>> 
>> Anyhow - My understanding is that if you leave skype running on a
>> system, it essentially utilises your bandwidth to route other peoples
>> calls even when you personally are not using the system. 
>> 
>> Does anyone know what sort of amount skype uses. Its not like I'm
>> worried as I am on an uncapped plan but more just interested.
>
>People claim it happens, but people claim that Elvis is alive, too :)
>People also say it only can happen on a computer that has a public IP
>address, and possibly has the right ports open for traffic. In-depth
>analysis of what happens seems not usually be part of the reports, and
>actual knowledge of what it does seems to be scarce. (Sort of like Windows
>Update :)
>
>FWIW, I haven't seen it taking any substantial bandwidth on a computer
>that's behind a NAT router, and I don't know anybody who has seen it
>happen. The bandwidth it uses while I'm not using it averages around 100
>bit/s.
>

http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~library/TR-repository/reports/reports-2004/cucs-039-04.pdf

Whitepaper above is a couple years old.
Do a web search on "skype supernodes".
Lack of supernodes was blamed for the outage this week. (last week?)



-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist