Skype, the voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and video program, is very popular. It’s also pretty bad software. Really, what were you thinking Ballmer when you wrote a check for $8.5-billion for Skype? You do know that not even two years ago Skype was valued at $2.75-billion right?
Here’s the simple truth. Skype has historically had many software problems and late last year the entire Skype network crashed for several days, we can pretty count on these kind of problems showing up on a regular basis.
You see, Skype is a modified peer-to-peer (P2P) network application. Skype started as a variation of the now outdated Kazaa P2P file-sharing program. When you make a Skype call your voice and video is encoded with a 256-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption key and then passed from one Skype PC to another between you and whomever you’re calling.
Yes, that’s right. When you call someone on Skype or show your, ahem, naughty bits, to your boy-friend or girl-friend while sexting, they’re passing through any number of PCs from you call him or her. Doesn’t that make you feel good and secure?
If you’re a Skype user your PC may not just be an ordinary peer though, but it may also be working as a Super Node (SN) as well. When you login to Skype, you’re probably not logging directly into the Skype login-servers but into a SN instead. The SN in turn, stores your Skype name, your e-mail address, and an encrypted version of your password.
If you have a PC with a high-bandwidth connection and you’re not using a firewall or network address translation (NAT), odds are good your PC will be picked to be used as a SN. Don’t want any part of that? Check out the Skype IT Administrator Guide (PDF Link) on how to avoid being a SN.
Did you notice something else though? For Skype to work, it needs access to insecure PCs. Seriously, who runs a PC on the Internet without a firewall in 2011? Only idiots. With no idiots, there are not enough SNs, and Skype falls apart.
Now, Skype automatically and constantly “self-heals” its network as users go off and on the service and smart users secure their PCs properly. Why do it this way? The idea behind all this is to make Skype extremely scalable without requiring the company to maintain a large, read expensive, server infrastructure. Technically, this worked well for Skype until December 22, 2010.
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