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"Peer-to-peer just eats up your bandwidth, right, it's like the old technology." This quote intrigues me the most. Is peer-to-peer really bad, and uses a lot o

"Peer-to-peer just eats up your bandwidth, right, it's like the old technology." This quote intrigues me the most. Is peer-to-peer really bad, and uses a lot of bandwidth, or is it just bad for Google?

delinka 15y ago
That's just spin to make the architecture sound like a bad idea. Yes, p2p anything uses more of your upload bandwidth than any other means of communicating on the 'net. IMO, that's not "bad" because it keeps the tubes all decentralized and more capable of routing around damage. Like it's supposed to do.
- tincholio 15y ago
  Nope, it's not about that. Skype can, if you're not running behind a NAT, make you a supernode, and in that case you will be routing calls between NAT'ed hosts "on your dime". Basically, it may be that you contribute your bandwidth to calls that have nothing to do with you. Presumably this isn't the case in the "cloud based" service, where the some server would act as a gateway between NAT'ed hosts.
  - recoiledsnake 15y ago
    They could just easily run a whole bunch of supernodes themselves in the cloud, and turn off the supernode functionality for client ip addressses. I don't see why they make it out to be a big dealbreaker.
    - tincholio 15y ago
      Of course they could, but then it wouldn't be p2p anymore, right?
      - th 15y ago
        I think it could probably still be considered p2p. Skype only falls back to using a supernode if two clients cannot form a connection on their own: http://saikat.guha.cc/pub/iptps06-skype/ http://saikat.guha.cc/pub/iptps06-skype/
        tincholio 15y ago
        If you read my original comment, that's precisely what I said. Supernodes are used to link NAT'ed hosts. If the supernodes were run by Skype on "the cloud" they wouldn't really be peers anymore, but act as servers. That's what I said in my 2nd post.
  - joshaidan 15y ago
    Does Skype actually route voice traffic through a supernode? I thought it was just routing TCP/UDP requests to open up ports behind a NAT'd router. As well, supernodes may also be handling some authentication traffic. But I'm not 100% familiar with Skype's protocol.
    - iki23 15y ago
      Yes, supernodes are used to negotiate the communication trough NATs, the method's called UDP hole punching: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=skype+nat+udp+hole+punching http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=skype+n...
r00fus 15y ago
Likely, it doesn't have anything to do with what's said, but what's unsaid... how would Google monetize that traffic/data and use it to augment their existing services? If it's all encrypted P2P and supernodes aren't centrally located but randomly distributed throughout the Skype-net. They couldn't place ads without rewriting the P2P to have more intercept points. If it is about money, then I think Chan's point does hold. Google would be buying a money losing venture that doesn't fit with their own monetization model and would take years to integrate if at all.
bad_user 15y ago
Yes it does, because in addition to your own traffic, your line also has to support the traffic made by other people - with torrents, this means uploading to other people what you've been downloading. I don't know exactly how much bandwidth Skype uses, but it has been the most reliable way of doing video-chats for me, even on the slow Internet connection I'm using.
- joshaidan 15y ago
  Yeah, but in these use cases it's using a lot of traffic because the application of file transfer, and voice/video conversations use up a lot of bandwidth. If we take, for example, an application like Bitcoin, it uses a minimal amount of data transfer because all it's doing is coordinating transactions and mining. If take a simple use case like P2P text chat, would the bandwidth costs be all that bad compared to a cloud or client-server model?

delinka 15y ago

That's just spin to make the architecture sound like a bad idea. Yes, p2p anything uses more of your upload bandwidth than any other means of communicating on the 'net. IMO, that's not "bad" because it keeps the tubes all decentralized and more capable of routing around damage. Like it's supposed to do.

tincholio 15y ago
Nope, it's not about that. Skype can, if you're not running behind a NAT, make you a supernode, and in that case you will be routing calls between NAT'ed hosts "on your dime". Basically, it may be that you contribute your bandwidth to calls that have nothing to do with you. Presumably this isn't the case in the "cloud based" service, where the some server would act as a gateway between NAT'ed hosts.
- recoiledsnake 15y ago
  They could just easily run a whole bunch of supernodes themselves in the cloud, and turn off the supernode functionality for client ip addressses. I don't see why they make it out to be a big dealbreaker.
  - tincholio 15y ago
    Of course they could, but then it wouldn't be p2p anymore, right?
    - th 15y ago
      I think it could probably still be considered p2p. Skype only falls back to using a supernode if two clients cannot form a connection on their own: http://saikat.guha.cc/pub/iptps06-skype/ http://saikat.guha.cc/pub/iptps06-skype/
      - tincholio 15y ago
        If you read my original comment, that's precisely what I said. Supernodes are used to link NAT'ed hosts. If the supernodes were run by Skype on "the cloud" they wouldn't really be peers anymore, but act as servers. That's what I said in my 2nd post.
- joshaidan 15y ago
  Does Skype actually route voice traffic through a supernode? I thought it was just routing TCP/UDP requests to open up ports behind a NAT'd router. As well, supernodes may also be handling some authentication traffic. But I'm not 100% familiar with Skype's protocol.
  - iki23 15y ago
    Yes, supernodes are used to negotiate the communication trough NATs, the method's called UDP hole punching: http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=skype+nat+udp+hole+punching http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&q=skype+n...

r00fus 15y ago

Likely, it doesn't have anything to do with what's said, but what's unsaid... how would Google monetize that traffic/data and use it to augment their existing services? If it's all encrypted P2P and supernodes aren't centrally located but randomly distributed throughout the Skype-net. They couldn't place ads without rewriting the P2P to have more intercept points. If it is about money, then I think Chan's point does hold. Google would be buying a money losing venture that doesn't fit with their own monetization model and would take years to integrate if at all.

bad_user 15y ago

Yes it does, because in addition to your own traffic, your line also has to support the traffic made by other people - with torrents, this means uploading to other people what you've been downloading. I don't know exactly how much bandwidth Skype uses, but it has been the most reliable way of doing video-chats for me, even on the slow Internet connection I'm using.

joshaidan 15y ago
Yeah, but in these use cases it's using a lot of traffic because the application of file transfer, and voice/video conversations use up a lot of bandwidth. If we take, for example, an application like Bitcoin, it uses a minimal amount of data transfer because all it's doing is coordinating transactions and mining. If take a simple use case like P2P text chat, would the bandwidth costs be all that bad compared to a cloud or client-server model?