At 25 Apr 2008 02:38:09 +0000 Larry wrote:

> I have Gizmo but find Skype much easier to use and Gizmo doesn't run, of
> course, on any of the Skype wifi phones I have in the other rooms of the
> house.

Are you sure about that? I thought most of those Skype phones also handled
SIP. (While you need Gizmo's software to do video, IM, and filesharing,
for just voice calling, it acts as a standard SIP provider tha works on any
SIP-compliant hardware or software. As I said, I don't even have Gizmo
installed on my PC.

> I don't need 27 people calling me on 8 different systems. One will
> do nicely...(c;

For incoming, sure- for outgoing I use the most advantageous one.


> I've been a Skype supernode for about 8 hours, tonight. There's one
local
> Knology user 24.214.49.19 and some user-0c6tde1.cable.mindspring.com
> connected through it as I type this. My other Skypes are all the wifi
> phone types and not able to supernode, including the N800 Linux tablet,
but
> they are making the lights blink every few seconds along with the
supernode
> contacts. It's nothing. Grabit is quite happily downloading and
cramming
> my poor RAID stack at 650KB/second so they're not using any bandwidth.
> What kind of bandwidth did you see from your supernode?

Beats me- whenever I'd notice the "internet" light on my DSL modem blinking
like a strobe light, and it meant I've left Skype running, so I removed
it, more on principle. Imake maybe a two dozen Skype calls a year, so it
doesn't need to be running 24/7 in my house anyway.

> Skype only routes
> routing information through you as part of the system redundancy around
the
> various bastards trying to block Skype from their systems. No file data
or
> audio data at all goes through other users. When you're talking to
texting
> or file swapping, you're directly connected to your other party....no
> relays are necessary.
>
> I've seen 10 connections at once a couple of times, but it never makes a
> dent in my bandwidth, here.
>
> Some people get kinda paranoid when they look at a list of things
connected
> and see all the skype connections. It's really nothing....

Probably so, but again, as little as I use it, it doesn't need to be
running constantly.

For convenience, I'm moved all of my VoIP software to one USB key that can
run it without installation, and can carry it traveling even if I don't
bring a laptop.