MS buys Skype - will it support Linux

[Amos Shapira]

On 16 May 2011 02:02, Oleg Goldshmidt <pub at goldshmidt.org> wrote:

> On Sun, May 15, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Constantine Shulyupin
> <const at makelinux.co.il> wrote:
> > A new article about Linux Skype alternatives:
> > Bye Bye Skype, Top 3 Free Replacements:
> > http://ostatic.com/blog/bye-bye-skype-top-3-free-replacements
>
> Unfortunately, I don't see anything there that satisfies _any_ of the
> three requirements I posted earlier in this thread.
>

Even before that - I've tried some of these SIP-based voice programs on and
off for a few years now and they *never* "just work" (let alone "work")
where as Skype is just a "plug a play" and voice clear as a whistle from the
first time I used it in ~2003.

The key issue, as far as I can tell, is that 99.999% of the networks today
are on the Internet behind NAT so you need something which can traverse both
sides and still manage to stream audio/video both ways (i.e. can punch
through NAT in both sides but does NOT depend on a central remote server to
have enough bandwidth to stream all traffic of all the calls on its network,
which is exactly the problem Skype solved).

Absolutely none of these (including the ones in the list Constantine
provided) manage to do as much as a simple "echo back" call to a SIP
service. You can say I don't know a thing about SIP (and I'll agree), but if
I can't set this up after spending an awful lot of time trowling support
forums and reading howto's then how do you expect your average Windows
layman to set this up?

Even more so - guys in my workplace who claim to have experience setting up
SIP and none-Skype voip exchanges still have trouble setting up simple
connections between our Sydney and San Francisco offices. You can claim that
it's their fault but my point is that SIP (which is what all these solutions
relay on) is just still too hard to use.

Skype solved a very complex problem very well and until you manage to come
up with something which looks at the VoIP issue at a completely different
way from SIP's "central office" way which addresses the NAT issue you are
not going to compete with them.

--Amos
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