Skype protocol

Skype protocol
Skype uses a proprietary Internet telephony (VoIP) network. The protocol has not been made publicly available by Skype and official applications using the protocol is closed source. The main difference between Skype and VoIP clients is that Skype operates on a peer-to-peer model, rather than the more traditional client-server model. The Skype user directory is entirely decentralized and distributed among the nodes of the network, which means that the network can scale very easily to large sizes (currently about 240 million users) without a complex and costly centralized infrastructure .

Use of Resources
Skype accesses the hard drive several times a minute. This can be verified by looking at the HDD activity LED, or by using a file access monitor such as FileMon. As Internet bandwidth of, some are selected by the users of software to act as "supernodes."Under certain conditions, Skype is reportedly willing to accept thousands of connections, but is said to be limited to 40 kb / s upload and download.