Sunday, October 9, 2011
The improvement of communication technology -Skype
Xiuzhi Fan
IT 103, Section 204
October 4, 2011
Project #1: The improvement of communication technology -Skype
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Introduction
Communication has significant functions on people’s social life; it makes people connect well with each other for not being isolated and brings people into rich social activities. Since high speed life is promoted in today’s world, a fast and effective communication in required and welcomed by people. For satisfying this need, more and more new communication technologies appear and take important place in our daily life, such as Facebook, email and Skype etc. Comparing to Facebook and email, Skype allows face-to-face communication which is a more effective way of understanding each other than writing. The new development of information technology on Skype has been spread worldwide and had important influence on social networking. This paper will address the topics of the technology of Skype, potential benefits of using it, legal, ethical, and social issues related to this technology, as well as the security of its development, and the hurdles that must overcome to bring it to fruition.
Background Information
With more than 521 million registered users, Skype is the most popular application in the world to make a VoIP or video call on today’s internet (Zhu, 2011). It was found in 2003 by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis for breaking down communication berries, and now is owned by the founders, Sliver Lake, eBay Inc, Joltid Limited, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Andreessen Horowitz. The biggest feature of Skype is that it allows users to make free calls to other Skype users worldwide based on Peer-to-peer (P2P) technology (Zhu, 2011). Furthermore, it allows users to send voicemail, chat, and share files and so on. Specially, it is changing how people communicate with the integration of voice, video and IM (Instant Messaging) into one application. It’s low cost, great features and convenience made Skype is really welcomed worldwide. Skype website also released data on October 2010 that “Skype had an average of 145 million connected users per month in the fourth quarter of 2010. Skype users made 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls in 2010, approximately 42% of which was video.”
The technology of Skype
As we know, Skype is a nowadays very fashionable and popular VoIP application. For better understanding the technology of Skype, I will briefly explain the term of VoIP. VoIP is the abbreviation of Voice over Internet Protocol, and also referred to as IP Telephony or Internet Telephony. It is another way to make telephone calls with the difference of cheaper cost or completely free.
The main difference between Skype and standard VoIP clients is that “Skype operates on a peer-to-peer model which is originally based on the Kazaa software, rather than the more usual client-server model” (Rossi, 2008). Associated with specific technologies, “Internet VoIP or video call applications, such as Skype, usually follow a closed source and proprietary design and uses strong encryption mechanism” (p1, Zhu, 2011). Because the Skype protocol has not been made publicly available and is closed-source, we don't know the code of Skype protocol.
Potential Benefits
Comparing to traditional telephones, Skype which is Internet Telephony has broken many barriers to communication. First, in the past, people spoke on international calls with taking particular care of the minutes and seconds it spend which usually was expensive. Now, people no longer have this concern by using Skype. It is totally free as long as you have a computer with a good Internet connection, a microphone and speakers. Users pay nothing more than the monthly Internet service which people usually pay it anyways.
Second, the video call of Skype allows face-to-face communication which the most comprehensive and interactive way for understating each other by taking attention of another’s mood, emotion, and body language. Also, Skype not only saves user’s money but also saved their time for traveling on the way. In this case, it is understandable that more and more people using Skype for business conferences and for long-distance meeting with family members, friends and loved one rather than traditional telephone, especially for cross board situations. Furthermore, because of the advantages of Skype, people around the word also use Skype for “remote activity monitoring, business calls, long-distance conference and cheap calls during travel and so on” (Ronaleen, 2005).
In addition, With the arrival of Skype software for handheld device, such as “iPhone and Blackberry, and the roll-out of 3G/4G high speed mobile wireless data network, such as AT&T’s HSDPA network, Clear’s WiMAX network, Skype users are able to make calls anytime and anywhere” (Zhu, 2011). This development pushes communication even more convenient and interesting.
Security and privacy
When people is attracted by Skype’s free video call and other extra services that traditional telephone cannot offer, there are also higher risks on security issue that Skype users need to take serious concern. From the Skype website, Skype is claimed to be a secure communication, and it is “committed to respecting users’ privacy and the confidentiality of personal data, traffic data and communication content.” However, when users are registered, their private information is provided which can probably lead to a security concern.
Legal and Social Issue
Many people considered Skype and other VoIP services as telephone, and thus raised an issue that “whether the same rules and regulations should be apply both to the traditional fixed phone and to the VoIP Services” (Korpi, 2006). For this issue, korpi looked up the decision made by the Finnish Communication Regulatory Authority in 2003 which decided TeliSonera’s VoIP service is in fact comparable with traditional telephone service. Based on this decision, Korpi indicated that if it adapted to apply to all VoIP services, new requirements have to be met, such as the issue that emergency calls can be apply in a VoIP service which will lead a social issue also.
Hurdles overcome:
Although Skype is a great success of the development of communication technology, it put lots of efforts to come over many challenges. Jiang Zhu (2011) discussed this in his research paper that “As well known, it is challenging to support bandwidth hungry and delay sensitive applications, such as video call or conferencing, in mobile wireless environment. Channel conditions vary over time and location; limited transmit power and congested spectrum constrains system capacity; large number of users sharing the same spectrum leads to network congestion and multiple access interference.” It is not easy to develop or update a new technology.
Conclusion
The new technology of Skype developed the VoIP or internet telephone and made great contribution to people’s communication and daily life. By using the new technology of peer-to-peer communication, Skype successfully become the most popular video call application in the world. It provided convenient worldwide online communication service with good quality and totally free charge. The many potential benefits of Skype made it really popular so that becomes almost essential for many people’s daily life. In this case, users need to pay serious attention on their privacy and security, although Skype indicated that it is designed to be secure to protect users’ privacy. The new development is not easy to make. Skype came over many difficulties such as technology challenges and marketing challenge to win the success, but it still need further efforts to make it better since there exits many legal and social issues related to it.
Reference
1. Ronaleen R. Roha. (2005, April). Free Global Calls. Kiplinger's Personal Finance,
59(4), 92. Retrieved September 12, 2011, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 815746701).
Annotation: This article introduced how the free internet telephony service, such as Skype, makes huge convenience to people’s life and saves the cost of long-distance dialing. It listed many advantages of using Skype or internet telephone
2. Zhu, Jing. On traffic characteristics and user experience of Skype video call. Retrieved October 3,2011, from ACM - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library, Information Technology and Computer Science (Database).
Annotation: This journal article mentioned the difficulties of overcoming all the technology berries of developing the new technology of Skype, and introduced the background information about Skype.
3. Rossi, Dario. Valenti, Silvio. Veglia, Paolo. Bonfiglio, Dario. Mellia, Marco. Meo, Michela. Pictures from the Skype. ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review table of contentsarchive.83-86,Volume 36 Issue 2, September 2008. Retrieved October 3, 2011, from ACM - Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library, Information Technology and Computer Science (Database).
Annotation: This paper introduced Skype classification and some basic information about Skype.
4. Unuth, Nadeem. VoIP-What is VoIP
Annotation: this website gave me a good basic knowledge about VoIP and Skype
Annotation: the Skype website gives me lots of information about the background of Skype and its features, as well as the private policy of it.
6. Korpi, Samuel. Internet Telephony - Security Issues in SkypeTM.
Annotation: It is a good paper that discussed many security issues related to Skype.
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