[Coco] Glenside Club meetings continued

[Bob Devries]

I'd be a bit worried about this, too. I don't know about Gizmo, but below is 
reproduced a letter to the editor of an Australian Electronics magazine 
"Silicon Chip" (Nov 05) regarding Skype:

/quote
Skype can have a costly drawback

I'd like to make a comment regarding Skype, as mentioned in your VoIP 
article in the September 2005 issue.
As a long-time professional and audiophile, I have been bemused by the 
apparent acceptance of P2P (peerto-peer) technology. I have also been amused 
(constantly) by the number of friends and acquaintances who get into 
never-ending trouble by their unthinking use of such technologies. Spam, 
spyware, malware, call it what you like, if there's one sure way of opening 
up your computer to anyone at all, it's by installing P2P applications.
Having said that, I was keen to become involved with VoIP some months ago. I 
installed Skype and have been using it for many months.

Now for the bad bit. As I'm connected via Optusnet cable broadband, I've 
always had a good quality firewall solution installed. A few weeks ago, I 
started noticing a fairly significant increase in my usage but thought 
nothing of it until my Optusnet "unlimited" account usage went into speed 
limitation (22kB per second throughput). After checking my data with network 
analysers, verifying firewall settings and so on, I found that Skype had 
been going berserk in terms of IP port usage and data throughput. Since the 
start of October, I've logged over 2GB throughput in three days.
After some head-scratching and in-depth discussion with my networking mate, 
we "discovered" that my system, as part of the Skype P2P network, is 
currently hosting more than 300 individual concurrent Skype conversations. 
The peak so far is 621 conversations, the average per 24-hour period is 180 
conversations.
The Skype official response to my enquiry is, "well, that's what a 
peer-topeer network does!". I forgot that this is the same mob that wrote 
Kazaa.

Since I have no option of redress and since Skype (and I have now learned, 
all other VoIP P2P applications) have no plans for allowing a sucker - 
sorry, user - like myself to limit the number of Skype hosting sessions on 
my machine, I have no option but to remove Skype and lose all the benefits 
of such an application. I know, I know, it's P2P and I should expect some 
pain with the gain. But not a 700MB per day penalty. After all, I'm paying 
more for other people's conversations than I ever use!
I thought you might like to be aware of the pitfalls of VoIP and that your 
less network-savvy readers might benefit from understanding the limitations 
of this "free" technology.

There are VoIP tools available that work just fine if you know the other 
party's IP address and with most ISPs providing good DHCP leases for 
always-on systems like mine, this might be a viable and useful alternative. 
Perhaps you guys could investigate this side of VoIP in a future article.
Peter Naus,
Mitcham, Vic.

/endquote
--
Regards, Bob Devries, Dalby, Queensland, Australia

Isaiah 50:4 The sovereign Lord has given me
the capacity to be his spokesman,
so that I know how to help the weary.

website: http://www.home.gil.com.au/~bdevasl
my blog: http://bdevries.invigorated.org/

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <jdaggett at gate.net>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 08, 2005 2:02 PM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Glenside Club meetings continued


>I am a bit leary of this. Free phone serve over the internet?
>
> There  has to be a catch. I was always taught if it sounds to good to
> be true then it is not true. This seems to fit that mold. I can't see
> where this service/software will be free for long. Maybe a year or so.
> Then comes the charges. How much then?
>
> james
>
> On 8 Dec 2005 at 1:03, hluckey007 at comcast.net wrote:
>
> From:           hluckey007 at comcast.net
> To:             coco at maltedmedia.com (Coco )
> Date sent:      Thu, 08 Dec 2005 01:03:38 +0000
> Subject:        [Coco] Glenside Club meetings continued
> Send reply to:  CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts 
> <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> <mailto:coco-request at maltedmedia.com?subject=unsubscribe>
> <mailto:coco-request at maltedmedia.com?subject=subscribe>
>
>> Hi, fellow CoCoers,
>>
>> I have some new information about how to have people from around the
>> country join in on our club meetings.
>>
>> The way it can be done, I believe, is to use a program called Gizmo,
>> down-loadable free from Gizmoproject.com. Anyone who joins can phone
>> free to each other and we can have conference call. My understanding
>> is that other calls are around two cents a minute over the Internet.
>> At a recent meeting I called Tony on his cell phone. He was sitting
>> aross the table from me. I could hear him on my speakers but I
>> couldn't talk to him through my computer because my mike wasn't
>> working. Now I have a compute were the mike and the speakers work and
>> at future meetings, starting in December, I plan to set up my computer
>> for calls. At the moment I am unsure how calls to Gizmo members work.
>> To find out more about Gizmo go to the site mentioned above and by
>> reading a short article in the December issue of Wired magazine on
>> page 046. We are using Window machines.
>>
>> Anyone willing to check this out?
>>
>> -- 
>> Coco mailing list
>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
>> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
>
>
> -- 
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>
>
> -- 
> No virus found in this incoming message.
> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
> Version: 7.1.371 / Virus Database: 267.13.12/194 - Release Date: 7/12/2005
>
>