[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
Gordon Henderson wrote:
It wastes my time, it wastes others time and it gets in the way of free solutions....While I'm not a fan of Skype for reasons mentioned - I'm not sure it's abuse... And how does it cost you money?
No but I only need to look up an IP address once - I don't need to send every packet to Skype once I know the recipient. Ignoring ISP IP changes issues here (see later)I guess one advantage of Skype is that it's also available forI really don't get that - How does it degrade anything? All Skype calls need to use a central server of some sort - how else can it know the IP address of the other party? Now Skype is quite clever in that rather than having one central "PBX" it has many - the so-called supernodes, and yes, some of these will relay audio data - just as sometimes it's neccessary for an external SIP proxy to relay audio data - all due to NAT issues.If I go SIP:blokenext door I go the a router in the exchange and back again, and the service is as good as it can get.Only it isn't because NAT will stop you. To make 2 phones work peer to peer from you to your neighbour, you'll need to have routers with working SIP ALGs (and I don't know any), and do port-forwarding. And with port-forwarding, you can only 'dial' one phone per IP address unless you change the default ports you use.Ever tried to dial an IP address from a phone?
I used to play with small tunneling servers that you could use to map any protocol into port 80 or 8080 to get through port restrictions and the NAT problem goes away when you use them - ok they're not so easy to configure by hand but they were code wise miniscule and could have been used to overcome the oversights in the SIP design (at least I think that's what they were). This may indeed be what Skype has added. Its not a huge leap in internet programming, but there does seem to be a huge amount of amnesia setting in about the internet. Simple point to point VOIP, once resolved, does not need this huge clutter of infrastructure. OK its very useful in an all singing all dancing setup but most of us dont have a full blown PABX just to call grandma.If you start with Skype you will probably be stuck with them forever as it will never be 'convenient ' to change - not a good move for you but more money in the bank for Skype -which was built on free software to start with!Skype made it easy - they worked hard to overcome NAT and firewall issues (OK, it was the p2p forerunner that did that!), but...
Tom te tom te tom
-- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html