Microsoft Using Linux To Optimize Skype Traffic

An anonymous reader writes "A security researcher believes that Microsoft has overhauled Skype, with thousands of Linux boxes serving as the 'supernodes' that route calls between users of the voice-over-IP service. Kostya Kortchinsky of Immunity Security 'discovered the Linux supernodes using a Skype probing technique he and colleague Fabrice Desclaux first demonstrated in 2006,' according to Ars Technica. The drastic infrastructure change doesn't affect the peer-to-peer nature of the calls between Skype users."

Comments

Re:Eh? This is how Skype works?

[Eponymous Coward]

They aren't irrelevant, but they don't have the influence they once did. XBox hasn't made them much money, but it's probably their most respected consumer product. Microsoft is really just an Office + Windows company selling to corporations these days. They are interesting in the same way that Oracle or Cisco are interesting.

They have a huge pile of cash, so you can never count them out, but I would say their bullying is over (except for patent trolling) because they have lost their best talent. They are trying to compete with a B-level team.