Proprietary Internet telephony network
The Skype protocol is a proprietary network used for Internet telephony. Its specifications are not publicly available, and all official applications based on the protocol are closed-source. It lacks interoperability with most Voice over IP (VoIP) networks, so it requires licensing from Skype for any integration.
Many attempts to reverse-engineer the protocol have been made to study its security features or to enable unofficial clients. On June 20, 2014, Microsoft announced that the old Skype protocol would be deprecated. Users had to upgrade to the 2014 version of Skype to continue accessing services, and older clients could no longer log in.[1][2] As of the second week of August 2014, the new protocol, Microsoft Notification Protocol 24, was implemented to improve offline messaging and message synchronization across devices.[3]