A detailed measurement of skype network traffic

The last few years witnessed peer-2-peer (P2P) and VoIP telephony gaining a tremendous popularity: Skype is beyond doubt the most amazing example of this new phenomenon, as its 170 millions users testify. In this paper, we propose a detailed measurement of Skype sources: we adopt a twofold methodology, using active experiments and passive measurement to gain knowledge about the traffic Skype generates, in a controlled and realistic environment, respectively. The analysis considers both signaling traffic as well as voice calls. Furthermore, we address the description of Skype sources at both packetand flow-levels: we describe fine-grained dynamics of the interaction between Skype and the network, as well as provide a macroscopic characterization of Skype traffic.