Skype: Should SJSU Ban It?

So I've been doing a little research about this thing called Skype. Seems it's creating quite a buzz here at SJSU, where there's talk about banning it. For those of you who don't know (and are too lazy to read the Wikipedia article), Skype is a P2P network through which users can make free calls to other users anywhere around the world using their computers. Cool, right? Well, except for the fact that it can turn faster networks into supernodes and suck up their bandwidth, something ISPs aren't too fond of. Hmm...universities tend to have fast connections, so does that make SJSU a target for this? Wikipedia claims that, "The selection of intermediary computers is fully automatic, with individual users having no option to disable such use of their resources." So if Skype wants to leech off your bandwidth, there's not a whole lot you can do about it.

But wait! This article says that a study showed putting Skype behind a default deny firewall "prevented super-node behaviour while still allowing calls to be made and received using web protocols." In other words, bandwidth use was limited to a user's own calls, which were unaffected by the firewall. Ok, seems like that would make the ISPs a little less grumpy.

But there are other concerns about Skype. First, it's closed source. Meaning, no one can know exactly what it's doing and how. This is a common practice and may actually make the network more secure, but some see it as a shady practice.

There are also questions of security. A year ago, some pranksters developed a patch that let them masquerade as other users. Wikipedia says, "The technique was for the prankster to put up an attractive profile with a woman’s name and picture, and put that profile into "Skype me" mode. Within minutes generally another user would invariably try calling/chatting. The patch running the whole time would then partner up another call to the first caller, and send messages from the first person to the second, and vice versa. This way, both victims would think that they were talking to a third, fictitious user, while they were instead talking to each other." Heh. Obviously, this prank was not intended to cause serious harm, but it shows that there are ways to get around the system. Skype also doesn't provide a way to verify another user's identity.

So why should we keep Skype at SJSU? IT consultant Steve Sloan wrote a great post about why Skype is important to have at this university. Skype allows faculty and students alike to collaborate with people all over the globe in an exciting new way. Sure, there are other alternatives to Skype that have less of the problems mentioned above, but did you know that Skype handles 7% of the world's long-distance minutes? As a university in Silicon Valley, it's important that we have access to the hottest technology in order to remain a competitive school. So is Skype worth the cost for SJSU? My vote is yes, it is.