This means new opportunities in the VoIP market. Than you Microsoft

In the short term, I'm hoping Google Hangouts will be a viable alternative for both normal users and enterprise users.

In the long term, I hope the WebRTC protocol will disrupt both of them.

Why are Google Hangouts a viable alternative for people who care about privacy? (Ostensibly the point of this article.)

"Microsoft has replaced P2P Skype supernodes with thousands of Linux boxes" from http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-s...

Wow. Does it make it the first, large scale, internal(¹) deployment of non-Windows infrastructure by Microsoft? The question is: why? Do their engineers managed to convince the company that Windows is ill-suited to the task? I am quite stupefied.

(¹) "Internal" as opposed to situations where Microsoft inherited non-Windows infrastructure from external acquisitions, such as when they acquired Hotmail in 1997 and their 5000 FreeBSD servers (eventually migrated to Windows.)

I was under the impression that they've used Linux in the past effectively as a firewall for their internet sites. Whether this was a temporary response to a specific situation or a semi-permanent thing I don't know but I recall reading that there was a period where Microsoft.com was returning non-Windows header information.

While they obviously don't publicise it I think they've probably used Linux where it's appropriate for some time now.

Do their engineers managed to convince the company that Windows is ill-suited to the task?

They acquired skype. So the question would be, Is it worth rewriting a ton of working code just so we can say it runs on our platform.

I'm pretty sure Hotmail ran Linux or BSD for quite a while after Microsoft bought them (though probably not any more)

Hotmail ran on Linux for a very long time.

Skype may yet transition to Windows servers, but MS are hardly going to insist they make it their first and only priority. That would be insane.

Hotmail never ran on Linux, it was all FreeBSD.

The change is interesting (though not that new it seems), but Microsoft flatly state that calls do not go over supernodes [1]:

"This has not changed the underlying nature of Skype’s peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture, in which supernodes simply allow users to find one another (calls do not pass through supernodes)."

Now obviously this could be a lie, but it should be fairly simple to prove one way or another - simply force a call between 2 NAT'd clients, and trace where the voice packets go, it'll either be to one of these newly centralised supernodes, or somewhere else?

1 - http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-s...

Calls don't go over supernodes: I frequently call people on Skype for a conference, with my brother participating on the same network, and when the call drops, my brother and me can still talk. Might be that this is an exception for extremely local connections, but I've had similar experiences in other situations as well.

Or, you know, centralizing their architecture so they can own all your communications and sell you ads like every other Tom Dick and Harry.

I don't think so. They wouldn't be able to target the ads without a lot of effort.... That's a LOT of voice recognition going on in a setting where people are not trying to dictate.

Most companies these days are hoarding data with no current abilities to analyze it for profit. They're rightly predicting that analytical capabilities will improve and they don't want to be the ones living in that world without massive amounts of customer data.

Right. That way I can send you the ads I would have targetted to you if you were still in college! That you are now 40 and have 3 kids is no matter. You still want all the cool college stuff, right?

Data storage is stupidly cheap. You might as well save all the data your users provide to you.

Contrary to the article, Skype didn't previously use supernodes for traffic between NATed clients. They were just used for NAT hole punching and then the traffic was direct between the clients.

It is possible that after receiving a wiretap request Skype will route your calls differently. But they could have rolled this out by just upgrading the supernode code and keeping supernodes distributed.

It seems far more likely that they made this change for stability/reliability. Particularly after the Skype network crashes that have happened in the past.

Well, you need a 3rd machine to route traffic between two machines if both are behind NAT^. It was my understanding that supernodes were (also) used for this.

^Unless you can predict the translated source port

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_punching

Doesn't contradict the parent post. For hole punching you need to know the source (host+port) your peer sends traffic from. If the source port is randomised (or already used by someone for udp if nat prevents sharing), hole punching will fail.

That's where the third party supernode comes in; the sending peer tells the supernode which source port it is using to send to the non-supernode.

If you're natted, the source port seen by supernode doesn't have to be the same as the one seen by others. Someone on your network may be talking to the same supernode already, so the conflict has to be resolved by some remapping in the nat.

You then retry with an alternate supernode.

Unless your NAT is randomising ports by default. Then you will always get the wrong answer.

Even if the sensational headline is accurate, it's not worth the conspiracy theories:

(1) Microsoft is a US Corporation

(2) With the Skype acquisition, Microsoft (arguably) becomes a telecommunications carrier.

(3) CALEA passed in 1994, "requiring telecommunications carriers and manufacturers of telecommunications equipment modify and design their equipment, facilities, and services to ensure they have built-in surveillance capabilities, allowing federal agencies to monitor all telephone, broadband internet, and VoIP traffic in real-time." [a]

My (unfounded, optimistic) speculation is the skype acquisition was strategic positioning in the mobile market: seamless cutover to skype when your phone has WiFi.

a - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_L...

So what happens when your not a US citizen, the wiretapping option is turned off then you think?

