The technical FAQ is not clear about Skype bandwidth usage when you are idle (ie not using skype, just making sure that your friend know that you are online). One could guestimate from it that it could go up to more than 1 GByte per Month !!!

As anybody actually measured that amount ?
How bad is it compare to centralised system ?

NB to Skype people : this is the reason why one of my friend stopped using Skype. So I'd like to be able to answer him .

From the Technical FAQ

How much bandwidth does Skype use when there are no active calls?

On average Skype uses 0-0.5 kilobytes/sec while idle. This is used mainly for contact presence updates. The exact bandwidth depends on many fac

0.5*3600*24:43200.000 kByte per day (43 MB)
#*30:1296000.000 kByte per month (1.3 GB)

Interesting figures Pascal.....

Are there any users out there who have tried to measure this....??

Graham.

As I understand, That's because of you "idle" skype's acting as a supernode allowing other users like myself talk on internet behind the firewall. Looks like concerns about bandwidth used by skype are growing into the serious problem. Read posts, some universities banned skype for that reason. I am very interested in to keep flow rate as little as possible as my cap's only 200mb During phone call Skype is always trying to make my outgoing flow around 4kbps even if I am not talking at the moment (other correspondent talking), which is twice of incoming flow from other correspondent. It would be great If skype team limited supernode connections to the 2kbps or let us choose bandwidth. this feature was asked many, many times and left without answer. It's time to realize Skype is bandwidth consuming software and do something. I would be pretty happy talking on 2kbps, sound quality is very very good and I believe pascalpvk will be happy too :lol:

I confirm the same problem.

Working through several times zones, my Internet connection is active 24 hours a day (and so was Skype active the same way until my Interent supplier told me I was beyond my 2.5 GB monthly quota - never arrived before) and threatened to cut my connection if not purchasing extra GB.

The Net limiter clearly shows that the four days before this problem, depite having been myself phoning less than 30 minutes, the upload statistics show an average of 500 MB/day consumed.

Trying various firewalls did not improve the situation.
Slight improvement obtained by limiting upload to 5 kb/s (I will try now 2 kb/s if the quality remains OK) but this can also lead to significant hemorragy at the end of the month.
Currently my only real solution is to close Skype ("quit") during night and when not in house. Very unpractical with a cordless system supposed to make you able to call and be called at least 14 jours per day.

It is more than time to solve this problem.

Dear phkirsch how you control the upload to 4kbs or 2kbs? what program you are using?
Thanks

dear be_me, I use the software NetLimiter v 1.30

thanks for the info...and how is the sound quality? to landlines and pc to pc?thanks

Dear be_me

Excellent, no différence. in fact I am using a Siemens Gigaset S445 and the M34 USB with the 1.1 version of Skype

Never use chat, only phone inside Belgium, Europe, Central asia countries and Mongolia. No problemm at all.

Phk

I have read this topic, and I have sincerely become worried about this.

I never thought that Skype could use so much "traffic" when in idle mode.

I have been using Skype for 2/3 months now, and I have not noticed any significant increase on my traffic. However, I do have a 4Gb monthy limit, and I really don't wish to pass it!

I have used Net Peeker and will now use Netlimiter to monitor Skype connection. I will post my data soon.

Does anybody, especially Super Skype Users have any comment on this? For instance, does the number of contacts we have affect the consumed internet "traffic" ?

Hi all,

I don't believe this story and i'm going to check it myself. If this is true Skype has a real problem because they don't tell people they could exceed certain bandwidth limits that some people have.

Sure Skype will use traffic for status messages but probably some KB's a day and not MB's a day.

I'm running NetLimiter to monitor Skype traffic for the coming weeks on a machine that only does Skype. Just to be sure!

Hi all,

I don't believe this story and i'm going to check it myself. If this is true Skype has a real problem because they don't tell people they could exceed certain bandwidth limits that some people have.

Sure Skype will use traffic for status messages but probably some KB's a day and not MB's a day.

I'm running NetLimiter to monitor Skype traffic for the coming weeks on a machine that only does Skype. Just to be sure!

