I tried out Skype today using two Next G MiniMax’s.

I ran a delay test to a couple of major web sites first (google, news.com, bigpond) and the connection averaged around 250ms all up (bigpond was much quicker, but google was a bit slower). The signal strength where I tested was pretty much perfect. I’d like to test again while driving, but that’s for another day!

I connected two computers through Next G MiniMaxes. Both running Windows XP (SP2) and Skype 3.0.0.190. One was a standard IBM desktop, the other a MacBookPro (with bootcamp).

I tried two different tests, once with the video also turned on (from the macbook to the ibm), and once without.

Both tests worked perfectly! There was at most a half second delay between the two ends, even with video turned on (for comparison I also made a call to a friend connected over ADSL, and the delay time was exactly the same). Voice quality was fine.

The testing I did consisted of talking non-stop for 10 minutes from one connection to the other (from the macbook to the ibm). I did some rough measurements of the amount of bandwidth consumed at the “receiving” end, and here are the results:

With video streaming (after 10 mins of connection and non-stop talking):

Downloads: 6.3 MB

Uploads: 2.9 MB

Without video streaming (after 10 mins of connection and non-stop talking):

Downloads: 2.85 MB

Uploads: 2.4 MB

I found it interesting that even though I wasn’t transmitting any voice from the end I measured at, the uploads and downloads were still pretty close. This might be to do with how Skype functions more than anything else…

We don’t have a proper VoIP box to test with here, but we might be able to test something other than Skype in the future.