how much bandwidth does video conferencing calling use?
Situation: A new bigpond client wants to do video calls to family overseas. They can’t get fixed line broadband so they go to wireless.
This is based on pricing at the end of 2007. If we assume that both ends of the connection are uploading video at 128kbit rate. Which is the maximum a fixed line ADSL 512/128 connection will get and depending on the reception quality of wireless that seems to be typical with about 3 or more bars of signal in my experience. Let’s take a ‘worst case’ scenario where double that amount is being used.
You are using all available upload bandwidth (XXXX/256) = approx 26 kilobytes/sec
Your friend is using the same upload bandwidth (XXXX/256) = approx 26 kilobytes/sec
Telstra charge for data going both ways so 26+26 = 52kilobytes/sec (theoretical max)So… 500,000 kilobytes (your download limit) / 52 = 9615 sec per month of MSN’ingSo… 2.67 hr worth of chatting a month. This assumes MSN uses all your bandwidth while chatting, of course. It’s the worse case scenario anyway
For the first month there is a software program called Net Limiter that could be used to restrict the usage. Plus they can look on the ‘my bigpond’ area for usage amounts.I would definitely recommend the maximum plan of 3GB ($110) and they can change to the 1GB plan later if they find they don’t need the full usage which by the above calculations would mean 16hrs of video conference based on the above. However my own experience with using msn is that you end up with a ‘talking head’ and you don’t see much change in the picture so you really are just doing a VOIP (internet phone) call which uses a lot less bandwidth and you would probably be getting a few days of solid talking time.