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New VOIP App. Profiled

Posted by michael on Sun Sep 14, 2003 06:54 PM
from the vaguely-useful dept.
Software The Internet
sniggly writes "Cnet News.com has an interview with Kazaa co-founder Janus Friis about their latest product Skype. Skype is a p2p VOIP technology that quote '... is addressing all the problems of legacy VoIP solutions: bad sound quality, difficult to set up and configure, and the need for expensive, centralized infrastructure.' Windows only beta client available."
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  • Is it wierd that ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Snoopy77 (229731) on Sunday September 14 2003, @06:56PM (#6959862) Homepage
    Skype sounds so much like hype.

    • Re:Is it wierd that ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by flafish (305068) on Sunday September 14 2003, @06:58PM (#6959876)
      "Making modifications to the Materials or creating derivative works based on the Materials is prohibited, as is using the Materials on any networked computer environment or other website."

      Huh? Then how the heck can you use it?

  • And the major thing all VoIP was missing (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2003, @06:57PM (#6959870)
    Pop-up ads and spyware! Now when you mention the right world, it'll be replaced with an ad. "I'm going to go drink a soda" becomes "I'm going to go drink a refreshing ice-cold Coca-Cola."

  • What about spyware? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dzym (544085) on Sunday September 14 2003, @06:58PM (#6959873) Homepage Journal
    I'd only use it if I could be reasonably certain that it wouldn't be some spyware-riddled infested crapware like Kazaa itself.

    Which, since it's from the same guys as Kazaa, I would certainly expect it to be.

    Color me uninterested until accounts of user experiences pop up all over the internet with an overwhelmingly positive response.

    • Spyware renamed (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Now it's "Value-Added User-Profiling Ware"

    • Re:What about spyware? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Snoopy77 (229731) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:06PM (#6959941) Homepage
      It does claim to be ad-free. Is this synonomous with no spyware? Who knows?

    • Re:What about spyware? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dark Nexus (172808) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:24PM (#6960071)
      IIRC, it was after they'd sold Kazaa that spyware started showing up in it, or at least after they started having legal problems.

    • So long as it is non-free you'll never know the complete story on what it's doing on your computer. For all we really know, it could have spyware that goes undetected by the masses for a long time. Proprietary encryption is inhererently untrustworthy. Yet again, on practical grounds and on freedom grounds you want Free Software.

      But I would not be surprised to learn that reporters are uninterested in talking about free replacements for this. They appear to be uninterested in talking about the groundbre

      • Re:Free Software answers these points well. (Score:5, Informative)

        by orthogonal (588627) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:50PM (#6960247) Journal
        . So, if there is a free VoIP app out there (perhaps one with strong encryption too),

        SpeakFreely [speakfreely.org] is free (GPL'd) and works reasonably well even on dial-up, and offers encryption.

        (Though when I last used it a couple of years ago, the encryption was difficult to set up, as it used an external and seperately installed PGP.)

        Why didn't I use it more than just for testing? Most of the people I'd call don't use VOIP. It's the early adoption problem: "Nobody" else uses VOIP, so it's less than useful to use it.

    • They might have the goose with the golden eggs here. Their whole revenue model naturally depends on viral marketing of a free product that has basic functionality.

      Once critical mass in telecoms has been achieved companies might start setting up gateways for this; they wouldnt want everyone be able to call just everyone within their company. Also they'll want conference and call forwarding. The whole shebang. Theyd pay good money for that if it means no more long distance charges.

      If this does happen to s

  • Google Censorship (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Aliencow (653119) on Sunday September 14 2003, @06:59PM (#6959881) Homepage Journal
    I wonder how long til there's a Skype Lite out there..and how long before Google removes links to it. Grr.
  • The next wave of bell propaganda will be "If it's not copper, it causes terrorism".

    Sounds like a good idea, after all Apple's trying to make video chat easy to use for the mases... Maybe Kazaa should also implement the same specs that Apple is with their iChat.

