Save Skype at SJSU

Whatever happened to the telephone?

Where I work Skype is banned, but not just on security, is a bandwidth issue. We have a LOT of bandwidth and a lot of skype loving geek users. I think the worry is everyone would become a superuser immediately and we'd become Europe's major Skype hub in minutes, so there are at least potential reasons to ban it some places.

Steve: Fair points. As an educator, but what about a student? It would be interesting to see what percentage of Skype usage by students is personal as opposed to something related to studies.

I like the idea of Skype, just have some trouble accepting the way it works. I guess it's something more important for home users which are on capped broadband plans. For these reasons I prefer Google Talk. Although I realize that I'm a disadvantage simply because of the shear force of the many millions of Skype users.

Steve Sloan, is SJSU network behind NAT or firewall. If so, SJSU users will not become supernode.

Why does a student need Skype? For the same reason I do as an educator, collaboration and communication. If our university blocks Skype and other universities do not, we will be routed around. We will be at an competitive disadvantage at gaining market share in our market segment
I use Skype every day in my work at San Jose State University. I have collaborated with fellow educators world wide using Skype. These conversation happened because I make public my Skype name.
If Skype is so evil, why is it allowed inside IBM and (I am told, Yahoo and other major corporations?) If it is such a terrible evil bandwidth hog why does my ISP route it?
Skype is the emerging standard in this segment. If there are four universities who block it because it is such a network killer why are hundreds of times that number allowing it? I am looking forward to hearing Ebay's perspective on this issue on Tuesday.

Robert, is it your position that at university should pay to relay voice traffic between two parties outside of the university's network? That's what Skype can do. The only way to prevent this is to ban / block Skype.

Penguinista: um, you should take a tour of Microsoft. We had many datacenters right inside our buildings with huge network infrastructures mere feet from our offices. Go look at some of my tour videos from the SQL Server or Windows labs, for instance. And in one building across the street from where I worked they had $18 million worth of datacenter equipment and networking where they could replicate a major corporate network.

"You should see the network infrastructure there — after all you can download Windows Vista for free right now."

Scoble, if you can't tell the difference between a datacenter on a fat pipe designed to handle bulk downloads and a office network, I must congratulate you for conning M$ into hiring you as a technical evangelist.

So what's the problem? Why does a student need Skype? Is Skype a right and not a privilege now? Is this the students and teachers complaining becuase they can't talk to their buddies across the hall or families across the country or world for free?

Bandwidth costs money, and Skype sucks bandwidth, even to the point where some networks have been brought to their knees because of it.

If people feel they should have Skype to call whoever they wish, I guess they could also use any of the university's phones to call anyone they wish. What's the difference?

Windows Vista downloads served to public by Akamai (and 4-8 additional servers OUTSIDE of MS campus) - this has nothing to do with Microsoft campus infrastructure.

Even more - download speed is throttled (at least was in the past and probably now) due to INABILITY of MS infrastructure to handle this load and users had to wait very long hours to download their Vista DVD image. So download time estimate at page like this ( http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/... ) is a lie !

Hire a fact checker for your blog.

>he would be insulting the manager, not IT.

To make it clear, in my insult above I'm insulting those who made the decisions, not the guys who are implementing. Translation: I +am+ insulting the manager. Even if I didn't get a memo.

It's silly to read my insult as against all IT people. I hope my readers are smarter than that. I guess I gotta dumb down my writing, though, cause there's some people here who expect me to spell it all out.

It ain't block (or forbidden) at my company either. At Microsoft (or at my company) the policy is idiotic. I am the VP of Systems, so, don't worry, I am safe :-P
Only technical feasible solutions should be implemented and the policy should make it clear to people like Scoble that this isn't a technical decision, but a managerial one. The problem is that managers do things without reason (and they call it work!). If a manager would have send Scoble a Memo stating the policy, the reasons, and the penalties, he would be insulting the manager, not IT. And the IT would do better being vigilant rather than putting road blocks. If someone violates a policy "by accident" (whatever that means!) they would know warn the person and leave it at that...

And my insult was VERY specific. To those IT folks who block Skype. That's hardly the entire IT industry. It ain't blocked at PodTech, for instance.

Cider: whatever. You are telling me that Microsoft couldn't find a way to throttle Skype bandwidth to my desktop? Come on now, the people I worked with are far smarter than that.

It wasn't a business priority. And if it were, I could have asked for a direct T1 line. Which would have cost the shareholders more than my little Verizon bill did.

Oh, and if Skype could take down Microsoft's network there'd be bigger problems than that. You should see the network infrastructure there -- after all you can download Windows Vista for free right now. Millions of people are downloading it regularly. And the network doesn't slow down very much.

