Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
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FCC to punish Comcast over Internet blocking

July 26, 2008

Dell Video Chat Launches

June 26, 2008

Today, Dell will launch Dell Video Chat powered by SightSpeed, which will be pre-bundled on all consumer Dell PCs. Landing Dell is a major win for SightSpeed, a competitor to Skype, Microsoft Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and others.

I spoke with Eric Quanstrom, Vice President of Marketing for Sightspeed about this major annoucement. I also installed Dell Video Chat to check it out for myself, so I'll include some screenshots along the way.

Eric said, "We've been bundled with camera manufactureres before but we've never been resident on OEM PC hardware.



Skype 4.0 beta New Look, New Features...

June 19, 2008

Skype announced Skype 4.0 beta yesterday. I was supposed to be on the briefing conference call, but was tied up with finishing up the Movable Type 4.2 migration. But I wanted to bring information about this major 'point' release to your attention. Better late than never I guess.


First, below are three videos provided by Skype.


Metaaso mermaid IPv6 P2P App

March 31, 2008

Metaaso mermaid is a line of products based on a Peer-To-Peer (P2P) technology, which is completely server-less and allows users to broadcast data/audio/video/text to millions around the world, without the need for heavy infrastructure, and over their very own private, secure peer-to-peer network.

What's interesting about mermaid is that it's the first IPv6 P2P sharing application that I'm aware of that makes extensive use of the new IPv6 address scheme, which helps get around pesky NAT issues and share data/media with your other peers.

Mermaid can also be used for P2P VoIP that doesn't require centralized supernodes like Skype does. In addition to VoIP you can also broadcast your webcam, and your voice live, to millions of people worldwide in real-time over your own private, secure, P2P network, optimized for webcam and voice broadcast.

What else can you you do with mermaid? They claim the following capabilities:

- The ability to broadcast MOVIES in realtime to millions of people worldwide over a private, secure, server-less P2P network.

- The ability to broadcast and receive NEWS, over a server-less, P2P network spanning the globe, where you can get the news, as soon as it gets published.

- The ability to broadcast ANY audio/video source connected to your computer over your own private, secure, P2P network to millions of people around the globe.

- Multiple people connected to each other, sharing their webcams, their desktops, their voice and files (file sharing) over their very own private P2P network, bringing global, and scalable multi-node video conferencing to mainstream.

How does it work?















Skype SIP Gateway (PE) 1.0 Released

October 30, 2007

You recall my SIP to Skype gateway breaks Skype's Great Wall of VoIP, right? You don't? Well, let me refresh your memory. I wrote:
As most techies know, Skype uses a proprietary protocol and does not support inbound SIP calls.

Propel PBM improves QoS for VoIP, Skype, Online Gaming and more

October 24, 2007

Propel Software Corporation today debuted Propel PBM, a "personal QoS software" at DEMOfall 07. The Propel PBM (Personal Bandwidth Manager) application provides personal bandwidth management on your PC by automatically optimizing and prioritizing network access for time-sensitive applications. By prioritizing the packets on your PC you can easily improved the performance of VoIP (including Skype), video calls, online games, and streaming media.


image courtesy of OReilly.

Who hasn't tried to use BitTorrent or some other bandwidth hungry application while on a Vonage or Skype call? When I used to have Vonage, I'd have to quickly shutdown my BitTorrent or eMule client whenever I heard my wife say "Are you hogging the Internet again?




Comcast Censors some Internet Applications

October 22, 2007

Last week I ranted about censorship of the word "God" in a promotion of The Ten Commandments movie of all things. Today, I'm going to continue that theme with an unbelievable story of how Comcast is blocking BitTorrent, a popular P2P sharing network.  According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Comcast is performing packet forging which causes the connection between two BitTorrent nodes to reset.

What's particularly troublesome about Comcast's packet forging is that customers have no idea what is causing the connection problems. It is believed that Comcast is using Sandvine to generate these reset packets.

Use Tor P2P - Get Arrested

September 17, 2007

A German blogger has a posting about how the police came knocking on his door, arrested him and confiscated all his computer equipment. The crime? He runs a Tor server, a sort of P2P anonymous proxy server that allows people to anonymously surf the Web, download files, and unfortunately download child pornography with relative impunity. Well, impunity for the downloaders using the P2P Tor server, not so anonymous for the Tor server admin.

BitTorrent Download Movie Site launches

February 26, 2007

Today, BitTorrent has launched their licensed entertainment networl and an enhanced BitTorrent protocol that will allow it to offer copyrighted movies, TV shows, games, and other media. The BitTorrent Entertainment Network will launch starting with over 5,000 titles, including films from Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate, and Warner Bros, as well as episodes of TV shows such as 24 and Prison Break.



According to the company, the service is aimed at young males who regularly use BitTorrent to download pirated versions of the same films and who prefer to watch these video programs on their PCs instead of a TV. BitTorrent is used by millions of users and in fact 1/3rd of all Internet traffic is consumed by BitTorrent traffic. The problem from naysayers is "converting" these pirates into legit-paying customers.



BitTyrant: Selfishness Comes To BitTorrent

January 8, 2007

Interesting Bittorrent news I came across on O'Reilly. Here's an excerpt:


One of the key tenants of BitTorrent is that you have to contribute (upload) to receive (download). BitTyrant is a new client that finds a way to be selfish within the BT protocols by selectively uploading to peers based on their upload capacity. It was created by researchers to test the robustness of BT's incentives.

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