  • teamspeak (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:00PM (#6959890)
    use teamspeak: teamspeak.org [teamspeak.org]

    has excellent sound quality, is free, has windows and linux clients and servers...
      • Chances are that behind most firewalls you are not going to encounter NAT'd and non-NAT'd systems that are going to mix. Sure as hell I'm not loading this crap on the non-NAT'd systems on a DMZ. Non-NAT'd systems anywhere else is just poor planning. So all those network will be islands where this stuff is unusable. Don't expect home users to figure out that they need a non-NAT system in order to get this to work; they think NAT is something you use bugspray on.

        In fact, going with servers is exactly wha

        • Re:teamspeak (Score:3, Interesting)

          by kbonin (58917)
          1) The automatic selection of a non NAT proxy to relay packets between NAT parties can eliminate the NAT direct connection issue completely. This could be part of the service agreement, such as "supernodes" in the Kazaa architecture being elected from service users with large pipes.

          2) Many network programmers have been playing with a clever exploit based on sequence number prediction to route back into a NAT obscured host, and this exploit works through a surprisingly percentage of deployed NAT boxes.

  • No Spyware (Score:4, Informative)

    by elid (672471) <eli.ipod@gmailEI ... minus physicist> on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:01PM (#6959906)
    From the FAQ:

    Does Skype contain any advertising or Spyware?
    No.

    Link [skype.com]

  • Party Line... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Basehart (633304) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:03PM (#6959915)
    If Kazaa is running this will my conversations be tapped into and downloaded to thousands of PC's in dorms across the nation?

  • Probably Redundant, but (Score:4, Interesting)

    by malus (6786) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:04PM (#6959925) Journal
    the telecom industry still hasn't figured out that VOIP is going to take more and more $$$ away.

    I wonder just when their lobbyists will get the US congress to outlaw or at least hamper the use of inter/intrastate VOIP?

  • Any idea what codec(s) it use? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by eddy (18759) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:05PM (#6959938) Homepage Journal

    I'd like one with vorbis and/or speex <ducks>

    • Re:Any idea what codec(s) it use? (Score:5, Informative)

      by momerath2003 (606823) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:37PM (#6960161) Journal
      From the FAQ:
      Superior Sound Quality
      Current Voice over IP and chat applications just don't measure up. Skype has created proprietary software and partnered with the best acoustic scientists in the business to deliver sound quality superior to even your fixed telephone line!

      Can I use other clients, e.g. Windows Messenger to connect to the Skype network?
      No you can't. We have crafted Skype with a proprietary technology that is not compliant with other clients at this time.

      Can I connect to a SIP server with Skype? No you can't. We have crafted Skype with a proprietary technology that is not compatible with SIP. SIP was simply not good enough for us.

      Which protocols does Skype use?
      Skype uses a proprietary protocol which we have developed. We looked at many available protocols when designing Skype and none were good enough for us. We hope you agree!

      Is the source code for Skype available? Can I have a copy?
      No. Skype is proprietary software.

      Hmm, does the word proprietary mean anything to you? ;-D

  • They found the money (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TransistorTv (617505) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:06PM (#6959945)
    According to their FAQ there is no spyware. However it suggests that there is an Skype to fixed landline phone / mobile phone feature on the horizon. So they're marketing plan is probably, create a viral product, get everyone to use it, add a valuable service ( make a cheap call to your friends mobile on the other side of the globe ). So I don't think they need the spyware this time, and the apps quality is quite good also, although I would like to see conference calls implemented. Just hope we'll get a linux client soon.

  • Migration (Score:5, Insightful)

    by trolman (648780) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:06PM (#6959948) Journal
    This is the Free version of Voice over IP that will get the masses involved. The upgrade path is Vonage [vonage.com] and company. This is a great thing. Thank you Kazaa Skype.

    The 911 argument is and will come every time that VoIP is mentioned mostly due to the huge effort that went into building the system by alot of players. Getting the physical addresses changed and databased was big and kudos to those involved. This 911 effort is now built out and everyone is mapped so now all voice services can take advantage. Do not forget that every cell phone and telephone in the USA is required by federal law to be usable to call 911 out of the box and that no service activation or account holder is required.

    Disclaimer: I use Vonage, turned off Bell South, and am a Geek.

