NDLI: WhatsApp Calling: a Revised Analysis on WhatsApp's Architecture and Calling Service

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Casas, Pedro Vanerio, Juan Martin
Abstract	The use of instant messaging applications in mobile networks has largely increased in recent years, replacing traditional messaging applications (SMS, MMS). WhatsApp is the application of this kind with the greatest market share worldwide; as a consequence, mobile operators are becoming growingly interested in understanding its underlying functioning and growth. In this paper we revise some of the results presented in our previous work on WhatsApp characterization, and extend this analysis to the new WhatsApp calling service. We study how the underlying WhatsApp architecture has changed after its acquisition by Facebook in early 2014, and shed some initial light on the new calling functionality, active since mid 2015. While the main backbone of the WhatsApp service is still hosted by the same cloud provider -- SoftLayer, we uncover the usage of Facebook servers to support and implement the calling service.
Starting Page	13
Ending Page	15
Page Count	3
File Format	PDF
ISBN	9781450344265
DOI	10.1145/2940116.2940132
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	2016-08-22
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	Subscribed
Subject Keyword	Calling service Network characterization Whatsapp
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article

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1	Ministry of Education (GoI), Department of Higher Education	Sanctioning Authority	https://www.education.gov.in/ict-initiatives
2	Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	Host Institute of the Project: The host institute of the project is responsible for providing infrastructure support and hosting the project	https://www.iitkgp.ac.in
3	National Digital Library of India Office, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur	The administrative and infrastructural headquarters of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in
4	Project PI / Joint PI	Principal Investigator and Joint Principal Investigators of the project	Dr. B. Sutradhar bsutra@ndl.gov.in Prof. Saswat Chakrabarti will be added soon
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WhatsApp Calling: a Revised Analysis on WhatsApp's Architecture and Calling Service