Download and upload speeds for skype

thebourke

To use skype for both video and ordinary calls...what kind of download/upload speeds would you need?

chris2007

Minimum of 1mb/s

Dardania

the basic 1 m download /128 k upload ADSL that you can get from any Bitstream provider will do the trick. The defining factor is the responsiveness of your connection so you're looking for a low latency connection, with fast pings.

A good tester: http://myspeed.visualware.com/voip/

watty

The speed needs to be stable. Anything from 50k (voice only) to 64k (voice & very poor video) to 120k(voice and typical web video). Same speed both directions.

Jitter should be low. ping under 100ms is OK

Johnboy1951

Dardania wrote: »

the basic 1 m download /128 k upload ADSL that you can get from any Bitstream provider will do the trick. The defining factor is the responsiveness of your connection so you're looking for a low latency connection, with fast pings.

A good tester: http://myspeed.visualware.com/voip/

I don't know about others but those tests do not indicate anything useful for me here ...... just used it and it told me I had 81.2% packet loss! Jitter near zero.
I can still carry on VOIP calls ...... with no discernable losses .... what do I believe, my ears or those tests? (rhetorical!)

Dardania

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

I don't know about others but those tests do not indicate anything useful for me here ...... just used it and it told me I had 81.2% packet loss! Jitter near zero.
I can still carry on VOIP calls ...... with no discernable losses .... what do I believe, my ears or those tests? (rhetorical!)

I usually found these tests useful, however it depends on what site conditions are like at the testing server / datacentre.

a more realworld test would be to do a pathping to sip.skype.com

eg:

C:\Users\User>pathping sip.skype.com

which for me gives:

Tracing route to sip.gs.skype.com [212.72.49.145]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  0  eeepc-s101 [192.168.1.30]
  1  192.168.1.254
  2  bas503.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.239]
  3  vlan500.sw502.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.125]
  4  vlan54.sw002.cwt.esat.net [193.95.130.161]
  5  ge2-0.br003.cwt.esat.net [193.95.129.23]
  6  xe-0-1-0-104.dub20.ip4.tinet.net [213.200.67.253]
  7  xe-2-0-0.lon20.ip4.tinet.net [89.149.186.85]
  8  ge-7-1.core2.London1.Level3.net [213.200.77.130]
  9  ae-34-52.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.97]
 10  ae-2-2.ebr2.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.132.134]
 11  ge-11-0.ipcolo1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.139.174]
 12  212.72.49.145
Computing statistics for 300 seconds...
            Source to Here   This Node/Link
Hop  RTT    Lost/Sent = Pct  Lost/Sent = Pct  Address
  0                                           eeepc-s101 [192.168.1.30]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  1   12ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  192.168.1.254
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  2   42ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  bas503.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.239]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  3   34ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  vlan500.sw502.cwt.esat.net [193.95.136.125]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  4   34ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  vlan54.sw002.cwt.esat.net [193.95.130.161]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  5   30ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ge2-0.br003.cwt.esat.net [193.95.129.23]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  6   28ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  xe-0-1-0-104.dub20.ip4.tinet.net [213.200.67.253]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  7   47ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  xe-2-0-0.lon20.ip4.tinet.net [89.149.186.85]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  8   52ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ge-7-1.core2.London1.Level3.net [213.200.77.130]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
  9   43ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ae-34-52.ebr2.London1.Level3.net [4.69.139.97]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 10   46ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ae-2-2.ebr2.Amsterdam1.Level3.net[4.69.132.134]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 11   50ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  ge-11-0.ipcolo1.Amsterdam1.Level3.net [4.69.139.174]
                                0/ 100 =  0%   |
 12   44ms     0/ 100 =  0%     0/ 100 =  0%  212.72.49.145
Trace complete.

The final RTT (Return Trip Time) of 44ms is indicative of what you can expect with say skype - for me it should be ample in terms of latency. It also looks good from a packet loss perspective that nothing got lost along the way

Johnboy1951

What's the equivalent to pathping for Linux I wonder .... traceroute?

Dardania

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

What's the equivalent to pathping for Linux I wonder .... traceroute?

it seems to be a combination of ping & traceroute on windows - have a look here:

http://www.opensourcetutor.com/2007/07/25/troubleshooting-tools-ping-pathping-httping-and-nmap/

or another few guys have hacked a script together to emulate:

http://www.grendelchen.com/weblog/?p=151
&
http://www.bitwizard.nl/mtr/


must try it on my linux nas...