  • Hmm alternatives (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Daath (225404) <lp AT coder DOT dk> on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:11PM (#6959978) Homepage Journal
    There are several similar applications out there, the oldest I can remember off-hand is Speak Freely [speakfreely.org] which does secure p2p.

    Right now we use Ventrilo [ventrilo.com] internally at work - it's not secure, but we can do conferencing in super quality with VERY low bandwidth! It's excellent!
    • Of the ones I've tried, I think the easiest to setup and use, along with a large selection of codecs, is TeamSpeak [teamspeak.org]. Yes, it sounds like it's designed for gaming, but I could see using this for many other applications.
    • Note speakfreely.org is no longer the Speakfreely homepage. That site contains an old version and is morphed into a commercial non-free software sales site (with no obvious link to the new site -- argh).

      Visit http://www.fourmilab.ch/speakfree/ [fourmilab.ch] for the real webpage.

      although in several months this will transfer to:
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/speak-freely- u/
      and
      http://sourceforge.net/projects/speak-freely- w/

      for the UNIX and Windows versions respectively.

      The latest version is 7.6a.

      "Speak Freely is

  • Very Misleading (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:12PM (#6959992)
    I went to the Skype page. It says you can "Make free phone calls - all over the world!".

    So I gleefully download the client and setup an account.

    Wrong. No capability to actually call anyone's telephone.
    • The ability to dial a "real" telephone is exactly what I'm waiting for.

      I want a VOIP solution for home. Not so I can call internationally, but for local conference calls that don't tie up every phone line I have. Unfortunately, most of the people I "conference" with aren't on broadband, so for this to work it needs to be able to dial multiple phone lines through a VOIP server.

      I'm sure we have the technology to do it.

  • So far it is as good as they say (Score:4, Informative)

    by Tarq666 (545095) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:14PM (#6960005)
    I've been using Skype for a couple of weeks now, and so far it is as good as they say it is. The sound quality is unbelievable compared to the other IM apps I've used. It really is almost as good as a phone. The only weird thing is it seems to take over your mic, mine is set to mute and it is muted most of the time. While using Skype however it comes back online and is usable despite still being reported as muted in the sound setup options. If nothing else, it is worth looking into if you like VoIP, if not, it also has a typing chat window as well.

    I've found that after the initial interest passes however, few people really want to use it to talk, but it is a nice replacement for MS Messenger (actually I use Trillian, but that might be kicked from the MS Messenger servers soon).

    The only problem(?) I've found so far is that initially a bunch of total strangers felt the need to talk to me, but I found the privacy options and set the app to only accept calls from people in my list, after that it was much quieter.

    • if it is kicked from MS serves shouldn't you consider using ICQ instead or some other IM? Why support them if they force you to use their client?
    • Actually, the latest version of Trillian Pro supports the new MSN Messenger protocols and they're updating the free version very soon, too.

      Woo! Hooray for Trillian!
    • Great, so they say they worked with a bunch of audio codec engineers for great sound - how much bandwidth does it use? Can you run it on modems, or do you need 128kbps upstream, or faster? If you're a P2P supernode of some sort, do you need at least 384kbps upstream bandwidth? How does it prioritize voice traffic vs. other data traffic that's less latency sensitive?

      Is it a standard codec family or not? The standard telephony codecs start with 8000 samples/second and 8 bits/sample (companded from a ~1

  • Proprietary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:19PM (#6960035)
    Odd pairing of questions and answers in the FAQ:
    Can I use other clients, e.g. Windows Messenger to connect to the Skype network?
    No you can't. We have crafted Skype with a proprietary technology that is not compliant with other clients at this time.
    Can I use Skype to send instant messages to my friends who use AOL/ICQ?
    No. AIM and ICQ uses proprietary closed protocols and make no efforts to be compatible with other IM systems. You should get your AOL/ICQ friends to use Skype instead :-)
    Did the same person write these two answers? Our proprietary protocols are good, theirs are bad. It boggles the mind....

  • Owww, my SKIN! (Score:3, Funny)

    by momerath2003 (606823) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:24PM (#6960076) Journal
    Yes, I have karma to burn. :-) VOIP!! [homestarrunner.com] Arrowed!

