Skype: Telephony done the peer-to-peer way

Ahti Heinla

The presentation looks at Peer-to-Peer distributed network technologies and Voice over IP (VoIP). By combining them, it is possible to build a large distributed telephony system with only using minimal central infrastructure. The centralised phone switches are made redundant; the cost of a phone call drops to zero. The same trend continues to mobile telephony, as WiFi access points become substitutes for GSM/3G basestations.