David Beckemeyer has some thoughts on Skype’s terms on service and that most users are unaware that their PCs might become supernodes and relay other people’s traffic.
There’s a potential PR disaster for Skype looming here. A lot of people are on metered broadband — mostly low-end products that extend the market for DSL to people not willing to pay $45/month for unmetered access. If your PC becomes a supernode, you might be paying hefty overage charges, or get capped. But if Skype lets people opt out of being a supernode, everyone will do it and the system collapses.
Funnily enough, much of the answer comes from David’s next entry: stop needing supernodes by not hiding behind a NAT box.
You can see the telco marketing pitch now — don’t use Skype, use our “managed” VoIP and get a predictable connectivity bill each month.
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In my understanding supernodes are required not just for media relay, but also for address resolution. It could be argued that supernodes do not consume much bandwidth for this function. But then, one can use dynamic DNS and lose the shackels of Skype.
Also, if the NAT/Firewall is not symmetric, then even the media relay function does not consume much bandwidth. But many countries (China?) use symmetric NAT/Firewall as a policy and they need to be serviced.
So the bottom line is that either you need supernodes and somebody has to foot the bill or you do not need Skype.
By the way, many users recognized that there is a possibility that one can be drafted for supernode functions. This was discussed in the Skype forum within the first couple of months.
Posted by: at February 27, 2005 05:21 PMIn other words, if you're not a full member of the Internet, you have to pay to become one. Otherwise, no problem!
That said, Skype's namespace and semi-closure (you generally need to become a buddy before you can call someone) might create enough VoIP spam resistance to create actual user value that a default open SIP architecture can't do. So I don't fully agree that you don't need Skype if you're a 1st class Internet member.
Posted by: at February 28, 2005 12:11 AMYou can define your VoIP service to block some numbers like you can do nowadays in e-mails, so spam would not be a major problem. beasides, if it's a payed service it is not likely that people will do that.
Posted by: at February 28, 2005 04:19 PM