  • Two questions, and a suggestion for an alternative (Score:5, Informative)

    by General_Corto (152906) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:24PM (#6960077)
    Quotes relating to the two questions here are from the Skype help FAQ [skype.com].

    Q1. key exchange?

    What type of encryption is used?

    Skype uses AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), which is also used by U.S. Government organizations to protect sensitive, information. Skype uses 256-bit encryption, which has a total of 1.1 x 1077 possible keys, in order to actively encrypt the data in each Skype call or instant message.

    And the key exchange is handled by... ? AES is a symmetric cypher, so there has to be some kind of key exchange. I'd like to know what that mechanism is, or if there's just one key and they can listen in on anything. After all, who'd need spy-ware if the whole thing was insecure by design? Oh, and if they've reinvented a bunch of cryptologic libraries, look out - there will most likely be fresh exploits to be had.

    Q2. Why the lock-in?

    Which protocols does Skype use?

    Skype uses a proprietary protocol which we have developed. We looked at many available protocols when designing Skype and none were good enough for us. We hope you agree!

    Okay, so they're trying to make a buck or two here eventually, but touting a proprietary protocol as being a good thing is usually not a good sign. People buy Microsoft Office though, so I guess it's not that big a deal for the average person.

    Suggestion. Would someone (or some group) restart development on Speak Freely?

    Okay, so this is a bit of a sidetrack, but it's a valid point. There is a large body of tested code available for doing most of this kind of thing, and it's called Speak Freely [fourmilab.ch]. However, on the downside, John Walker (Mr. AutoCad to you) has decided to cease development, as of August 1 2003 (yes, that's in the past). All the code is at SourceForge, (both Unix [sourceforge.net] and Windows [sourceforge.net]) so you can go wild with it.

    Something to think about.

    • Skype, SIP, Speak Freely, NAT (Score:4, Insightful)

      by billstewart (78916) on Monday September 15 2003, @01:33AM (#6961776) Journal
      Speak Freely is a nice system, but it doesn't really address the problem of global directories and location. It looks like Skype might or might not be able to do this, but you can't really tell because it's proprietary and undocumented, at least until somebody reverse engineers it.

      NAT and Firewalls are the two fundamental problems in making things like this work - they both interfere with SIP and Speak Freely and other peer-to-peer applications in ways that are fundamentally hard to solve, and since the Skype protocols are undocumented, I'm skeptical about how useful they are at home and more skeptical about how useful they are at work, and I don't know how to set up my firewalls to let their connections through.

      As you say Key Exchange? - it's nice to know they're doing 256-bit AES, but how are they setting the keys? Microsoft's original PPTP had about seven things wrong with it, several of which were key-exchange related, rendering it totally insecure, as did 802.11's WEP. Diffie-Hellman with no authentication? D-H with some kind of SSH-like authentication persistence (User "Bob" has a different key than last time - are you sure?) Kerberos-like secret key server? How does it prevent man-in-the-middle attacks? Strong encryption doesn't help you if the keys are known.

  • No free VOIP-POTS? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Guspaz (556486) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:29PM (#6960105) Homepage
    Skype doesn't appear to have free VoIP->POTS (The ability to call regular phones from the VoIP product), so I fail to see how it's different from any of these other VoIP-only products. There's hundreds of them already...

  • Forget the popups (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vile7707 (470358) on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:34PM (#6960147)
    With this we are likely to see a new telemarketting trend if it takes off. Think about it, there's a no call list, but there's certainly no such regulations regarding this technology yet.

  • Not bad.. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by James_G (71902) <james@[ ]balmegacorp.org ['glo' in gap]> on Sunday September 14 2003, @07:40PM (#6960183)
    I just downloaded and set it up, and had a quick chat with a friend down in California. The quality is very nice and it's super easy to get working. Especially nice is the fact that, although we're both behind NAT connections, we were able to get connected with no problems at all - no configuration was necessary.

    Personally, I'd be prepared to pay a fairly reasonable amount for a tool like this, if they decided to go down that route. I live in the US but my family is all back in the UK. I currently spend in the order of about $50/mo on international calls (and that's with a low rate international plan) so something like this could save a lot of money if it was priced reasonably. I've emailed my folks back in the UK to have them download it as well so I can test the latency and see how well it works.

