BIOS LEVEL

I suppose we’re not the only ones interested in replacing our cell phones and landlines with a single phone. Nick Randolph’s got a few great articles comparing the differences between the different services offered by Skype (SkypeOut, SkypeIn, Skype Voucher), and more of the hurdles that Nick (our NicK) may not have addressed in his evaluation. Of course, we’re all patiently waiting for Nick’s (our Nick) final conclusion on the matter.

Using my DD-wrt router and a bandwidth monitor that works with the router, called Rflow, I measured how much bandwidth the Skype phone uses. It uses anywhere between 5 to 10 KBps. Checking the Skype website they say the Skype service uses 3-16KBps (link). Just as a side note it is possible for Skype to use all of your bandwidth. From Wikipedia:

“Skype also routes calls through other Skype peers on the network to ease the traversal of Symmetric NATs and firewalls. This, however, puts an extra burden on those who connect to the Internet without NAT, as their computers and network bandwidth may be used to route the calls of other users.”

Here is my results in a nutshell. At a bandwidth usage of 5-10KBps of up and 5-10KBps down The Skype call came through clearly. I have Comcast cable in the Philadelphia area and I only get 40KBps up. So Skype is using a 1/4 of my up bandwidth. I then share that connection with 4 other people. So that explains why I am unable to make Phone calls some times.

Look for my final write-up later this week.

Just when I feel that I can use this technology in my life I get reminded how early of a generation it still really is. It makes the calls great, it receives the calls great, but it locks up. The other day I left it in my bag when I got to work. I pull it out and hour later and found out it locked up. Well when it locks up it eats up the battery like nothing else and its been like this way for two hours I guess. So the Phone was dead. Really this device you have to have a charger with you at all times and you have to check it to make sure it works every few hours. I wonder if the non wifi models have the same locking up issue?

I went back again to Reading Terminal Market. This time I went with my orinico wifi card and Linux laptop. I spoofed the mac address of the laptop so that it matched the skype phone. This allowed my laptop to impersonate the skype phone and authenticate on the access point. After it was all said and done the laptop was able to surf. The Skype phone how ever was completely unable to connect. I guess the access point has some additional security.

Also the battery life on the phone so far is annoying. The phone must be charged every night to have enough battery to get through the next day. I forgot to put it on the charger last night so its been dead all day. Wifi is a very power hungry technology so that’s why you don’t get great battery life. I really wonder how they will pull it off when the wifi enabled cell phones come out.

Lastly next week I will have to give up the Skype phone. So until then I’ll keep trying it out. If any one wants me to do any other tests just leave a comment!

The past few days have been very busy, but I have made progress with the Skype phone. I went back to the free wifi at Love Park and attempted to get on with the phone. Again I had no luck. This time I brought my laptop along and I quickly realized that the wifi in the area was down. Determined to get on I headed over to the lovely Reading Terminal Market. They have free wifi but with a different provider. The phone again was unable to get on. So after firing up the laptop I noticed that it required you to click through a web portal first. This problem of the phone not being able to get onto a browser authenticated wifi is a problem. I can see two solutions to this. The first would be is to add a web browser to the phone to authenticate on the access point. This solution has its own can of worms as the screen is the size of postage stamp. A better solution that I can think of is create some type of standard on how devices like this can authenticate with the access point. Can anyone think of any other solutions for this? I will be going back in a few days with my Orinoco card to see if I can’t spoof my mac to get the Skype phone on, Keep your eyes open for this.

Also I got several more calls for Constantine. I ask why they were calling and it turns out the guy put my number on job applications. All I have to say is: If this guy doesn’t can’t put the correct number down on job applications then he doesn’t deserve to be hired.

So I found out the name of the person who had my number before me. It was some one named Constantine. I was amused when I got a call asking for Constantine It made me think of the movie. Then I got a few more. Ok really, they need to stop calling. Its getting annoying. I think if they call tomorrow I am going to ask why they are calling…I am curious.

Today I walked around Philadelphia right out of city hall and around love park. There is free wifi around there. I attempted to get the skype phone connected to it but I had no luck. I then tried to get my palm connected and had no luck. I was unable to tell if the wifi was broken or if there was some configuration on their end that I was missing. Determined to make a call I walked around a few blocks for 30 minutes trying to connect to any random access point. Out side of the building where I work I did manage to get a connection to an open access point. I made a call to my friend Zack, but after two rings I lost signal. So even in the middle of a city with buildings all around and access points all around its very difficult to make a phone call over Skype.

