Kazaa founders tout P2P VoIP
Published: 12 Sep 2003 10:30 BST
Kazaa has a renegade image, whether it's deserved or not. Do you think Skype will have that same kind of reputation?
Kazaa's renegade image is due to the copyright stuff that has defined Kazaa, not to mention Hollywood's multimillion-dollar public-relations campaign against Kazaa in particular and file sharing in general. All Kazaa users we've met -- and in the end they're the only ones that matter -- love Kazaa. The hundreds of emails we've received from Skype Beta users speak clearly. People love Skype as well.
What kind of impact do you think Skype will have?
We hope Skype will be as popular as Kazaa and will have a similar disruptive impact -- albeit on a different industry. Very few people can find anything bad about unmetered telephony -- except the established telephone companies.
Are you really the first P2P VoIP system?
P2P is a widely used and abused term. Software is not peer-to-peer just because it establishes direct connections between two users; most Internet software does this to some extent. True P2P software creates a network through which all clients join together dynamically to help each other route traffic and store information. The power of the network grows with the number of users.
How does Skype differ from FWD, which is also a free software download and free phone service?
Free World Dialup relies on centralised infrastructure: In other words, lots of servers both to maintain the directory of users and to route calls. That means that their costs scale with their user base. It'll be hard for them to provide top quality as they grow.
What other differences does a P2P telephone system have over others out there?
P2P telephony just works. Our research shows that more than 50 percent of broadband users are behind NAT (network address translation) and firewalls, and can therefore not make full use of VoIP solutions that are based on SIP (Session Initiation Protocol). The P2P technology we use makes it possible to connect and receive calls, as long as you can make an outgoing Internet connection. People expect telephony to be simple. You pick up the handset; you get a dial tone; you call. That kind of simplicity is our benchmark.
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