Skype question

[Blacksheep]

Are there any busnuts familiar with and or using skype? It's a free skype to skype communicator anywhere in the world! A customer showed it to me the other day and it looks prewtty cool especially if you have friends and or family across the nation. It's all free and was crystal clear! She was talking to her niece in Ca. and it sounded like she was in the same room! Their web site even has free video calls if you have a video camera.

Just curious!

BS

[FloridaCliff]

Just a little background on these type of services.

Skype, Vonage or whatever they are going by depend on you having a high speed internet connection.

The send your phone conversation as data from end to end.

All is well, as long as you have no slow downs or the end user needs a resend because of corrupt data.

Resend equals drop out and dead air to the person listening.

The difference between these type of services and an actual internet phone provider is QOS.

QOS is Quality Of Service.  Basically what happens is that if you initiate a phone call with your high speed provider, who you have phone service with, is that they tag the phone data with a priority tag.

This allows it to go through there network as above all standard data traffic.  This results in a high quality phone conversation.

Since the other second seller providers are only shipping data, (as it appears to everyone else) they suffer from lots of dropped calls and interference during high usage times.

They work and many people I know use them for overseas calls.  Just at a reduced quality or a complete loss.

You gets what you pays for.

Cliff 

[Blacksheep]

Thanks Cliff! I knew you would know! 

BS

[Barn Owl]

Wow, what a coincidence. My brother is shipping out to Afghanistan and he was just telling me about Skype. He hopes he will be able to use it while over there. It must not be too intolerable; besides, I can live will a hiccup once in a while if it's helping save for fuel.

[belfert]

Are the large ISPs and Internet backbones really honoring QOS for VOIP?  I think this would be ripe for abuse by other programs adding QOS tags and pretending to be VOIP to get priority.

My VOIP phone is so bad I use my cell phone most of the time.  It has a loud hum 75% of the time that the caller on the other end can also hear.  It may have to do with the VOIP gateway being in the utility room where all of the phone lines terminate, but my old POTS line ran through there and no voice quality problems.  The VOIP provider just blames the ISP and I am fairly certain it is not the ISP.

[prevost82]

We use Skype with our Datastorm internet sat system when traveling. Wife talks to the kids every day. Once everyone get use to the latency it works great. Best is computer to computer ... next best is computer to phone ... worst is computer to cell phone, the latency is real bad on this one.

Ron

[JackConrad]

Ace,
    Cody & Libby used Skype as their only phone source while at our place.  The biggest problem I saw was that they had to have their computer on and be at the computer when someone called. If their daughter needed to talk to them at other than their scheduled time, she had to call us on our phone.  Jack

[rv_safetyman]

We discovered Skype a couple of years ago when I had an assignment in China.  Talked to Pat more than when I was home

I had to travel on our anniversary, so, I got the celebrate our event before she did. (12 hours time difference as I recall).

At home and on the road, we use satellite, and has been mentioned, that presents a challenge because of the delay for the signal to travel 22K miles up and back.  We talk like we are on a radio and use "over" when we are done talking.  The delay seems like it is 5 minutes, but it is only a second or two.

Skype also has the option for video camera.  However, that takes a lot of bandwidth.  Satellite has rather low bandwidth for the uplink, so video does not work on satellite from our tests.

Skype is free for computer to computer but there is a charge for computer to phone.

By far, cell phone is much more convenient, but for talking to friends/family in different countries, it is a great option.

[HighTechRedneck]

I tried Skype a couple years ago.  When I wasn't using it, but left the installed software running, it was running quite a bit of activity on my Internet connection.  I didn't care much for that.  So I would shut down the Skype software when I wasn't using it, but then no one could call in on it.

I wonder how the Yahoo Voice service compares?

[bobofthenorth]

My wife uses Skype to talk to her sister in Japan - they have pretty long calls so the cheap rate is a really good thing.  We use it when we are in Mexico but haven't had much luck using it on the satellite connection.  We look for a moderately strong wi-fi signal if we know we have some LD calls to make.  Its like everything else in this world - you gets what you pays for.

