Skype and ADSL

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kaspaas

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Hi,

It is Saturday afternoon.

I'm testing Skype in anticipation of 1 Feb 2005.

When I called echo123, a Skype service to check if it is working, it does not work well - too many gaps in the data it seems.

Does this work for anybody else?

Does local Skype (SA to SA) work?

Thanks






South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.
 
Hi Kaspaas

I have used Skype as a P2P conversation tool with BTTB and it worked well. I have not tested it regarding any other service (PC to phone, PC to mobile, International etc.) and will be interested to see the results. Anybody that makes use of it for these services?

RPM
[email protected]
 
Hi RPM,

please try skyping echo123 - it is an automated answering machine that gives a welcome message, asks for a 10 second message, echos it back to you and tells you what to do if you could not hear your own message.

Thanks


South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.
 
Well done Kaspaas for that. The "echo123" tip.
Now people wanting to test Skype can do so without having to have someone else online to connect to.

BTW, I chatted last night to the owner of SAWireless http://www.sawireless.co.zafor about an hour without any problems. His transmission was noisy, but he had a gimpy headphone set. Otherwise he heard me perfectly.

Also another thing. The new version I'm running uses less bandwidth. It varied between <b>0,7kb and 2.5kb.</b> The higher data rate was on transmission.

As I stated elsewhere, I have hosted a conference of 5 people in total and played counterstrike at the same time. This was with ADSL of course.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">PC to phone, PC to mobile, International etc<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">
One would have to register with Skype. This would only be available for people calling outside SA. It isn't legal here yet, so we can only talk to people in another country to their mobile or phone line.

I wonder if the Skype people are aware that our legislation has been changed to legalise VOIP.

<b><hr noshade size="1"></b><font size="2"><font color="red"><b>You can take Telkom out of the Post Office but you can't take the Post Office out of Telkom.</b></font id="red"></font id="size2">
 
The echo123 sounded fine to me.

Need to get a decent headset for this stuff though.
 
I used it to speak to friends in Spain - strange thing is that they could hear me perfectly but I couldn't hear a single thing from them - not even static. I think I'll go try echo123 now!

EDIT: echo123 works perfectly. That proves what I thought - it was something wrong with my friends' computer.

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I am on ADSL and tested on echo123. Worked perfectly except playback was wrong, the recorded voice comming back was far to sexy to be my own voice, made me excited;) nice find on that echo123 though, sure not many people new about that.

There is no peace without war!!!
 
My Experience: (I have a plantronics headset - recomended)

ADSL-ADSL: , (me telkom pretoria / other stormnet durban) sounds tinny, sometimes had to revert to Instant Messaging in 2/4 calls (this ability to switch between IM/Voice is a useful feature).

echo123: Works fine but also sounds tinny

Telkom ADSL-Telkom VSAT: Had an hour long chat, quality waaay! better than land line or cell. Surprisingly the latency seemed low for satelite.

Skypeout calls to landline: So far very mixed to poor connects but quality not goodenough to sustain a conversation. Both attempts were to the Far east, Telkom's IP routing to that part of the world has never been good.

If you're getting asymetric or failure to connect it may be your NAT router setup P2P compatibility.

read this :
http://midcom-p2p.sourceforge.net/
 
Hi,

Did some more testing. I'm usually running my PC as a Linux (KDE, Suse9.1) workstation and installed the latest version there.

When it did not work, I read the manual :-), FAQ and asked the question, got the responses that it is actually working fine.

I then booted my PC to Windows 98, and Skype worked fine.

Seems as if Skype is not yet as Linux friendly as one would hope for.

Thanks for all who responded.


South Africa needs World Class Broadband at World Competitive Prices.
 
Used SKYPE now and was perfect, like sound recorder quality. No delays no tinny sound. Tested ADSL-ADSL local.

There is no peace without war!!!
 
I use Skype on suse9.1 no probs kaspaas - what issues did you encounter?
 
I just called a land line number in denmark @ 10:00 am (telkom IP peak load time). Clear as a bell, better than GSM or telkom

cost: 16 minutes for 0.29 euro !

maybe this DSL line will pay for itself after all !
 
I know of someone [:D] who has called the USA, Ireland, the Netherlands and Australia using SkypeOut over ADSL. Variable quality, but in all cases it was perfectly audible. And the rates, the rates! Under R4 for a 27 minute call to Australia!

I find it perverse in the extreme that, with the current Rand/Euro exchange rate, it's cheaper to phone long-distance (over 50km) in ZA over SkypeOut than with Telskom...

Eish.
 
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