Skype brief post-mortem

Re:Skype brief post-mortem by anonymous246 on Wednesday December 22, 2010 @05:17PM (#2032680)

Does anybody know if these supernodes are paid for by Skype or they're simply users' computers being commandeered by Skype (after getting click-through permission).

The explanation doesn't ring true to me because AFAIK supernodes are used only if a direct P2P path cannot be established between caller and callee.

What we're observing is the inability to sign in and see contacts' status. I always thought that was centralized. Are supernodes involved in signin?

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Re:Skype brief post-mortem by oiuytriuytr on Wednesday December 22, 2010 @05:55PM (#2032769)

In theory they can be regular users computers - but unless you have the only PC connected to some small outpost on the internet it's unlikely that it would be you.

Generally it's either a skype or ISP owned machine

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Re:Skype brief post-mortem by terryjsmith on Wednesday December 22, 2010 @05:59PM (#2032786)

This article is a little old now but I imagine the basic technique is still the same:

http://www.h-online.com/security/features/How-Skype-Co-get-r...

As I understand it, for corporate firewalls or routers/firewalls configured to not allow "hole punching", Skype will use the supernode as a relay for all communications.

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Re:Skype brief post-mortem by piramida on Thursday December 23, 2010 @02:21AM (#2033796)

The user database is centralized (from a talk that lead Skype engineer given couple of years ago), so I too wonder how would a traffic routing nodes affect signing in. I am sure non of the client code has their user database credentials... So supernodes can only prevent communication, calls, video from happening.

So there's something else they are hiding. My Mac skype dies on start since yesterday (trying to sign-in), supernodes would have nothing to do with that.

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