I appreciate what you're saying. But to say that is an unsolvable problem is why users gripe about IT. Just be honest, it's a lower priority than other things on your inbox right now. I can grok that.

But if you're in IT you've gotta realize that your users will find themselves at odds with you from time to time. Hell, you should hear what most people say about their IT staffs inside big companies. F***er is pretty kind, actually.

I'll repeat what I said earlier. The problem is not VOIP, it is the way Skype works. If it isn't appropriate, choose a different VOIP application.

Your argument that most developers use Skype and, as such, IT should enable use to this, is ridiculous. What you fail to realise is that if you have an organisation with a fast network and you allow free access to everyone to use Skype, you might end up going online, starting a download from a website and then seeing it go very slow. What would we get then? A Scoble post that IT are f***ers because your download is slow.

However, why is it slow? Skype is eating all the bandwidth. Look at the chart I posted in that Ja.Net link. It aren't making these judgments to make their lives easier, they are doing it in the best interests of their users and the business.

I'd suggest you seriously reconsider your insult to the entire IT Professional industry by saying what they do is out of laziness.

Cider: you too are forgetting how the whole personal computer industry got here. It was a way to give the finger to the IT folks who had too much power and kept people from doing their jobs.

My job at Microsoft was building relationships with developers using the tools that THEY wanted to use. Most developers I know use Skype. So, when IT blocked it it made my job more difficult. What happens when IT gets in the way? We route around. Just like what happened when people brought Apple II machines into their corporations so that they could do spreadsheets (and later IBM PCs). IT didn't like that either.

Maybe instead of calling users names IT should figure out how to serve the business instead of how to make their jobs easier.

Alfredo,

Its best to have both a managerial and technical solution. At least then, you can't have people contravening policy accidentally.

I'm not surprised though by the opinion spouted by Scoble in this topic though. While at Channel 9, he and his emotionally-stunted colleague, Charles Torre, said time and again how much they hated IT people and how developers were more important (and bloggers, OF COURSE, more important than everyone else on the planet).

BTW, Regarding proxies - Skype (at least on Windows) does not honor any proxy configuration requests.
It will try to search for non-proxied connection very hard and if will find one - will keep using instead of proxy configured.

I hit this once then was trying to force Skype Video use much faster incomming channel from sattelite (4Mbit) instead of mobile phone GPRS (28Kbit). Only removing internet routing (i.e. preventing all and any connection except proxy) from machine was able to address this. Probably some firewall applications can do this also - but anyway you see that it's not an easy task.

#28

My point is more to the point of the article :-P It's useless tp block it, not to have a policy saying: "This is not allowed". Just catch a few people violating the policy and throw them out! Blocking is useless, the policy is not. What Robert did to effectively avoid the blocking would have violated the policy, probably. Most places put a tech solution over a managerial solution. They do the blocking they don't have the policy. I repeat: Blocking is useless... a complete waste of time and effort. Leave open and detect... and have a policy in place. This is what I have done at every bank that has asked me to block messenger... Put a policy in place, inform employees and watch... Don't block anything.

#27:

Don't confuse what is possible technically from what is or is not against a company's policy. I've known too many people to get in trouble by relying on one "unbreakable" tunneling protocol or another. The fact is that someone with such a persistent connection can be detected and singled out for further scruitiny... such as simply poping into their work-space when there is activity and seeing what is on the screen.

Of course the risk you take might be different as a student at a university vs an employee at a defence contractor.

Blocking Skype is hard and useless, specially if you got geeks around. You don't need an expense account, just a connection at home and SSH or other form of tunneling... Anyone can do that.

Aaron: interesting. I was told that IT was explicitly blocking it unless you got approved for a direct connection on your desk.

You couldn't use Skype at Microsoft? It works for me! You must have had something configured wrong.

The problem with Skype is that any fast computer with direct Internet access can become a super node. A super node can use considerable network resources.

If all you are doing is computer to computer calling, then I recommend using Gizmo Project or GOogle Talk. These products have the same great voice quality as Skype (they all use the same codec), but will not turn your computer into a super node.

I don't have Skype so I'm not biased; and I'm not going to argue the security/bugs aspect either, but who pays for the bandwidth? Do they add a "bandwidth fee" to the students' tuition? Or do they budget for bandwidth out of money collected from tuition instead of allocated from the state's general revenue funds? If so, then the students are paying for it, and let them use the bandwidth for what they want. If the taxpayers are paying for it, then it's maybe a different story. In either case there's a fixed amount of bandwidth connected to the college, and whoever's paying ends up deciding how it's used.

