3 ms·

Are Skype relying on third parties with no contractual relationship for an essential component of the network?

• ars 16y ago
  Yup. But they do mention it when installing. You can also disable it. If you are not firewalled or NATd you are a supernode automatically - on the plus side you get better sound quality for voice calls. Normally the bandwidth used is pretty low since you are mostly forwarding text messages. When they said mega-supernodes they meant machines controlled by them that do nothing else, and are on high bandwidth connections. (My bet is lots of amazon instances.)
  • yellowbkpk 16y ago
    I've looked around for the ability to turn off supernode on Linux and Mac clients for a while but have come up empty. Do you know which section of the preferences/settings it's supposed to be in?
    • NikkiA 16y ago
      I don't think there's a UI element for it, but you have to add a registry key, see here: https://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/SkypeConfiguration#Disable_Supernode https://www.cs.uwaterloo.ca/twiki/view/CF/SkypeConfiguration...
      • pyre 16y ago
        How pray-tell, does a Windows registry entry disable super node functionality on Linux and/or MacOSX?
        • neworbit 16y ago
          Well barring effective virtualization, booting into Windows disables supernode functionality on Windows and MacOSX in the same sense that a brownout does
• michaelbuckbee 16y ago
  Skype's EULA pretty clearly states that this is the case: 3.3 Utilization of Your Computer: Skype Software may utilize the processor and bandwidth of the computer (or other applicable device) You are utilizing, for the limited purpose of facilitating the communication between Skype Software users.