Skype under Fedora-10

[Veli-Pekka Kestilä]

Tim wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-06-07 at 18:05 +0300, Veli-Pekka Kestilä wrote:
>   
>> That feature actually is one which is missing from sip, if someone
>> would make opensource voip-solution which would be secure and use p2p
>> as transport we could maybe see real alternative to skype. Truth is
>> that there is a lot of computers which cannot act as a server and
>> no-one will want to host voip server for free (in large scale) so that
>> two of these behind nat computers could talk with eachother.
>>     
>
> They don't have to do that.  The only peer-to-peer thing really
> necessary is the two sides of the conversation.  You don't need to have
> a mass of peer-to-peer strangers connected together, this isn't file
> sharing.
>   
It's needed for cases of both ends having nat-connections. You can try 
other possibilities like STUN which Kevin mentioned, and I remember 
reading Skype trying it first before resolting the use of 3rd party 
routing of call. But sometimes STUN just doesn't work and some firewall 
operators actively fight against it.
> There could quite easily be a simple server installed on ISPs, like they
> (nearly) all have mail servers, that simply managed the locating of
> their users online (status and IP), then the clients direct connect
> together.  i.e. The server has a very small, comparatively speaking,
> workload.
>
> There's no need for there to be abusing individuals as a server for all
> and sundry.  And it'd be far better for everyone if ISPs ran a few more
> servers, like VOIP and instant messaging, which weren't client
> dependent.
>
>   
As a partial owner of ISP i can tell you that if somone isn't paying for 
that server it's not going to happen. For us it would only mean one new 
server, but with bigger operators it could easily mean couple of them in 
some kind of cluster and atleast one or two guys keeping it running. Of 
course then would come goverment demanding for surveilance access.

But as an idea it's nice and would make sense if there was way to make 
it for free to ISP's. In here it would be because of small margins from 
fierce competition and what I read in other parts of the world ISP's who 
have monopolies for their area probably don't want to offer anything 
which would eat into their profits.

-vpk