Presence and IntComm WG

[Ben Teitelbaum <>]

Candace Holman 
<>
 writes:

> In this article, Tolly studied Skype peer-to-peer traffic to evaluate
> the impact on network bandwidth.  He quoted the Skype Web site on what
> peer-to-peer means: "A true [peer-to-peer] system, in our opinion, is
> one where all nodes in a network join together dynamically to
> participate in traffic routing-, processing- and bandwidth-intensive
> tasks that would otherwise be handled by central servers." Interesting
> view.  Tolly suggests that this means your Skype-enabled workstation
> may be functioning as a traffic relay for otherwise-centralized call
> processing, conferencing, voice mail, etc.  

That seems like a fair definition of "true peer-to-peer" to me.  One
of the big reasons that universities may see a lot of Skype traffic is
the use of public IP addresses.  Skype needs a share of its users to
be non-NATted to serve as media relays for hosts behind
tricky-to-traverse NATs.

-- ben

-- 
Ben Teitelbaum   http://people.internet2.edu/~ben/