© DrBacchus

Wide are networks (WAN) play a key role in delivering unified communications in distributed enterprises, but many conventional WAN network monitoring tools don't provide enough visibility to analyze real-time voice and video as effectively as other applications.

They do not give WAN managers enough visibility into their VoIP traffic at all times. That means managers often don't discover problems until users complain that a connection is garbled. Things like duplex errors within the MPLS network affect all traffic, and the lack of visibility is an issue due to the sensitivity of VoIP traffic. Complaints about call quality usually throw up a red flag that other things are amiss, such as duplex errors. This is a common challenge for networking pros, and fortunately some WAN monitoring vendors like NetScout Systems are beginning to address it by beefing up their unified communications analysis tools.

© Adriano Gasparri

Within the Skype and Linux user communities, the announcement that Microsoft is purchasing Skype was not taken too kindly by many. Steve Ballmer had reassuring words to address their concerns, promising that Microsoft will continue to provide Skype for operating systems and devices not sold by Microsoft, although he didn't specifically mention Linux among these.

Even if it does include Linux though, it is an obvious gap for free software. There are other free VoIP solutions for Linux, but none of them measure up to Skype in terms of the details or size. None of these other free VoIP solutions offers a complete stack that presents users with an easy sign up and run experience like Skype. This presents a big problem for Linux users if Microsoft decides to drop Skype support for Linux. This could be a huge problem for those that rely on Skype for frequent overseas calls or as their main phone line.