Skype Is Down. What Next?

It seems Skype is down globally and cancelling two meeting this morning has exposed the unusual dependence on a single point of failure.

How come there aren't aren't any global multi-platform alternatives? Or are there?

Google hangouts is so atrocious that it cannot count.

streger · 10 years ago

http://alternativeto.net/software/skype/

hackertux · 10 years ago

Tox is a Free Software project whose goal is to free users from the grip of Proprietary instant messengers like Skype.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tox_%28protocol%29

brador · 10 years ago

Why have free alternatives to Skype not taken off? What's missing? It's just a 2 way video stream, right?

wmil · 10 years ago

NAT / Firewalls cause a lot of issues. Peer to peer data isn't as straightforward as you'd expect.

The Skype people actually came from Kazaa, so they had a lot of experience with sending peer data across corporate / educational firewalls.

WebRTC is trying to generalize the technology, but it's new.

Joona · 10 years ago

Users. Skype is the replacement for MSN Messenger, which people just used for chatting with friends.

Dylan16807 · 10 years ago

Plus asynchronous text chat.

krunox123 · 10 years ago

Have you tried Telegram? I've been using it for months already and it's good, to be honest. You can download it here: https://telegram.org/apps

kartoffelmos · 10 years ago

https://appear.in is free and does not require any installs or account creation.

(disclaimer: I'm an engineer at appear.in)

jtheory · 10 years ago

What's your source of revenue? That needs to be clear before we can comfortably use a service for business purposes.

flippant · 10 years ago

WebRTC is peer to peer. I'm going to guess that it's not particularly expensive to run the service.

maze-le · 10 years ago

Thats why i like decentralised messaging (XMPP/Jabber). If a Jabber server goes down, it only affects the users on that particular server, not all users worldwide.

aexaey · 10 years ago

Technically, XMPP is federated (like SMTP) rather than decentralized (like Kademlia).

Point about single-server downtime still stands, of course.

wmil · 10 years ago

It's not easy to make a peer to peer system that can get past most corporate firewalls.

So Skype is more complex than you'd guess.

Your best bet is something using WebRTC.

mhkool · 10 years ago

most firewalls only let you go out via a proxy using port 443. Also port 80 can be used but then you have to wrap your chat protocol in HTTP which is not fun. Most firewalls do not let anything come in, so the software on the appliance/computer inside the corporate LAN has to initiate a connection and go outwards.

This implies that there cannot be a peer-to-peer setup since both peers-to-be can only go out and never connect to the other. And hence there is a server in between the two chat partners.

arcticbull · 10 years ago

What if I told you there was a device that you already had that was capable of two-way voice and video communications in your pocket? ^_^

kele · 10 years ago

You still need to use some software to do that. Also, the screen is too tiny for VCs.

Diti · 10 years ago

I guess the alternatives you use depend on the country or region you are in. In France, I see everyone use Telegram instead of Skype.

vram22 · 10 years ago

The telegram FAQ says that it cannot be used for voice calls:

https://telegram.org/faq#q-can-i-make-calls-or-video-calls-v...