MSN > Skype - whats your plans?

blastman

blastman

blastman

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hey guys,

at work most of the sales staff use MSN to talk to customers. This has grown into a large part of our business so we can;t do without.

As we all know, as of the 8th April MSN will no longer work as it'll merged into the skype network.

What (if you in the same situation as me) are your plans to merge from one to the other?

We have several adsl lines that our firewall plays round robin on to provide internet connection to my users. Due to this skype is very hit and miss largely depending on what adsl line to pick up and even then there are some inconstanties.

I'm being asked for a solution and I have no idea what to suggest apart from Lync (which we don't have time to evaluate and install)

HELP!!
 
I presume you're saying that Skype video chat doesn't work very well due to bandwidth issues when one of the poorer ADSL connections is in use? Surely any video chat system will suffer on poor bandwidth connections.. MSN Messenger too?

I manage a company that has a lot of users distributed globally - they were exclusively MSN Messenger like your company, but 95% of the time they just used instant messaging, which doesn't require a high bandwidth connection (some of their users have terrible internet connections). They have gone over to Skype now - it does instant messaging too and they seem happy. They use video when they need it - if the connection speed is suitable (they know which users have pieces of wet string for a connection! :D )
 
Easiest solution:

Migrate to Skype change networking to a fail-over solution so you always have a constant network (why do you actually round-robin it?? - surely you'd only want to change lines when it goes down)

Other solution:

As you've said. Implement Lync - it's not the hardest thing to do. Certificates is the most annoying thing with it. You'll then need an Edge server to federate with Skype (so one internal server and one Edge server). Plus points are that it's usable from most smartphones and once you have the Edge server setup. Users (as long as it's allowed) can login from anywhere. Only requires port 5061 from the internet as well so firewall configuration is easy.


M.
 
jameshurrell said:
I presume you're saying that Skype video chat doesn't work very well due to bandwidth issues when one of the poorer ADSL connections is in use? Surely any video chat system will suffer on poor bandwidth connections.. MSN Messenger too?

I manage a company that has a lot of users distributed globally - they were exclusively MSN Messenger like your company, but 95% of the time they just used instant messaging, which doesn't require a high bandwidth connection (some of their users have terrible internet connections). They have gone over to Skype now - it does instant messaging too and they seem happy. They use video when they need it - if the connection speed is suitable (they know which users have pieces of wet string for a connection! :D )
Click to expand...

Sadly no. The problem is simply being unable to connect. sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. sometimes it wont work on a specific adsl line, but restarting the application and trying again get you in. same adsl line!!

m4cc45 said:
Easiest solution:

Migrate to Skype change networking to a fail-over solution so you always have a constant network (why do you actually round-robin it?? - surely you'd only want to change lines when it goes down)

Other solution:

As you've said. Implement Lync - it's not the hardest thing to do. Certificates is the most annoying thing with it. You'll then need an Edge server to federate with Skype (so one internal server and one Edge server). Plus points are that it's usable from most smartphones and once you have the Edge server setup. Users (as long as it's allowed) can login from anywhere. Only requires port 5061 from the internet as well so firewall configuration is easy.


M.
Click to expand...

We configured the adsl lines so that there was an equal share of the 4 x 8mb adsl lines. We had an issue where one line was being heavily used and the upload port was being hammered causing very slow internet pages.
 
Moving account to Jabber - www.jabber.org

Moving client to either Digsby or Pidgin

Skype's track record on customer privacy is abysmal at best, I want nothing to do with it.

Lync is worth a look, although I am worried that Microsoft are going to do their usual bait-and-switch with regards to pricing. They've already taken an axe to it compared to 2011, once they've captured some of the market you'll see it creep up again.
 
Last edited:
Use Trillian to connect to MSN. Its only the client that's going, the network itself will remain, so just use another client.
 
Skeeter said:
Use Trillian to connect to MSN. Its only the client that's going, the network itself will remain, so just use another client.
Click to expand...

Everything is going. Messenger accounts will be converted to Skype accounts from April 8th.
 
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