Wills
join:2001-01-03
Port Charlotte, FL
| Who hates Skype?
Who are the ones running to him claiming they hate skype?
Skype's competitors? The other VoIP companies that make you pay?
Is it the ISP's who are finding out, with all this bandwidth intensive software, that their networks aren't up to par?
Is it greed hungry ISP's such as Shaw and others who know they're networks aren't up to par, yet would rather limit customers access than spend a small amount of money to properly implement their service?
Is it network admins that can't, for some reason block Skype and need to buy a box dedicated to doing just that?
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I have a shaved head, a goatee, and tatoos. Don't you realize the rules don't apply to me. |
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brooklynman4
join:2004-09-07
Brooklyn, NY | I guess skype wants to have a nice backgraound check when someonme aquires them  |
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LilYoda
Feline with squirel personality disorder
Premium
join:2004-09-02
Mountains
| reply to Wills
Yeah, skype has a tendency to run on any TCP port, so it's hard to block in corporate networks. And it sucks bandwidth for private employee use instead of being available for corproate applications.
Cisco developped a specific extension to the NBAR service to finally be able to block skype. But I think it got bypassed by skype again... |
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IOddity
join:2005-06-06
Rio Dell, CA
| Well there are some nice new toys out there that block traffic not by port but by packet content itself. It 'sniffs' the beginning of each packet, and decides what needs to be done from there. This type of checking is even usable on very large amounts of traffic and very efficient. I watched one at work cutting down the p2p traffic and was frankly impressed. Even as a p2p enthusiast it's hard not to admire neat solutions. |
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LilYoda
Feline with squirel personality disorder
Premium
join:2004-09-02
Mountains | I think that's exactly what this box is, albeit limited to sniffing of P2P, IM and skype traffic. Which is I said that such devices are needed in corporate environment nowadays, since traffic blocking by port isn't cutting it anymore. |
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WhyADuck
Premium
join:2003-03-05
2 edits | reply to IOddity
Well, that makes a WHOLE lot of sense, because it will only force the VoIP clients to add extra "garbage" traffic to confuse the filters. In other words, as I understand it a Skype client now tries to send just the audio data alone, but if it has to I'm sure it could be modified to grab some random data from the user's browser cache.
I mean, here's a thought: Both clients (the one on each end) grabs a random web page that is accessible to both. They then use the content of that page as a seed to encrypt the data. How are the filters going to know what kind of traffic it is? Meanwhile both sides are uploading and downloading even more bytes just to confuse the filters. Also, the CEO of this company may be saying that commercial VoIP shouldn't be blocked now, but you just know that some money grubbing evil bastard ISP is going to want to try to use it that way.
Personally I hope the hackers win this one - this kind of blocking of a service the customer is paying for is just evil, especially when it's simply voice chat between friends or family. I've never used Skype and don't intend to but I do fear that if such tools are available, people will want to use them. It's kind of like how the gas stations never charged a dime for air for your tires until somebody came out with a coin-operated air machine, which made some of the station operators figure that they'd charge extra because they could - well in this case the customers are already paying for broadband service, so it's not like they are demanding something to be made available for free. Broadband should not discriminate between applications - how would you like it if your ISP decided to charge you a buck for each e-mail sent and received? |
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en102
Canadian, eh?
join:2001-01-26
Valencia, CA
 ·RoadRunner Cable
 ·DSL EXTREME
| reply to LilYoda
I agree - I used to run a grey market Cisco 515 on a DS3, and it was tough filtering out good from bad manually. I ended up blocking whole blocks of IP's and ports to get rid of IM.
Packet sniffing tools help out a lot, similar methods to sw firewalls - they determine what kind of app is running |
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Maarvin
Premium
join:2005-04-11
Denver, CO
·Comcast
| Is it not curious that at the same time that AOL-Time Warner announces their own Skype-like program that a device specifically designed block out Skype appears? Just coincidence I'm sure.  |
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