Aswath Weblog

Smart Alec

Feeling smug and smart. Hence the tone of this post.

A few days back I commented that people seem to be careless when they use Skype statistics. Here is a recent example. That story tells us that Skype claims that they have 2 million subscribers worldwide. I thought it is something like 35 million and they have 2 million concurrent users online at any given time. No matter; it gets more interesting. The story goes on to tell us that Vonage does not consider Skype to be a competitor. According to the article, Skype retorts by saying that “over half its subscribers now use [SkypeOut]”. Mix and match the numbers; quote incorrectly; do whatever it takes to build a story the way you want it to be. This is journalism?

My entry about SIP, Skype and The Bull created different interpretation than I intended. But a comment posted by VelvetFog in this thread suggests that there is another calf wanting to be the Bull. According to this,

SIP is inefficient because it uses text based encoding. (H.323 was knocked because it uses “Asinine” encoding, while text encoding will be easy on the developers.) Of course SIP has made a deal with the devil, by “optimizing the SIP overhead for wireless environment.

SIP is designed by a committee designed to replace a worse H.323. It is unstated that IAX is better because it is designed by one person. Skype is better because it has the aura of mystery.

IAX rocks because it can travel multiple NATs, handle TDM and it is the new, new protocol. All others are legacy”.

I say that all protocols are almost equivalent. So can we stop this bickering and focus on enriching the user interface and user experience?