Microsoft files EU Android complaint

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 03:53:52PM -0400, D. Hugh Redelmeier wrote:
> We agree that Skype has bad aspects.  Do we agree on what those are?
> I've outlined mine above.  You object to the distributed nature:
> leaching resources from the users, I think.

Actually my problems with skype are:

- The protocol is awful.  Random ports doing peer to peer traffic.  Even if
  you want to allow it on your network, it's hard to do that because it
  is totally random.

- Skype clearly has been trying to become the VoIP system excluding
  all others.  Never mind that SIP and H.323 and all that had existed
  for years and everyone else (even Microsoft) was following a standard.
  Skype did their own thing and then advertised the hell out of it to get
  lots of users locked in to their private VoIP world of no choices.
  I am actually not surprised Microsoft ended up owning in the end given
  Skype's business practice looked like a perfect clone of how Microsoft
  has always operated.

- Of course whenever people start complaining about the lockin, skype
  promises to make a SIP gateway.  Then when everyone has calmed down
  again, they conviniently forget about the gateway promise and go back
  to business as usual.

- The protocol isn't open and documented unlike the standards that
  predate skype by many years.  As I said above, it is obvious the protocol
  is garbage.  Convinient for skype though that they were able to build
  a business on the bandwidth and cpu power of their users.  I don't
  think they ever made that clear to their users though when they gave
  away the software.  I believe Microsoft has reduced that though by
  choosing to run dedicated super nodes themselves rather than rely on
  random users who happen to have a good connection to do that job.

> I'm not sure of the current Skype architecture.  I have the impression
> that Microsoft has moved a lot of stuff from leached user machines to
> their own servers.

Yes the supernodes are now dedicated.

> Skype is something that one gets dragged into.  If you need to talk to
> someone who only has Skype, for example.  It is reputed to be really
> good at getting through NAT and firewalls without the requirement for
> a skilled operator.  And it is kind of free as in beer.

Sure.  And when we blocked all peer to peer traffic at work the sales
people screamed bloody murder when suddenly skype stopped working.
We had no idea skype was such a piece of shit at the time.  When we
tried to look up from skype what ports to allow to keep skype working,
we couldn't find that info, because it doesn't exist.  Skype will use
anything at all to sneak its way through a network.

Hence why I said skype is a nightmare for a network admin.

> The SIP infrastructure is a bit weak.  It isn't conventional to have
> end-to-end encryption and I don't know of universally accepted
> protocols for negotiating encrypted links.  Furthermore, dealing with
> NAT has gotten middlemen involved in each call.

Sure, but it works with lots of software and lots of providers, and you
can run it on top of anything you want (ipsc, openvpn, etc).  At least
with SIP we know what we are getting.  With skype you just have their
word that your stuff is secure.  With SIP by default at least I know it
is NOT secure.

> Quality of Service with SIP hasn't been that great in my experience.
> Skype is reputed to be better.

Depends on the software/codec/connection/etc.  It can be quite good too.

> Finally, one strength of SIP has been that ITSPs can offer you "DID"s
> (plain old phone numbers).  But that forces middlemen on you for
> those calls.

And skype does that too for a fee.  No difference there, except with
SIP you can choose any of a bunch of competing providers.  With skype
you can only choose skype.

> I don't want my communications to be "owned" by a company, especially
> one that is a sole provider.  Especially one that makes its living
> selling user profiles to advertisers.

Google chat happens to sometimes be convinient for showing the grand
parents the grand kid.  I don't use it for anything else.

> Even if all your "content" is end-to-end encrypted, traffic analysis
> is a powerful surveillance tool.  This is the equivalent to "pen
> register" for phone surveillance

I don't do anything on google I wouldn't want publicly known.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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