Now - if the college wants to split their network bandwidth into two pieces, the bandwidth covered by student fees and therefore unregulated, and the bandwidth paid for from the college budget to be used by faculty and staf, and therefore able to be regulated by college administration, that might be a workable solution - except that the students should ALSO expect to pay for network administrators and the like to keep their network running. Are they willing to pay for that too? If so - have at it!

They blocked Skype for your own good, Bob, didn't they tell you that? Had to keep all those bad buggies away that could sneak in and bring down the entire galaxial internet. Sheesh.

Here's the link to Ja.Net's advice on Skype.

www.ja.net/development/voip/skype&janet.pdf

It should be pointed out that any University which allowed open, unrestricted usage of Skype would bring networks to their knees.

Andrew,

Your argument doesn't make sense.

The problem with Skype is that it seeks out fast connections and makes them supernodes. Universities tend to have very fast connections.

So, no, it is not just nerds at SJSU who use it. You run Skype and EVERYONE who uses Skype in the entire world could use your connection. And they frequently do.

The UK's academic network, Ja.Net, actually gives very specific advice to Universities who wish to use Skype and until very recently, they were considering banning Skype on Ja.Net connections because it contravenes their usage policy, which would have meant that Skype would be banned from every UK University.

VOIP isn't the issue here, the way Skype works is.

I get a real bad taste in my mouth thinking about skype with its supernode issues and all, but its ubiquitous now and integrated into so many things. Kind of like fighting against using email. So I'm about to wave the white flag. Especially since they got those cool little WiFi phones.

Between them and TMobile with their GSM to broadband adapter it's going to be some battle.

Power to the people!!!

Hehe, Scoble. :)

Now watch the powers that be at MS read this entry and send you a bill for all your usage while at MS.

Is there such a thing as a Skype proxy server? SJSU could tell everyone to point their Skype "phones" to that and then bandwidth limit the machine, ensuring that there's plenty of internet connectivity left over.

Hey Robert,
Thanks for the publicity on the story! The bandwidth argument that the University is using doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, as Skype is really only being used by the nerds (for now) at SJSU. The irony of it is that by not talking to students first and being so rash, they got themselves bad publicity that has hindered actually banning it AND probably got people interested in Skype that didn't know it existed before.

That's smarts!

Sorry for offending you all. You act like you've never heard such a word before. Very common on the streets of Silicon Valley and in Redmond.

Anyway, it might be useful for all of you to go and look at the early history of Microsoft. Why did people first bring PCs into the workplace? Cause IT made it too difficult to do new jobs using new technologies.

It's always gonna be the workers vs. IT. And Microsoft has the best IT in the world.

So now Microsoft IT people are f***ers.
Or we should believe it's word filters and has nothing to do with people.

Yeah. It was not long time after you stopped getting paycheck from Microsoft for blogging here and filming movies with cheap camera (everybody was wathing only becouse there was no alternative sources).

So you had MS shareholders unwittingly paying for you to indulge in your obsession with the internet. That'll show 'em

There are a couple security issues with running skype nodes. Network within a network stuff, and silly high bandwith/compute consumption type thingies. Banning it altogether doesn't seem smart, particularly at a university.

-r.

We can't use it as UC Santa Barbara either. The ISP said no way... how annoying.

I think colin hit the nail on the head. Seems many think bandwidth is both free and unlimited.

Always ways around IT clampdowns...

The best policies are case by case...general policies, but exceptions if can show legit cause. Going hard and fast, dictatorial can be backwards and even harmful.

Back in my IT Management days, I had a Dealer Manager that used IM to legitimately talk to his Dealer Network (yes really). Corporate IT was why don't you just use this here, java-bloated Dealer Network app. But the Field guys he needed to contact, where always on third party IM's (even on Mobile Phones). Now you can make bandwith and security arguments up to high heaven and be right, but that wouldn't be the RIGHT THING to do. I wrangled and got him exceptional permission. Later on a new regime cracked down (no exceptions), and he got frustrated and bolted to the high-paying Dealership himself.

But then you have to watch for the geeky Power Users that just want all the flash and end up goofing off. ;)

Hmm -- no Skype at Microsoft eh?

Did they allow/support Messenger audio/video?

(i.e. was the argument a bandwidth consumption argument, a NIH argument or just a we decided what's best .. up yours argument?)

P.S.

We don't allow Skype at our place of business, as with many other direct protocols, because it would be another thing sucking the expensive and already challenged bandwidth away (and their isn't a relatively inexpensive next level available), preventing people from getting their actual work done.

Is it me or does your level of bravado in criticising Microsoft since leaving seem a little higher?

Robert is "The Man"? Naw, he's the voice of the people.

I thought you were THE MAN.. Now what am I going to do with the shatterd peices of my reality? What?!

You cyber revolutionary you!

Does your phone have skype in it?