    The basically zero effort setup is what really makes this rule though. No worries about forwarding ports, etc. It Just Works[TM]. This may well turn out to be the killer VoIP app. Time will tell!

  • Rebel without Cause - a Voxilla Editorial (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jeffpulver (315066) on Sunday September 14 2003, @08:59PM (#6960624) Homepage
    An interesting editorial [voxilla.com] regarding this CNET story run yesterday on Voxilla.com [voxilla.com].

    Being one of the people singled out in the story the good news is that since the story ran, I spoke with Janus and Free World Dialup [pulver.com] will be working with the Skype team in interconnecting our respective networks.

    What concerns me more than this story is that last Friday it was first reported that Wisconsin
    joined [pulver.com] the growing list of US States that is taking action against VoIP.

  • VOIP gateways? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JVert (578547) <corganbilly AT hotmail DOT com> on Sunday September 14 2003, @09:13PM (#6960694) Journal
    VOIP will always be just a toy without having a seamless way to answer and make regular telephone calls.

    I've been looking around for some open source gateways for voice modem to h323. Is there really nothing like this out there and were stuck with this?

    Alot of cell providers are doing $30 /mo for unlimited internet, anyone tried to do VOIP with a smartphone?
  • Is it impossible for the open source community to develop a new app and protocol for IM. IM is the biggest thing to not happen on the internet fro users. (Micropayments interest providers, not users.)

    Give me one single robust protocol and the apps to run on it can be many and slendid. Just make sure it has everything useful from all the other IM apps out there. Even if the execution quality is poor, lay out the groundwork.

    a) decentralized
    b) secure
    c) video and audio
    d) messaging
    e) file transfer
    f) file browsing
    g) open protocol
    h) whiteboard
    i) multiple logins j) basic multiuser functionality(a la IRC)

    I am certain I am missing something. But I really didn't expect things to take this long... I know hypertext took a long time to turn into the www, but that was a bit more pioneering. This is largely a technical issue, since every feature above is offered by On of the big IM's, Skype or Waste.

    Obviously, the Major businesses are not intersested in developing an interoperable standard. However, it is the technophiles and pedestrian Internet Users who would benefit from this. So it should be seen to by us to create one protocol to implement such an awesome app. And even if you couldn't call POTS from it, it would catch on. Hell, if it was open, the major IM providers would probably build gateways to access it or eventually leave their existing systems to jion it, increasing it's already immense value.

    At least then I wouldn't need to have Trillian, ChatZilla, IIP, Waste and Shareaza all at once (and Y! Messenger, MSN Messenger, AIM and ICQ installed) just to share a few annecdotes and family photos with friends!

    Please, coder people! Help us out!

    • The OSS community already has developed an IM protocol that is decentralised, secure, open, free, does messaging and file transfer, etc. etc., known as Jabber [jabber.org].

      Check it out. Sure, it doesn't yet have audio/video support as part of the main standard, but it's based on XML so anyone can extend it with their own "many and splendid" apps, and uses transporst to connect to other messaging systems like ICQ or IRC. I recommend Exodus [jabberstudio.org] as a good basic Windows client, the Jabber website lists many more.

      As we've seen
    • Just guessing here (well, I did sniff some packets with Ethereal) but I think that the negotiation is done using an open (3rd party) host -- so the call setup is not necessarily P2P. But, the RTP packets flowing between me and my callee were definitely end-to-end, P2P.

      This is probably counting on the fact that most home firewalls use fully conic NATting.

      I'm also guessing that the signaling and media are using the same port, unlike most (all?) other VoIP protocols. This saves the desginers from having to
    • While I'll agree that the entrenched players are using 911 and service during power outages as tactics, it's still true that the landline and cellular telephone networks are designed to be immensely reliable, while the TCP/IP networks are designed to "usually work". This is one of the reasons that VOIP is so much cheaper; they don't have to make sure that every single component in the system is battery powered, for example, so that it can operate independently of the primary power grid. The telco's are requ

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