And I'd also like to thank Brad for pointing out Skype's API, as I've
also being wanting to use a VOIP platform for speech processing and
communication. I don't know if Steve is going to end up using it, but
it's nice to hear about a useful platform like this.
andi
Quoting Stephen Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
Hi Brad,
I am interested in Skype of course as a VOIP provider for me
personally. I have just re-installed the client to chat with a
potential collaborator. You propose Skype as a communications
backbone for Texai that solves all the problems I foresee with
getting past ISPs and home DSL/cable/wireless routers to reach
at-home Texai users. And I, as a result, agree that I will evaluate
Skype for this purpose should n2n, and all other open-source
alternatives fail.
One of my self-imposed constraints is to develop free software (i.e.
GPL) and reuse open source solutions. Skype uses a proprietary
protocol and is closed-source. I suppose that client software that
I write to their Java API can be licensed GPL but the network itself
is closed.
On the other hand n2n is GPL v3 and I should be able to borrow the
most relevant features of Skype for the Texai peer-to-peer
communications backbone that I will implement on top of n2n, should
it actually work for me. From the Wikipedia article on Skype:
* Skype operates on a peer-to-peer model
* three main entities: supernodes, ordinary nodes and the login server
* each client builds and refreshes a list of reachable nodes known
as the host cache.
* contains IP address and port numbers of supernodes
* supernodes relay communications to other clients behind a firewall
* any skype client can become a supernode if it has good bandwidth,
no firewall and adequate processing power
* the Skype user directory is entirely decentralized and
distributed among the nodes of the network—i.e., users' computers
* which allows the network to scale very easily to large sizes
(currently about 240 million users)[44] without a complex
centralized infrastructure costly to the Skype Group
A good article on the details of these featuresl is here. The most
important attributes of Skype are evidence that a peer-to-peer
network can:
* scale to several hundred million users
* be done with no costly complex centralized infrastructureThanks
so much for your detailed technical suggestion.
Cheers.
-Steve
Stephen L. Reed
Artificial Intelligence Researcher
http://texai.org/blog
http://texai.org
3008 Oak Crest Ave.
Austin, Texas, USA 78704
512.791.7860
----- Original Message ----
From: Brad Paulsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2008 5:31:16 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] organising parallel processes
Steve,
This may be a naive question, but have you considered using Skype as
a P2P mechanism?
The Skype User Agent (UA) software has been downloaded 100's of
millions of times and the average number of users on-line at any
given time is in the 8-11 million range. Skype publishes a (free)
API specification for the UA which includes their very powerful and
user-friendly chat system. This system can be used to host both
group and public chats and also to upload/download any type of file
(typical uneven P2P file transfer rates, but it's very reliable and
accessible via the UA API). There are API's for Win32, Linux and
Macintosh. There is also, if memory serves, a Java-based API that
should run on any platform that has a JRE (although, the UA API is
a text-based, message-passing API and is, thus, only platform
dependent at what Skype calls the "Communications Layer"). And I
notice just now, there's a new Python wrapper for the API (again,
available on any platform that can host the Python run-time --
which list includes the usual
suspects). There can be multiple programs (Texai agents?)
concomitantly using the single Skype UA via the API on a single
machine. Anyhow, you get a very powerful VOIP/text chat P2P user
agent for free. You don't need to (can't, in fact) host the UA
download site. You just put a Skype graphic on your site that
points to the Skype-hosted download site. Check out Skype's
developer site: https://developer.skype.com/.
Cheers,
Brad
P.S. The Texai server(s) could just be a Skype UA, with its own
Skype username. You could wrap any text-based application-layer
protocol you'd want to inside the Skype chat protocol. I can't
recall if there is a limit to how many users can be involved in a
group or public chat session. I don't think there is any limit.
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