What does Skype use the supernodes for, anyway? I understand peers are used for relaying voice traffic, which is important to keep bandwidth costs down for the company.
And I understand servers are used for authentication. However, I recall hearing Skype uses supernodes for such basic operations as "presence" and rendezvous functions and buddy list management and so on. Why bother with supernodes for these -- wouldn't it be faster, easier, and more reliable to just use a few cheap servers? -david > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:p2p-hackers- > [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Serguei Osokine > Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 8:57 AM > To: theory and practice of decentralized computer networks > Subject: Re: [p2p-hackers] what really happened to Skype? > > On Monday, August 20, 2007 Alen Peacock wrote: > > ...it seems clear that the author was highlighting the failure > > of the log-in system as causing cascading failures. > > The only thing that the author really said was that they > are sorry. No technical details, no nothing. I hate it when they > do that. It's like reading a Microsoft press release. At least > with the Internet failures (flapping and such) you had an analysis > coming very quickly and publicly; but apparently, not in the era > of the closed protocols. God forbid someone has a peek into their > algorithms. No, they should be kept secret. > > I mean, of course. Otherwise someone might actually learn > something from that failure and maybe even prevent some similar > failure in the future. And we cannot allow that, can we, precious? > > Phew. Sorry for the offtop. Just had to vent. Did I already > say that I hate this MO? > > Best wishes - > S.Osokine. > 21 Aug 2007. > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Alen Peacock > Sent: Monday, August 20, 2007 3:57 PM > To: theory and practice of decentralized computer networks > Subject: Re: [p2p-hackers] what really happened to Skype? > > > Does anyone know much about the Skype P2P/DHT/network algorithm, and > > can they hypothesize what sort of event could cause it to take so long > to > get > > back into operation? > > Log-in/authentication is centralized in Skype, although distributed > (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_Protocol). The Skype post says > that the restarts "caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined > with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain > reaction that had a critical impact." > > That remains very nebulous, at least to me. But it seems clear that > the author was highlighting the failure of the log-in system as > causing cascading failures. > > This would make sense, if, for example, peers don't talk to one > another unless they are already authenticated to the central servers. > I have no idea if that is true or not, but something of that nature > could clearly cause the chain reaction described. > > Alen > _______________________________________________ > p2p-hackers mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers > _______________________________________________ > p2p-hackers mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
