Monday, August 28, 2006
Skype Started Wifi program
Skype is a little piece of software that lets you make free calls over the Internet. We are revolutionising the telecoms world by allowing our users to call other Skype users anywhere in the world for free. In less than 2 years we’ve had over 180 million downloads (they’re free too) and we have a growing community of 55 million registered users.
Making free calls over Wifi is pretty nifty and our Wifi partners who have already opened their networks to Skype users agree. Making your network Skype-friendly means providing our users with free Skype-only web access. It’s a great way for new users to try Wifi and gives them an easy path to upgrade to full Internet access.
Here’s how to do it.
Marketing
Your Wifi start page should include a Skype banner, which you can get here.
You can check Skype’s promotional and distributional terms here.
There should also be a prominent space on your start page that lets people know they can use Skype for free from your hotspot. If you want to limit the time so that users sign-up for full Internet access, that’s fine, but we do request a minimum of 15 minutes free Skype-only access. We recommend “Talk for free! Click here to get free access to Skype.” Clicking on this should lead to a joint landing page.
The landing page should have a Skype banner, a link to download Skype and a button to allow Skype-users to connect to your Wifi network. Simple really.
Check out Skype’s affiliate program here as well. Using any of the banners provided in the affiliate program will allow you to earn commissions on sales that result from your clicks.
Technical
In the broadest possible terms, we consider an ideal network configuration to be one that’s set up according to the rules shown here:
Ideal network configuration for Skype
1. Outgoing TCP connections should be allowed to remote ports 1024 and higher.
2. Outgoing TCP connections should be allowed to remote ports 80 and 443.
3. Outgoing UDP packets should be allowed to remote ports 1024 and higher.
4. For ideal performance, the NAT translation should be stateful, meaning that translations are remembered and reused for subsequent packets. The state must be kept for at least 30 seconds after the most recent translation. (Skype recommends that the translations be maintained for as long as an hour, if possible.)
Many peer-to-peer applications, including Skype, rely heavily on UDP packets to help maintain the best possible quality of connection among peers because UDP packets can be transmitted quickly and require very little overhead to manage. However, for UDP communications to work properly for Skype through NAT, the translation rules for UDP packets must be consistently handled, meaning that UDP packets set from one external network address and port number must be consistently translated to an internal network address and port number without varying either the network address or port number.
Although the use of UDP is optional - meaning Skype will work fine without the ability to transmit UDP messages - the call quality experienced by Skype users will be much better, on average, if the caller is able to send UDP packets to the called party and receive UDP answers in reply.
Tip: Checking your network for P2P friendliness
Many of our customers have told us that they use a freeware program called “NAT Check”, written by Bryan Ford, to see if their network’s UDP translation is compatible with P2P protocols including Skype. The NAT Check program is available for free download from the program’s website at http://midcom-p2p.sourceforge.net/ and is available in a precompiled form for platforms running Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. (NAT Check is not Skype software.)
Skype-friendly partial results from NAT Check
UDP RESULTS:
In the results of NAT Check shown above, we see that the network’s UDP translation is applied consistently (“consistent translation”), that the input and output ports are identical except in the event of a conflict (“loopback translation”) and that unsolicited UDP packets sent to the network are discarded (“unsolicited messages filtered”).
Although not strictly necessary, it is preferable for the network’s firewall or NAT gateway to support IP packet fragmentation and reassembly. In addition, the firewall must not block an attempt to send parallel UDP packets or TCP connection attempts to multiple ports at the destination address. Some firewalls misclassify such behavior as port scanning and therefore block the host altogether. Such behavior could not only impact the ability of Skype to run but would likely impact other legitimate network applications running on the same host computer.
by Skype.com
Skype is a little piece of software that lets you make free calls over the Internet. We are revolutionising the telecoms world by allowing our users to call other Skype users anywhere in the world for free. In less than 2 years we’ve had over 180 million downloads (they’re free too) and we have a growing community of 55 million registered users.
Making free calls over Wifi is pretty nifty and our Wifi partners who have already opened their networks to Skype users agree. Making your network Skype-friendly means providing our users with free Skype-only web access. It’s a great way for new users to try Wifi and gives them an easy path to upgrade to full Internet access.
Here’s how to do it.
Marketing
Your Wifi start page should include a Skype banner, which you can get here.
You can check Skype’s promotional and distributional terms here.
There should also be a prominent space on your start page that lets people know they can use Skype for free from your hotspot. If you want to limit the time so that users sign-up for full Internet access, that’s fine, but we do request a minimum of 15 minutes free Skype-only access. We recommend “Talk for free! Click here to get free access to Skype.” Clicking on this should lead to a joint landing page.
The landing page should have a Skype banner, a link to download Skype and a button to allow Skype-users to connect to your Wifi network. Simple really.
Check out Skype’s affiliate program here as well. Using any of the banners provided in the affiliate program will allow you to earn commissions on sales that result from your clicks.
Technical
In the broadest possible terms, we consider an ideal network configuration to be one that’s set up according to the rules shown here:
Ideal network configuration for Skype
1. Outgoing TCP connections should be allowed to remote ports 1024 and higher.
2. Outgoing TCP connections should be allowed to remote ports 80 and 443.
3. Outgoing UDP packets should be allowed to remote ports 1024 and higher.
4. For ideal performance, the NAT translation should be stateful, meaning that translations are remembered and reused for subsequent packets. The state must be kept for at least 30 seconds after the most recent translation. (Skype recommends that the translations be maintained for as long as an hour, if possible.)
Many peer-to-peer applications, including Skype, rely heavily on UDP packets to help maintain the best possible quality of connection among peers because UDP packets can be transmitted quickly and require very little overhead to manage. However, for UDP communications to work properly for Skype through NAT, the translation rules for UDP packets must be consistently handled, meaning that UDP packets set from one external network address and port number must be consistently translated to an internal network address and port number without varying either the network address or port number.
Although the use of UDP is optional - meaning Skype will work fine without the ability to transmit UDP messages - the call quality experienced by Skype users will be much better, on average, if the caller is able to send UDP packets to the called party and receive UDP answers in reply.
Tip: Checking your network for P2P friendliness
Many of our customers have told us that they use a freeware program called “NAT Check”, written by Bryan Ford, to see if their network’s UDP translation is compatible with P2P protocols including Skype. The NAT Check program is available for free download from the program’s website at http://midcom-p2p.sourceforge.net/ and is available in a precompiled form for platforms running Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. (NAT Check is not Skype software.)
Skype-friendly partial results from NAT Check
UDP RESULTS:
- UDP consistent translation: YES (GOOD for peer-to-peer)
- UDP loopback translation: YES (GOOD for peer-to-peer)
- UDP unsolicited messages filtered: YES (GOOD for security)
In the results of NAT Check shown above, we see that the network’s UDP translation is applied consistently (“consistent translation”), that the input and output ports are identical except in the event of a conflict (“loopback translation”) and that unsolicited UDP packets sent to the network are discarded (“unsolicited messages filtered”).
Although not strictly necessary, it is preferable for the network’s firewall or NAT gateway to support IP packet fragmentation and reassembly. In addition, the firewall must not block an attempt to send parallel UDP packets or TCP connection attempts to multiple ports at the destination address. Some firewalls misclassify such behavior as port scanning and therefore block the host altogether. Such behavior could not only impact the ability of Skype to run but would likely impact other legitimate network applications running on the same host computer.
by Skype.com
