Ken,
Excellent summary of what is going on. I disabled the Skype
port-forwards and it appears to work OK. (I also found the
UPnP enable/disable option in the Verizon router and
disabled it.)
Don
On Wednesday 14 January 2009 04:46:58 pm Ken Elliott wrote:
> Skype will work (last time I checked) with uPNP turned
> off. It tries to turn it on so that it can use your PC
> as a connection host. When it does so, it tells a Skype
> server in the cloud your address. When someone starts up
> Skype, it registers itself on a "volunteer" server (like
> yours). When someone tries to call him, Skype directs
> the connection to your volunteer server, which informs
> the target that there is a call waiting. The two route
> their calls though the volunteer server.
>
> Why do they do this? Well, if the target is behind a
> router with all ports blocked, you can't call him. So by
> having each Skype user make a connection to a central
> server, no ports need to be open - except at the central
> server. Naturally, the bandwidth has a cost, so Skype
> tries to open ports via uPNP, and if successful it will
> become a volunteer server. And you agreed to this in the
> EULA.
>
> Since the quality of the connection depends on the
> throughput of the volunteer server, it is possible to
> setup your own Skype server and direct your Skype calls
> to use it. This is commonly done for Podcasters, who
> need a clean signal. I've forgotten how to do this, but
> it was in the docs.
>
> Oh yeah... uPNP was developed by.... (wait for it)....
> Microsoft. It was designed for the Xbox to easily
> connect to another friend's Xbox. There may have been
> some unintended consequences.
>
>
> Ken Elliott
>
> =====================
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of
> Donald E Haselwood Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009
> 12:04 PM
> To: slug@nks.net
> Subject: [SLUG] How did Skype set port forwarding?
>
> I installed Skype. The tests showed it working.
> Later I was looking at my Verizon router and
> discovered two new port forwarding entries for
> Skype. Now how was it able to do that? I
> thought that any changes in the router required
> user:password (unless remote administration is
> turned on).
>
> Donald Haselwood
>
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