The Jeff Pulver Blog: Cisco and Skype: Strategic Speculation

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September 16, 2004

Cisco and Skype: Strategic Speculation

I just read a story on TheStreet.com which said that a senior Cisco executive, Mike Volpi, has joined the board of Skype.

Now things are starting to get...shall we say...interesting?

Cisco, the company that has yet to meet a protocol that it doesn't like may very well be working with Skype to implement their non-standard firewall piercing technology into their family of routers and other edge devices. This would be a move that would keep Skype technology proprietary and give both them and Cisco the edge in delivering real-time communication services in what would otherwise be hostile working enviornments.

To be continued...

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Posted by jeff on September 16, 2004 08:56 AM | Permalink

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Comments

Mike:

I don't think it is necessary for Skype to make the protocol public for interconnecting to SIP-based networks. Currently, Skype is onterconnecting to some VoIP providers like ITXC et al using standard protocols. So interconnection is more a policy decision. On the other hand, if the soon to be released Skype API is sufficiently rich, then the interconnection can be an add-on service offered by others.

Posted by: Aswath at September 22, 2004 09:28 AM

Skype NAT-traversal techonoloy is entirely based on the distributed P2P network of users, otherwise there is nothing new about it. I am not sure Cisco really needs to know about that. If anything Skype may need Cisco gear for the future... My 2c is that it is more of an endorsement for Skype than an opportunity for Cisco to get know-how. AG

Posted by: AlexG` at September 21, 2004 08:06 PM

Yes, you prob right skibare. Cisco has to keep up in this fast paced industry and typically as a big company, they can 'buy' the future. Not necessarily Skype but maybe a company that has or will have a protocol that is NAT and firewall workable such as IAX or another new protocol.. maybe..

Posted by: JPMatznick at September 17, 2004 04:17 PM

I'm not sure why you think the "non-standard firewall piercing technology" would go into the routers and edge devices? The beauty of the skype connection is that it doesn't care about the intervening equipment because it can run over UDP or TCP and even appears to make its way through HTTP proxies.

The challenge may be the long term proliferation of symmetric NATs. The current protocol uses peers on public IP addresses or behind "friendly" NAT/FWs as reflection points to bridge users behind firewalls.

Will be interesting to see if they ever make the protocol public... or if someone else reverse engineers it to make a bridge from SKYPE to SIP.

Fun times.

Posted by: Mike at September 16, 2004 11:13 PM

assumming that nobody else can develop comparable, or better, platform - yes.

Srdjan

Posted by: Srdjan at September 16, 2004 06:16 PM

AMAZING development where CISCO the 800# Gorilla needs to see what the little chimps are doing........or, does CISCO '''SEE''' the future and needs to buy it to stay IN the ballgame???
skibare

Posted by: skibare at September 16, 2004 09:29 AM