Using P2P as your startup’s infrastructure (6)
Just one week ago, Skype went through a global outage, and it was revealed a few days ago that it was due to a massive number of Windows users restarting their software. The incident revelead a major flaw in Skype’s algorithm, with tech blogs now questionning the validity of the P2P protocol.
Near Montreal, what I found interesting is Marc Gingras’ post, where he decodes for us Skype’s explanations, what went wrong, and why Skype’s self-healing algorithm didn’t work. And he continues by cheering the virtues of P2P. Of course, he wrote the post because he is the CEO and founder of Tungle.com, a Montreal startup that received earlier this year $1.5m in funding, and whose technology relies on P2P to organize executives’s appointements and calendars.
Late in his post, Marc Gingras says:
Tungle built its own proprietary peer-to-peer network. Similar to Skype, each time a Tungle client starts, it communicates with a supernode to find out the location of its peers. One of the key differences with the Skype network is that we have the ability to start supernodes using our own resources. So, if multiple clients go offline at once, Tungle could, in a matter of minutes start multiple supernodes to accommodate for the massive amounts of reconnects.
For me, this means that Tungle has leased/bought an array of servers throughout the world, with the Tungle client built-in, ready to start as supernodes whenever they receive a signal from Tungle, which is very smart. (Of course I might be wrong, I am decoding his post, the same manner that he decoded skype’s)
Skype is usually extremely reliable. Downtime happens, unfortunately. As long as it’s extremely rare as it’s been the case, I’m fine with it.
I agree with Carl, but Tungle’s approach is cool. I liked Marc’s post as well.
Actually I think true P2P will work well, but it’s the combination with the authentication that nailed Skype …
Also I find it ironic that the whole supernode issue, which Skype has caught a lot of flack for in the past from network admins, didn’t save it this time.
[...] Heri at Montreal Tech Watch extended on my thinking about P2P networks and linked to a really interesting post by Marc from Tungle with some insight into the [...]
i find also skype very reliable. but have you noticed that they don’t advertise it as “telephone” in their webpage? there isn’t a name either, just descriptions of the service. Vonage, on the other hand, which does VOIP, has advertised itself as providing telephone services. So they had to follow strict laws from the FTC in the US and pay fees when their service was down. and meanwhile, skype doesnt have to pay anything…. because the point here is that they never promised anything to their customers.
[...] Marc Gingras writes about P2P technology issues, following heated criticism from the blogosphere about skype’s outage. His startup, tungle.com, relies on P2P to sync managers’ meeting schedules. (August 21st) [...]
[...] Heri at Montreal Tech Watch extended on my thinking about P2P networks and linked to a really interesting post by Marc from Tungle with some insight into the outage. [...]
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