ABSTRACT
Skyper, an acronym for Sky peer-to-peer, was the original name given to new software designed to make free phone calls possible on the internet in 2003. However, at this time, another domain with the same name already existed on the World Wide Web. So the “r” was simply deleted and Skyper became Skype. In Skype, described as a peer-to-peer network, “… resources and data can be simultaneously exchanged between two networked computers, however, both computers must be on an equal footing, as the name suggests. Using a microphone, the computer records the user’s voice; it then converts this information into individual datagrams (or network packets) and sends it via the Internet Protocol (IP) to the respective receiving computer. Thus, the entire data exchange occurs via the Internet. The receiving computer puts the incoming datagrams back together and transforms the data back into language that is delivered via a loudspeaker” (www.voip-information.de/peer-to-peer.html).