[Sean]

We use Skype to connect to the PSTN when we are out of cell phone range, which is quite a bit.  At 2.1 cents per minute, it's a good value, but, more importantly, it means we can call for a tow truck, lifeflight, or whatever from out in the backcountry.  Of course, there is that annoying satellite propagation delay that has already been mentioned, which is baffling to anyone you might call out of the blue.  I end up starting the conversation with a brief explanation of the fact that we are on a "satellite phone" and that there will be a delay in each direction and possibly some "drop-out".  Emergency services dispatchers understand this; other folks, perhaps not so much.

Are the large ISPs and Internet backbones really honoring QOS for VOIP?  I think this would be ripe for abuse by other programs adding QOS tags and pretending to be VOIP to get priority.

It doesn't work that way.  In order for you to get preferential QOS for voice, you need to be using a carrier that provides such, and they will specify what equipment you need to use (or provide the equipment) for voice service.  Our satellite provider, HughesNet, does not support voice QOS on consumer connections, but we could go to a different provider using different modems that supply voice.  Not worth the substantial extra money, in our case.

Bear in mind that voice QOS is only supported end-to-end by cooperating networks.  If you have a company with several offices, for example, you can buy IP networking from such a carrier that will connect your offices together on a "private" network, which will incidentally also connect your company to the Internet.  You'll get QOS on office-to-office calls within your company.  You'll also get it all the way to your carrier's PSTN gateway (or your own PSTN gateway, if that's the way you're set up).  But you can't make a call to some arbitrary VOIP station on the internet, such as someone on Skype, and get QOS.

Skype, Vonage, and their ilk are consumer services designed to work on the public Internet.  They don't use QOS.

-Sean
http://ourodyssey.blogspot.com

[PP]

Finally, a subject I know something about. We discovered Yahoo Voice a couple years back and call family overseas every other day for around 2 cents/minute. We use it on my laptop over a dialup connection and a headset with microphone connected. We have phone out and phone in service, but I rarely leave the laptop on and hence, no one ever calls in. The sound quality isn't much different than my cell phone in most cases. And when we get a 'bad connection', we log off and sign back in. Yahoo requires a minimum $10 or $20 dollar upfront deposit and then constantly shows you how much you have left. When we're on the road, we connect through free WiFi hotspots and the sound quality is even better than dialup. Because we spend so much time on the road and we have family overseas, a cell phone was almost useless to us for staying in touch with them. Just try calling overseas with a cell phone and you'll see what I mean. Oh, I almost forgot, calling computor to computor is free, anywhere in the world. Vonage may be right for some people, but for most it's a ripoff taking advantage of those that don't shop around. Just my opinion, don't sue me. No monthly fees with Yahoo Voice. Gotta run now, but check it out, you won't be disappointed. Of course, I'm biased because it works for us. Will

[Highway Yacht]

Has anyone ever used the "Majic Jack"?... I've seen it advertised. It is suppose to be a little device that plugs into your computers usb port and then you plug a telephone into it. No microphones or headsets to use. I think it was 19.99 a year and you get a dedicated phone number just like a home phone. No per minute charge and free long distance. The neat thing about it was that if your computer is off...the caller can leave a voice mail and you can call them back. Also I believe call waiting and caller ID comes with it. Doesn't seem like a bad deal at all if it works.

[belfert]

As far as QOS goes, I was misreading one of the posts.  I thought he was saying QOS would occur over the Internet.  He was saying that if you buy your VOIP from say Comcast that your voice data will get priority until it leaves the Comcast network.

I didn't think any Internet backbone providers would honor a QOS tag.

[HighTechRedneck]

An interesting sidenote regarding the Yahoo Voice service.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080429/ap_on_hi_te/yahoo_jajah