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Comment by lampe | Hacker News Reader

skype just uses an http tunnel cause mostly the 80 port is open so no magic here(it does some more tricks but this is on).

I dont think skype is easy just look at the UI... i dont like skype for linux it never works on my laptop...

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It's a bit smarter than just using an http tunnel.

Skype is capable of direct client-to-client connections, despite intervening NAT. It's pretty clever -- with the server's help as coordinator, the clients both initiate the connection, causing their own NAT routers to accept the inbound packets from the other side.

That's also called STUN, I believe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STUN (or probably a variant)

I think that's called hole punching http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hole_punching

I'm not keen on some of the recent changes to Skype but I don't really consider "Skype for Linux" to actually be Skype. Skype is actually the only reason beyond dev testing that I keep MS Windows.

Skype for Linux is the only software I've installed in at least 8 years, AFAIR, that has crashed my desktop session.

I wish all it did would be to crash my session. Mine would go into an endless loop or something, consuming 100% CPU. Everything would still appear to be working fine, only I couldn't make any calls, my chats wouldn't be delivered, etc. This happens around once every five minutes, and I have missed important meetings because Skype had hung and I was wondering why the person I was waiting for hadn't logged in yet, only to be asked where I was later.

It's the worst sort of bug, because it leads you to believe it's working fine, when it isn't. Skype for Linux is the reason I don't use Skype any more.

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