As a fine upstanding non-US citizen you are simply not considered by that law, and so can't be considered as much as you might like by the companies implementing systems that have to comply with that law. Microsoft's options are move to another country (not going to happen), ignore the law (not going to happen as it could cost them dear), or implement the law even though it might cause problems in markets outside the US.

For services hosted in other countries the law in those countries might well have something it can say/do, but even if they do successfully put their feet down MS could just pull the services out (costing the country if the investment in equipment/services/employees is significant) and move them elsewhere. They might be able to add the protection needed under those non-US laws the nodes in the affected areas, it depends on the exact wording and enforcement of the law, but even if they did you lose that protection as soon as you hit a node elsewhere anyway.

Practically speaking if this is a concern for you (and it might legitimately be: contrary to what governments seem to think people and companies that are not criminal, not just the criminals/terrorists, have good reasons to want some privacy generally and more specifically those in competition with MS (amongst others) would not want to trust them as the gate-keepers) then your only option is to find an alternative to Skype. That isn't going to be easy though: any commercial provider is going to comply with the same regulations otherwise they'll find it difficult to operate in the US market (or the Chinese market which is growing much faster and is even more spy-y than the US) and even if you find something you then need to convince other to use it too.

Your comment seems to be built on the assumption that if the government has passed laws to make what it does legal, then we shouldn't worry— nothing conspiratorial or against our interests is occurring.

Why, then, wasn't Skype required to implement CALEA-compliant functionality before Microsoft bought them?

Did we really think we could trust Microsoft with such an acquisition?

You used to trust a shady Europe-based private corporation; now you have to trust a shady US-based private corporation. Regardless of their specific track records, there is nothing intrinsically different between the two.

What are some good open source alternatives for skype?

Wiretapping sounds so innocent. Of course, all US comms must be available for lawful wiretaps in fight against crime.

No, what we're dealing with here is a dragnet cast upon the comms of users around the world, who aren't protected by US Constitution and thus can be tapped at will by US agencies and even private corporations without any warrants or oversight.

For instance, if Microsoft wanted to learn about technical or trade secrets of competitors communicating through Skype (say, a couple of start-up founders), now they're free to do it.

Also, if a US agency wanted to put on a no-fly list some people who casually converse about what morons those TSA people are or how all US administrations support the Israeli regime that commits war crimes against Palestinians, now it's very easy to do.

For instance, if Microsoft wanted to learn about technical or trade secrets of competitors communicating through Skype (say, a couple of start-up founders), now they're free to do it.

Is that any different from using, say, Gmail or Google Apps? Not saying that Google is looking at that data but this is a problem with essentially every web-based communication tool. People shouldn't have an expectation of privacy or security just because it's a company they know/like or it's a popular tool.

It's a risky situation, if you ask me. Consider the data that tools collect on us:

- location and contact history (cell phones)

- message history and address book (email, social network)

- interests/activities (calendars, event tools, feed subscriptions)

- browsing history

As an engineer, think about the evil fun you could have with that data. You could really mess somebody up if you didn't like them.

For instance, if Microsoft wanted to learn about technical or trade secrets of competitors communicating through Skype (say, a couple of start-up founders), now they're free to do it.

What? No they're not.

It does sound outlandish but... what specifically is stopping them?

Do you seriously think trade secrets aren't enforceable outside US borders? That there's no such thing as a transnational tort claim? Do you also think that because the "Constitution doesn't protect" stuff that Microsoft can randomly steal from people? Can they murder people too?

You knew this was a batshit claim when you saw someone trying to map the Constitution to Microsoft in the first place, since the Constitution doesn't regulate private businesses at all.

Come on. We're smarter than this.

Come on. Pseudonaïvité.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Controversy

(To your first question: ask Robert Metcalfe (3com), Charles H. Ferguson etc. To your second question: drones. -- Welcome to the real world)

But true, this has little to do with skype.

What does ECHELON and military drones have to do with civil liability?

The root comment in this thread suggests that Microsoft might be centralizing Skype so that it can scrape trade secrets out of phone calls. That sentiment is based on a preposterous misapprehension about how international law works.

We were talking about kites (if you know what I mean), and off-the book killings.

There isn't really anything that is called "international law", as such. There are agreements between nations, and those agreements are what they are.

Sad to see a two and a half month old blog article with a flame bait headline and no references or proof being lapped up by HN.

This is the kind of thing that makes it annoying that just about all interesting internet companies are in the US. Why can't Europe step up with some competition?

Skype was originally a swedish company until it was aquired by eBay.

Estonian, I thought.

The evidence on this one is rather thin. It takes a speculation in a comment on HN about what Microsoft could be doing - without any proof that they are actually doing it, adds some code that proves something Microsoft claims they do not do could be done if they wanted to do it - and the conclusion is Microsoft definitely has sold everybody to the Man. I think a jump from "they could be doing it" to "they did it" requires more proof than that.