Some Noob questions

[Asha'man X]

Hey everyone.

Just a few questions regarding Skype, or any other recommended VOIP program.

I'm looking to increase our cap and adsl line speed at work, to cater for the growth of pupils and staff. I've had requests from the school principal before about using Skype to make calls to the company owning our school in the UK, to save on normal international calls, but I've turned him down and managed to put him off about it, but in the future I'm sure they will want it looked at.

My first question is, do I need to open any ports on our router and firewall?
Secondly, how much cap does a half an hour call use up for example? I dont want to implement it and then find it's killing our cap.
Is it possible for a program to run through a Squid proxy server, or will the program need direct access to the default gateway?

Thanks for the help

 

[CCABW]

First strive to understand before you decline

<Snip>but I've turned him down and managed to put him off about it, but in the future I'm sure they will want it looked at.</Snip>

You are the kind of IT guy that give business people reason to hate techies.

The internet line is surely paid for by business and they must certainly have every right right to use it for business purposes...

First learn about something before bluntly saying no out of ignorance.

 

[Asha'man X]

@CCABW

The only reason I've turned him down is because I'm caught between a rock and a hard place: I give them Skype, fine. Except now cap is vanishing and more and more staff want it. Back then we were on 6 gigs a month, we now up to 8.

If the school goes over the limit like it has on the past, my line manager the bursar freaks out and demands to know why it is, he simply cannot get that 6 or 8 a month is not a lot. Even though bandwidth is cheap enough, he counts every penny and any expense is almost like a physical pain to him

It's the only reason I turned them down. I need to weigh the one against the many in a school full of people who are master complainers.

Now that we have more pupils and money coming in, along with a new bursar, I may be able to finally ease those restrictions up and let them have more freedom.

 

[CCABW]

The load wooshing sound you heard was the point of my reply passing you by

<Snip>I may be able to finally ease those restrictions up and let them have more freedom</Snip>

Your function is surely to supply & support IT solutions to enable business....

A simple cost benefit analysis is often a great place to start to empower people to decide if they really need something, or merely wanted it...

(Oversimplified) Example, if they are spending R40 a month on phone calls abroad, upgrading the cap may be an "expensive" option. You could have been seen as the hero who pointed this cost saving opportunity out

If they are however spending hundreds of rands a month on those phone calls (more likely, don't you think?), you could have been seen the IT hero if you where in fact driving the adoption of skype (other VOIP solution) at the price of 1GB top-up on your cap, the guy who brings huge cost savings to your business...

Now, you are seen as the IT guy that places "restrictions" on business....

 

[Sony_3G]

If you browse the skype website, you will find tyhat they have a page explainging how much bandwidth skypwe needs/min

 

[ambo]

Flaming aside ...

The answer your are looking for is not difficult and you could have found it fairly easily with google. According to the Skype page on Wikipedia it is limited to 40kb/s up and down. Which equates to less than 20MB per hour.

With ADSL bandwidth costing less than 20c per MB you are looking R4 per hour on Skype. Theres the one half of your cost analysis on a platter

 

[Asha'man X]

@ Ambo

Thanks for the help there. I suppose I should have done a search first, but oh well. You learn something new everyday. At least now I have some interesting and decent info to look over.

@ CCABW

All I ever wanted to do is learn and improve the infrastructure at my work. Every situation and job is different. As is the way we do even the simple tasks and things. You flaming me has not helped one bit, and is off topic. Instead of venting, you could have just told me to go to Skype's website or do a search about the topic. Now we've wasted time arguing about how I have to do my job, which had no relevance to the topic.