November 22, 2005

Skype: It's Peer Networking Could Slow Your Network

The Butler Group, Europe's leading IT research and advisory organisation advises that businesses using Skype should be careful in using Skype as it could slow your network down.

The Butler group writes, the reason why Skype works as well as it does is because of computers called Super Nodes - think of them as you would a local exchange, routing your call etc. Any computer running Skype with a clear-line-of-site to the Internet, plenty of bandwidth, and plenty of resources (memory, CPU) can become a Super Node, and this could result in this machine and its network segment becoming overwhelmed by Skype traffic.

Skype is not the perfect enterprise VoIP solution, I don't think anyone said it ever was; but it's certainly a boon to small groups and the private individual. At the start of 2004 there were around 4.3 million businesses* in the UK, and only 0.1% of these (around 6,000) had more than 250 employees*; 0.6% have 50-249 employees*. So, for 99.3% of small firms with less than 50 employees Skype is great.

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