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Comment by drakenot | Hacker News Reader

They removed P2P streaming around 2014[0].

[0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...

The good old Skype strategy, with super nodes.

For those who didn't use Skype at the time, they had an algorithm which would promote some nodes to "super node" status. Those nodes would then be used for processing power, uploads, etc.

I guess Microsoft didn't like the possible legal implications and this "feature" went on the chopping block quite early after the acquisition (unless my memory's failing me and Skype dumped it even before the acquisition).

With a P2P architecture you basically have to use "super nodes" to get through firewalls. There are three main reasons Skype dropped P2P:

* The nefariousness one: So Microsoft can let NSA and the cops listen in.

* Because mobile clients don't work well with P2P.

* Because servers and bandwidth got really cheap.

and because Skype didn't own the IP for their p2p implementation, or even the source code to it.

"An executable-only object code form of the GI Software was licensed by Joltid to Skype, a well-known Internet-based company that provides users throughout the world with free or low-cost telephone services over the Internet. Skype did not obtain a license to the GI Software source code, however"[0]

[0] - https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/new-lawsuit-brings-clarity...

For some reason the notion that an arbitrary piece of desktop software might be an unholy mixture of proprietary binary blobs from different companies, and to which no one entity has the complete source code, fills me with dread.

Yet, dissonantly enough, this is exactly the model you accept if you use proprietary drivers on your system. Arguably, it's the model you accept if you use any proprietary software - programs are not perfectly isolated from each other.

If you found this revelation about Skype to be vaguely shocking, as I did, consider if your reaction is consistent when it comes to the other things in your life - like your Android phone.

It's probably fair to attribute this to Skype since it's the same people, but didn't that design originate out of the Kazaa file sharing network way back in the day? As I understood it there was some degree of protocol / code-sharing between Kazaa and Skype at least early-on.

I thought it was more about punching through firewalls than borrowing processing power

Could be.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supe...

> ...the Skype peer-to-peer network architecture elected certain nodes to be "supernodes", to help maintain the index of peers as well as handle parts of the NAT [network address translation]/firewall traversal for other peers. This election algorithm chose only machines with open Internet connectivity, substantial uptime, and which were running the latest version of our peer-to-peer code.

I probably misunderstood the first part of his comment to mean that they also wanted to distribute some of their processing to clients.

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