firewall?
3. Is Skype still reading the machine's BIOS?
4. And what about the rumors at home and abroad of back doors for bugging on Skype? Have those rumors been quashed or does my company risk dissemination of proprietary phone calls?

Sorry guys, my very large employer gives me a big policy denial if I even try to visit Skype.com let alone download anything from them and install it. You have to address the above before you even start to gain the trust of large companies.

Re:Questions on Supernoding & Security

[eldavojohn]

are you retarded or just trolling?

Neither, I hope.

Your post indicates a very large ignorance about what SIP trunking is.

Ignorant as charged. Mind helping me out ... oh, wait, forgot this was Slashdot!

So they aren't installing software anywhere? They have made it "just work" with SIP trunking? What's their angle/revenue from something like this? And I can safely assume this means they won't be doing anything listed in my original post?

I didn't find any details on any of this in the article. You have succeeded at making me feel like an idiot but any answers directly to these questions or the previous ones would still be appreciated. Let's just assume I'm a retard so you no longer have to establish that point, ok?

Re:Questions on Supernoding & Security

[citizenr]

SIP is usually implemented in hardware, be it a PBX or a phone. "Skype for SIP" means they will offer SIP gateways for Skype = no Skype software on your end.

Re:Questions on Supernoding & Security

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't feel bad. Your questions about Skype are all valid (I am a telephone / networking specialist) and have valid support from past headlines.

I think there's a lot of people here on /. that have a knee-jerk reaction to VoIP (it's 1337!!!!11) and can't stand to see someone ask the important questions behind the 'free' service.

I'm managing a VoIP system now (Asterisk) using a fractional T1, and can attest that there are issues with VoIP, and just running blindly toward it will cause pain. Keep asking those questions.

VoIP can be a fine system, but you must be aware of the issues and the compromises it brings. At this point, it's no better or worse than other phone options, just different. I hope that answers to your questions show up so that people can make an educated choice for their service options.

Skype, see Microsoft

[guruevi]

Skype is like the Microsoft (MSN) of VoIP. It's one of the main players for home and even small business yet it isn't compatible with any of the other players. It also attempts to lock in their customers (as they don't accept or dial out to SIP) so anyone that wants to connect to anyone else needs Skype. Furthermore it's doing some dubious practices behind the doors with three-letter agencies and governments so they can't be trusted. Anyone trying to implement their protocol is either infringing on patents or otherwise will meet a DMCA.

Re:Skype, see Microsoft

[raju1kabir]

I guess my question is really what do VoIP applications like Quetcom or Twinkle have that Skype does not? Give me a good OS-X-vs-Windows-Vista reason why they are superior. I'm genuinely curious and would switch if there's a good reason to do so.

I've been using SIP-based VoIP for about 8 years, including leading some decent-sized deployments around the world, and I have never heard of Quetcom or Twinkle. So this tells you one thing already: there's a tremendous diversity of software out there in the standards-based VoIP world (an alternative theory is that it's just telling you that I'm somewhat ignorant). Diversity means you have a better chance of finding something that more closely meets your needs.

But let me tell you some of the reasons I think SIP-based VoIP would appeal to a home user who's at least a tiny bit technically inclined:

1. Vastly superior hardware. Even halfway-decent SIP phones make the best Skype-compatible hardware look like absolute garbage. A mid-range Polycom will give you a full-duplex speakerphone that will rock your world. I'm using one from here in Malaysia to connect with co-workers in Europe and the USA, and the sound is perfect. 100%-effective echo cancellation, even with my 250ms other-side-of-the-planet latency. With Skype, echo always seems to become a problem at long distances (I'm not talking about feedback you get when using your PC speakers).

2. Vastly cheaper calls. The SIP ecosystem has a huge number of competitive suppliers, many of them with rates that leave Skype in the dust. My per-minute cost for most calls is 1/3 to 1/2 of what Skype charges (and I get comparable or superior audio quality).

3. Far more customisability. With a bit of tinkering, you can set up call handling/routing to do anything you can dream of. Calls from my parents ring on my mobile at any time no matter where I'm traveling, while calls from clients are handled differently depending on where I am and what time it is. Despite traveling to 20+ countries a year, I never pay roaming fees because I can route my calls to a new prepaid SIM card minutes after buying it, just by sending my server an SMS. With Skype you can only do what Skype, and a handful of bolt-on plug-in vendors that require your PC to be on all the time, think will make them money.

4. Interoperability. I'm a freelancer, and the SIP phone on my desk integrates directly with the PBXes of three of my main clients. I'm just a 3- or 4-digit extension in their phone system, with full abilities to do whatever people sitting in the office can do on their phones. My 4th line button connects to my own Asterisk server, which in turn bridges to a bunch of other systems.

SIP trunks are already widespread and cheap

[sampas]

Verizon and ATT offer SIP trunks already, but they don't push them because they're cheaper than TDM ports. Plenty of other VOIP providers like Aretta and Vitelity also offer them. With G729 over IAX2, though, you can get even more calls down a single T1. Is this news just because Skype is doing it?

