While many users have fast DSL lines at home when it comes to the downlink, uplink speeds are typically still very limited. While many might argue that unless you run servers at home (which I do, e.g. Owncloud, Selfoss, Prosody…) this is hardly noticeable I have to disagree now that I have seen how a Skype video call looks like when both sides of the connection have an uplink that allows them to transmit at faster than 1 Mbit/s. The video resolution, quality and frame refresh rate are as stunning as the bandwidth taken once Skype notices what the network can provide. Quite a number of my video calls these days now stream at an uplink/downlink aggregate of 5 Mbit/s. In othr words such video calls consume 2.25 GB of data per hour. Compare that full two hour movies in SD quality I download from my online video recorder that have a mere 1.5 GB per file.
One thought on “A Skype Video Call at 5 MBit/s”
Comments are closed.
Hi Martin,
Was it on a DSL line? Do you mean it was 2.5 Mbit/s uplink and 2.5 Mbit/s uplink?
There is an old but interesting study on Skype behaviour for audio only at http://www3.informatik.uni-wuerzburg.de/TR/tr377.pdf, I don’t have any reference for similar work on video.