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Heads up: Spotify using clients as supernodes

J

jirij

Virtual Member
This is just to give you a heads up about something less known about Spotify.

Spotify announced availability in my country some time ago and is finally available since December, 12th, 2013. So I decided to give it a try. As soon as I did, my security systems lit up, so I cut it off and began investigating - it turns out that Spotify uses a peer-to-peer network (p2p) to re-stream music between clients, kind of what Skype does, therefore possibly eating lots od bandwidth of your internet connection. You're essentially a free server working for the company, if your receiver is able to connect to the p2p network that is.

I've found out that other people observed similar results and even Spotify is silently marketing it as a feature! (http://community.spotify.com/t5/Hel.../Unadvertised-P2P-feature/m-p/400160?nobounce or http://community.spotify.com/t5/Hel...how-to-disable-upload-p2p/m-p/627052?nobounce)

Anyway, just wanted to let you know (the search feature here didn't find any results on this topic). Your receiver might not be connected to the p2p network if it's heavily firewalled or is behind NAT, which can't be "punched through".

edit: I myself have observed just UPnP attempts, but there seems to be more ways to interconnect receivers/clients, http://www.csc.kth.se/~gkreitz/spotify-p2p10/spotify-p2p10.pdf
 
UPnP would only be useful for local sharing between devices on the same local network, which means the same local wireless NAT box for most of us. That seems sensible enough.

How Spotify behaves with cellphones is more interesting and potentially serious
 
davidsrsb said:
UPnP would only be useful for local sharing between devices on the same local network, which means the same local wireless NAT box for most of us. That seems sensible enough.

How Spotify behaves with cellphones is more interesting and potentially serious
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The UPnP packets I intercepted were for my router, requesting ports to be opened/forwarded. Luckily, I don't have a dumb router that would open such security holes without authorization.

From what I found, mobile and web clients don't connect to the p2p network.

auric said:
Skype also caused some unrest amongst eagle eyed users when some noticed that they had been turned into supernodes http://www.forbes.com/sites/anthony...itecture-of-skype-to-make-it-easier-to-snoop/ May well be part of the cost of using these types of distribution systems.
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Yes, I mentioned Skype in my post, since the technology used is quite similar.
 
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