On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 11:06 AM, Vik Olliver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Er, not quite what I meant. What's the technical workings that makes > Skype auto-configurable and how does one go about gluing it into a SIP > auto-configuration wrapper? What needs to change? Who needs to be lent > on?
Skype will use any and all network ports that it can find open, regardless of their reason. It will send your call data over port 443, pretending to be HTTPS traffic in order to defeat your proxy systems. SIP uses only the ports that are described in the open standard, and only with the type of content that is described in the open standard. That's the difference. Skype lies, SIP tells the truth. Skype is a parasite on the network infrastructure (that doesn't mean it's bad, necessarily, there are beneficial parasites, but it does describe it's use of the network). The only "standard" way to open ports on your network that were not already open, would be to use UPnP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upnp). However, there is no authentication in UPnP, which makes it reasonably pointless in an untrusted environment ... something as simple as a Flash advert could re-program your firewall if UPnP was enabled. Both Microsoft and Apple have alternatives to UPnP available, but there is not much hardware support yet. The underlying problem is that doing networks properly is difficult. -jim