So far at home and at work where the wifi in plentiful the skype phone is nice to use but on the go it is very limiting

This is part of Nick’s Skype Challenge. Late last year, I bought an older Dell Axim X5 PDA from eBay. It’s in pristine condition, runs with a 400MHz CPU (which can be adjusted to save power). It’s a useful little toy, I can scribble down notes, browse the web, and go on instant messenger when I’m near an access point. I like it more than pen and paper (which I happen to like quite a bit).

Now, when I’m at school, I have very limited cell phone reception. That is, everyone does. A lot of campus isn’t in range of any cell phone towers, and Sprint users have it worse than Verizon (I’m a sprint person). Luckily, most of the main buildings I have class in all have access points, and as a result I took to installing Skype on my PDA to make calls. Calling landlines was free last year.

I’d only installed the “lite” version of Skype, unsure of how well it would work with the high-end version. The first time I tried this, I was only able to call and listen. For whatever reason, my microphone didn’t work. I shrugged at this and just left it alone until this week. I installed the latest version of Skype “lite” for PocketPC and, to my surprise, the microphone worked. I called Nick this morning and we were able to speak. However, it was difficult. I could only hear the first syllable of anything he said, then it either faded out or became a metallic tone rather than speech. For the hell of it, I installed the high-end version to see if it made a difference. It did. The call was more clear than before, but still nothing compared to the quality over PCs. I have a feeling this is either a CPU limitation or my compact flash wireless card. I’m not sure one way or another, so we’ll just have to find somebody to experiment with that has a faster PDA.

Also of note, the high-end version did lag the system a big, but did not jumble the speech.

I did some more tests over the weekend. I took the phone into the city and tried to see how useful it was. I couldn’t find any free wifi access points but the open access points I tried were all low signal and I was unable to connect. Walking around the city I was unable to may any calls. We do have free wifi here in Philadelphia but I was not around where we have it.

The last test I did over the weekend was more of a geek test. I called a cell phone of some one in the same room to see how much lag was in the call. Between the Skype phone and a GSM Cingular phone there was a lag of one second. This was only noticeable when I called some one in the room.

Also I need more people to talk to.

Today I did the first tests. I called my parents’ landline back in Pittsburgh. The first thing I noticed was the sound quality. The sound was crisp and I could hear the person on the other end perfectly. My parents could hear me clearly as well. I would say the quality is much better than any cell phone.
The second test I did with the phone was to see how far from the access point I could go before I lost signal. I have a tiny apartment so I get a perfect signal everywhere in it. For the test I walked outside and down the street . I had a perfect call quality up until the call was dropped when I walked behind a brick building. This result was above my expectations because I thought I would drop the call before the corner as my signal drops to low at about half way.
Tomorrow I’ll do more tests!

I recently got the Belkin skype wifi phone. This thing can send and receive Skype calls and do SkypeIn and SkypeOut. I looked at the plans and its roughly $70 for unlimited calls in and calls out to a landline phone for a year. $70 a year for unlimited for a year that’s Fantastic! Cell providers charge $70 a month for like 1500 minutes or something like that. What I plan to see is if I can replace my cellphone with the Skype phone. The phone is first generation so it will have some limitations and SkypeIn is in beta. I will be looking at the idea behind this and not the actual technology. If all goes well with this test then I could safely say that this is the future, but lets not get ahead of ourselves.

First off, the Belkin wifi phone, I could have used the Netgear phone but both work for what I want to do. The Belkin phone feels and looks like a regular cellphone. It doesn’t have a camera and has a very simple button layout. It’s charged through a standardUSB mini-B plug and the screen is bright and easy to read. I can see no problems with this device physically.

As a background SkypeOut is a service that you pay $30 a year and it provides you unlimited calling to any landline phone in the US or Canada. SkypeIn is a server that you pay $40 a year for a phone number and unlimited calls in. SkypeIn allows people to pick up their cellphone or house phone and call your Skype Phone.

Btw here is the link to the phone: Amazon.com

Tonight I will start using it and lets see were the tests go.