41 ms·

Are they no longer using SIP at all?

douche 11y ago
I can't imagine that they would dump the SIP protocols that they are using now for Lync/Skype For Business - there's an enormous amount of work invested both by them, and by Plantronics, Avaya, Cisco, and all the other VOIP-phone vendors. As of Skype for Business 2015, it's still SIP - S4B is more of a marketing maneuver than a real technical change. On the server side, applications built to integrate with Lync 2013 work seamlessly with S4B. The S4B client is just a reskin of the Lync 2013 client - it's a minor-minor revision number change, and still calls itself Lync 2013 on its About dialog.
- dorfsmay 11y ago
  Is Skype using SIP? I thought they were using their own proprietary protocol?
  - douche 11y ago
    That's the confusion... Consumer Skype is still, to my knowledge, what it has always been. However, Lync has been rebranded as Skype for Business. It's still Lync, and uses all of the same SIP-based protocols that it always has, since it was called Office Communicator. I still haven't quite figured how they are going to mash the two together, or if they actually are going to. It is confusing having two completely different Skype clients on your desktop.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      It honestly makes no sense whatsoever. It caused massive confusion in the business I last worked in as users constantly opened Skype, and not Skype for Business.
    - jcrawfordor 11y ago
      This is a mistake I've seen MS make twice. First, it was OneDrive and OneDrive for Business - they're actually completely different products, and you might remember the outcry around here a while back when it was discovered that OneDrive for Business adds metadata to XML files. A lot of people didn't get what product was really being discussed. Now it's Skype and Skype for Business. S4B is a steaming heap compared to Skype in terms of features, and I think in the end consumers are going to end up confused and angry about this new Skype that doesn't have the features of the old one.
      - douche 11y ago
        Skype for Business is a completely different product than regular Skype. I'm going to bitch until they give some sort of API access to LyncOnline/Office 365, because it makes my day job writing extensions for it more difficult, but as an IM platform and Gotomeeting-esque screensharing tool it's actually quite good. It's not terrible as a softphone, either, if you are making calls between or within federated Lync/Skype environments. Administering and deploying it is kind of a PITA (just look at some of the architecture diagrams[1], or try to set it up as an on-prem/cloud hybrid...), which is why Office 365 is really taking off, but I'd say it compares favorably to IBM's out-to-dry SameTime, or any of the XMPP variants I've encountered. [1] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398095.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398095.aspx
        jcrawfordor 11y ago
        That's what I'm complaining about, MS keeps taking two different products and giving them the same name. :) I have major problems with Lync/S4B's IM implementation. The most obvious are the lack of store-and-forward for messages to offline users and the poor to nonexistent support for persistent chat rooms (my solution: a "conference call" that's been going for weeks without anyone having turned on the audio). It's also very bad at handling changes in network connectivity, docking/undocking my laptop drops me from IM for at least a couple of minutes and often requires a restart of S4B. I will agree that the softphone support is pretty good, but it's non-interoperable with our VoIP environment so it goes almost entirely unused. Unfortunately this has been the case everywhere I've worked except for one place that had WebEx and Cisco phones - those would get along with each-other sometimes if you were lucky, but it wasn't very reliable. My point is that I've found the office communications landscape to be a terrible backwater of technology. I dislike Slack but I can see why it's taking off - most of the on-prem options for IM fail at basic IM features while adding VoIP/telepresence options that are non-interoperable and complex to implement and support. It says something that my employer has multiple FTEs dedicated to scheduling and setting up the videoteleconference rooms, because it takes a specialist just to make a call these days.

I can't imagine that they would dump the SIP protocols that they are using now for Lync/Skype For Business - there's an enormous amount of work invested both by them, and by Plantronics, Avaya, Cisco, and all the other VOIP-phone vendors. As of Skype for Business 2015, it's still SIP - S4B is more of a marketing maneuver than a real technical change. On the server side, applications built to integrate with Lync 2013 work seamlessly with S4B. The S4B client is just a reskin of the Lync 2013 client - it's a minor-minor revision number change, and still calls itself Lync 2013 on its About dialog.

dorfsmay 11y ago
Is Skype using SIP? I thought they were using their own proprietary protocol?
- douche 11y ago
  That's the confusion... Consumer Skype is still, to my knowledge, what it has always been. However, Lync has been rebranded as Skype for Business. It's still Lync, and uses all of the same SIP-based protocols that it always has, since it was called Office Communicator. I still haven't quite figured how they are going to mash the two together, or if they actually are going to. It is confusing having two completely different Skype clients on your desktop.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    It honestly makes no sense whatsoever. It caused massive confusion in the business I last worked in as users constantly opened Skype, and not Skype for Business.
  - jcrawfordor 11y ago
    This is a mistake I've seen MS make twice. First, it was OneDrive and OneDrive for Business - they're actually completely different products, and you might remember the outcry around here a while back when it was discovered that OneDrive for Business adds metadata to XML files. A lot of people didn't get what product was really being discussed. Now it's Skype and Skype for Business. S4B is a steaming heap compared to Skype in terms of features, and I think in the end consumers are going to end up confused and angry about this new Skype that doesn't have the features of the old one.
    - douche 11y ago
      Skype for Business is a completely different product than regular Skype. I'm going to bitch until they give some sort of API access to LyncOnline/Office 365, because it makes my day job writing extensions for it more difficult, but as an IM platform and Gotomeeting-esque screensharing tool it's actually quite good. It's not terrible as a softphone, either, if you are making calls between or within federated Lync/Skype environments. Administering and deploying it is kind of a PITA (just look at some of the architecture diagrams[1], or try to set it up as an on-prem/cloud hybrid...), which is why Office 365 is really taking off, but I'd say it compares favorably to IBM's out-to-dry SameTime, or any of the XMPP variants I've encountered. [1] https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398095.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398095.aspx
      - jcrawfordor 11y ago
        That's what I'm complaining about, MS keeps taking two different products and giving them the same name. :) I have major problems with Lync/S4B's IM implementation. The most obvious are the lack of store-and-forward for messages to offline users and the poor to nonexistent support for persistent chat rooms (my solution: a "conference call" that's been going for weeks without anyone having turned on the audio). It's also very bad at handling changes in network connectivity, docking/undocking my laptop drops me from IM for at least a couple of minutes and often requires a restart of S4B. I will agree that the softphone support is pretty good, but it's non-interoperable with our VoIP environment so it goes almost entirely unused. Unfortunately this has been the case everywhere I've worked except for one place that had WebEx and Cisco phones - those would get along with each-other sometimes if you were lucky, but it wasn't very reliable. My point is that I've found the office communications landscape to be a terrible backwater of technology. I dislike Slack but I can see why it's taking off - most of the on-prem options for IM fail at basic IM features while adding VoIP/telepresence options that are non-interoperable and complex to implement and support. It says something that my employer has multiple FTEs dedicated to scheduling and setting up the videoteleconference rooms, because it takes a specialist just to make a call these days.