Aswath Weblog

Inner workings of Peerio

I am in the process of understanding the inner workings of Peerio. Since only limited information is publicly available it has been difficult. So far my understanding is this: it uses some sort of peer discovery protocol, probably something like what is available in Windows XP; once the reach information is made available, one peer can initiate a communication session to another using any of the protocols, like H.323 and SIP. In this understanding, Peerio’s role is limited to identifying the reach information. So any user experience in the communication phase is independent of Peerio. Answer to one of the questions in their website reinforces this:

Q: What is the sound quality of Peerio444™?
A: Sound quality in standard VoIP applications is determined by the voice compression and transmission technology in use (vocoders, protocols, etc.). Peerio444™’s ready-to-use client contains standard vocoders found in the majority of today’s commercial VoIP systems. Peerio444™’s unique modular configuration allows the application to incorporate any set of existing VoIP vocoders and proprietary vocoders from companies such as Global IP Sound (as used by SKYPE).

Then I came across an entry in Ipinferno that is puzzling in light of the previous understanding:

Regarding his free software download, Peerio444, Dmitry (Peerio's CEO Dmitry Goroshevsky) told me that sound quality has been a major problem which is why it has not been made generally available. He told me that an important licensing announcement would be made *soon* which would provide a solution, but would not commit to a schedule for delivering this technology to the marketplace.

But the same entry also has this quote:

Peerio is serverless. This is, according to Dmitry, a fundamental and game changing difference -- and not just for VoIP but for many different kinds of networked applications that will ultimately run on the Peerio infrastructure.

Oh well. Confusion and misunderstandings are part of the learning process.

DUH. Peerio444 is an integrated software with peer discovery component and a softclient. The latter is probably is a custom development whose codec has performance issues. Since softclients like Xten allow IP address based dialing, it might be possible for peer discover client pass the address information to the softclient. This would address the problem. Probably this is what Mr. Goroshevsky was referring.