Re:SIP trunks are already widespread and cheap

[TheRaven64]

I don't really see who would use this. If you already have SIP infrastructure there are loads of companies competing for your business in SIP to POTS bridging, and you can easily use different ones for calls to different companies, and for providing phone numbers in different countries. Skype doesn't offer particularly good value for money, its one advantage over SIP providers is that it is trivial to use from behind a NAT or a firewall, something that doesn't apply to a company that already has SIP deployed internally.

Re:SIP trunks are already widespread and cheap

[FireFury03]

If you already have SIP infrastructure there are loads of companies competing for your business in SIP to POTS bridging

That's assuming the point of this is to bridge to the PSTN. Allowing SIP users to call Skype users (without going via the PSTN) would be beneficial for their customers. They don't make money from calls they aren't bridging to the PSTN, but retaining their customers means more people who might make use of the bridge.

Skype doesn't offer particularly good value for money

Nor do many very successful businesses - Skype have a big name for themselves, and this makes them the first choice for a lot of people who are too lazy to shop around for a good deal.

I often hear it commented that Skype is "easier" than SIP - this has very little to do with the protocol, and everything to do with the fact that the user doesn't have to exercise their brain and make a choice about which service provider to use. The sad thing is that when Skype give them a really sucky service (because they try to work around broken networks, with varying success, rather than forcing the user to fix it) the users conclude that "VoIP sucks", rather than "Skype sucks", and don't even bother looking at the alternatives.

its one advantage over SIP providers is that it is trivial to use from behind a NAT or a firewall, something that doesn't apply to a company that already has SIP deployed internally.

SIP is actually quite trivial to deploy through a stateful firewall and most NATs so long as *all* your calls are going through the NAT. STUN does, for the most part, tend to work reasonably. It isn't 100% reliable (as the STUN RFC admits), but it's pretty good and if it works for you once, it'll probably work for you every time. On the other hand, in cases where SIP won't work, Skype will do crazy stuff like silently tunnelling your voice over HTTP instead of making you fix your terminally broken network - this frequently leads to a crappy service with no real indication to the user that they could fix their network to make it better.

I don't know about Skype's quality of service

[Anonymous Coward]

Just browse through their forums. Their support system is almost nonexistent. The Skype software also seems relatively buggy in my experience.

I have been trying to use both SkypeOut and SkypeIn as my primary phone for almost a year now. SkypeOut is pretty decent, it's really cheap on the subscription plans and it works well. SkypeIn has been a whole different story. It has been very unreliable. Often I miss calls as Skype sends them straight to voice mail (like I'm not logged in even though I am). When this happens there is no trace of anyone calling unless they leave a voice mail. I have to log out then log back in to get the SkypeIn number to start working again. Then just stops working again after a while. It is unusable in my opinion.

I still use SkypeOut but I use a regular SIP provider for incoming calls. I probably won't be using SkypeOut much longer though because there does not appear to be any way to set your caller ID number to anything other than a SkypeIn or cellphone and I want to set it to my SIP incoming number.

Re:I don't know about Skype's quality of service

[nicklott]

Skype for business is truly awful. There is no support , their software locks users out of their accounts randomly along with their credit, it also blocks them from the business account randomly, oh and did I mention there is no way to contact skype?

I can deal with the lack of support and dropped calls in their free version, but as soon as I start paying them money I expect to at least have some level of contact with the company and people who are paying a considerable amount (and there are people spending thousands complaining in their forum) will expect personal contact. If they ever want to turn a profit I suggest they get this part of their business sorted or they are boned.

To fill in the missing info for the confused ....

[joe_cot]

SIP is the underlying protocol that makes most VOIP work. If you're using Vonage, or Asterisk, or most other VOIP systems/providers, your phone calls are getting coordinated over SIP, with the audio sent back and forth on the side. Using SIP, Cisco systems can communicate with Asterisk systems, which can communicate with Microsoft SoundPoint systems, etc. Any of those systems can connect to a "SIP Provider" to get phone service.

Skype is off in its own little walled garden, with a special protocol and codec. There have been many attempts to link Skype and SIP, and they're usually pretty painful (and proprietary).

SipToSis is a program that will allow you to have a skype "server" that will connect sip calls to skype users and vice versa. It's a bit of a pain to set up, but it walks. He also offers a set of scripts to have multiple skype clients set up, load and unload them as necessary, redirect calls, etc. It's a huge, huge hack, but it works, and is much cheaper than previous solutions of this type.

There was apparently a beta test for an Skype channel driver for asterisk. This would allow someone to setup skype as just another input type (like a Zaptel analog phone connection, or a SIP trunk), and seemed to be the ideal solution. Either it never went anywhere, or they decided they didn't want me in the beta :(

Gizmo also offers a Skype trunking solution, similar to what Skype seems to be offering. They call it OpenSky. It looks like it would work pretty well for home users, but it would get pretty steep for businesses -- and how many home users would set up friggin asterisk, besides me?

So if you're a business, OpenSky or Skype's current beta is probably what you're looking for. If you're a home user or an admin who either can't wait or has too much time on your hands, give SipToSis a try. It's a bit of a pain to set up, but it costs $2-$14 dollars one time, as opposed to everyone else, who will charge monthly or per minute.