4 ms·

Skype uses a peer-to-peer network for the majority of the connections and really only uses servers for authentication and for gateways to other services/network

by danyork 15y ago

Skype uses a peer-to-peer network for the majority of the connections and really only uses servers for authentication and for gateways to other services/networks (such as the regular phone network). A couple of years ago I wrote a brief description of the technology underlying Skype: http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2010/11/a-brief-primer-on-the-tech-behind-skype-p2psip-and-p2p-networks.html http://www.disruptivetelephony.com/2010/11/a-brief-primer-on... (I have no connection to Skype myself, but have worked in the VoIP industry for 10 years and have been writing about Skype for a good portion of that time.)

mirkules 15y ago
Cool, thanks for the link. If I understood correctly from your article, supernodes are basically Skype clients that act as distributed servers used for discovery of other clients. But I imagine authentication has to happen against a Skype server, and the clients would have to constantly communicate with that server to stay online, to get the current balance, etc... That's 40M requests at any given time. Since it's semi-distributed, and you have to pay for the service (to call a landline or internationally, for example), how does this fit into the distributed model and how do they keep track of everyone?