Look forward to seeing your results as I agree this is quite incredulous

Regards

My look surprising but here are the stats for uploading for normal use, 90% skype out, normal phone call (2 to 4 minutes):

- Until 28 december: daily "consumption": 20 MB average
- From 29 december: 300 MB/d with the result that on the 6 january the provider threatens to cut the connection if I did not purchase extra GB (since I pay 0.89 €/d until I am back to a cumulatee amount of 2.25 GB)
- From 7/1, equipped with the NetLimiter permanently open on my display, I carefully watched: I see well my phone calls (in average one fall call represents about 1 MB) and being totally idle, I see "waves" arriving like during my phone calls but staying permanently and veryquickly accumulating the MB consumed. Somes days, up to 60 MB were still consumed. Solution applied: after some minutes, seeing the wave continuing: to quit Skype and reactivate: it gives some times quiet before new waves start appearing.
- After 21/1, tired to see an average of 60 MB consumed daily, I started putting skype on line only when I need to call, and quit after teh phone call and offline of course during the night. result: an average of 7 MB/day
- Since the 22/1 I limite Skype to 5 kb/s and since today to 2 - no impact on the quality and when watching it seems working: I see still continues evasion of MB when iddle but not reaching high azmplitude. But I continue quitting when leaving my computer fro some time. Result: less than 10 MB/d these days.

NetLimiter clearly shows all the sofwares consuming down and uploading: definitively Skype is THE consumer (the second one is Outlook) with less than 500 KB/ d with an automatic send/receive every 5 minutes day and night and a normal traffic of emails with attchments in both direction (about 10 per hour).

Thanks to all for assistance. I will unhappily be away from tomorrow until 22 February wityh computer stopped - at least within a few days I will be back to my quota of GB and stop paying the daily 0.89 € extra.

Wow, your ISP set your quota to 2.5gb/month????
How can you live with that? I download and upload over 5gb of data easily each week with Comcast High Speed Internet Cable! That's about 20gb per month, and I've never had any problems.
Hardcore users download anywhere from 30-80gb per month.
If your ISP has really set your quota to 2.5gb a month, you should definitely dump that ISP and find a better one. 2.5gb is not even enough for a DVD (4gb), that's ridiculous.

Well, I am back with some "temporary" results.

Yesterday I monitored my computer internet connection using NetPeeker 2.73 and after searching the forum a bit and spefically this post, changed to Netlimiter (both programs gave similiar results, but will only mention the ones from Netlimiter).

[I have a print screen of this, but will only post it if someone asks.]

The connection was monitored during 4 hours, and I did not receive/made any calls in that period.

Netlimiter showed a total of 100,17KB received and 139,54 KB sent. Extrapolating this will give a day total of roughly 1440 KB.
I will continuing monitor Skype for the next days, but I really am intrigued by phkirsch and pascalpvk posts.

Just for additionnal information, please tell what kind of connection you have:[list]Bandwidth of conection
[*]NAT or not
[*]Online/Offline time
[*]Port settings in Skype[list]
I guess the higher volumes only happen for those with public IP on the computer and enough bandwidth. Those are probably also online 24/24, 7/7.
=> possibly more or less being seen as supernode.

But to what I see one my side, Skype does not consume any noticable bandwidth when idle, about 5-7kB/s during call.

Hi,

After some rumours on bandwidth i installed NetLimiter. In two days i have not find extraordinary bandwidth use with Skype. I use IM a lot but bandwidth is about 300-500 kb a day.

I don't think Skype is eating up bandwidth with the status messages.

Till now it does not make me worry!

The only ones who may worry are those who permanentely serve as relay... and a nice thing would be to know what those have different from the others!

Just to add my 2 cents worth on the bandwidth problem.

I installed Netlimiter and monitored Skype for 2 hours without using it at all but still doing normal internet work and I got the following results

Download 27,161 Bytes
Upload 18,192 Bytes

I don't know how this converts in bandwith usage over a long period, I am sure somebody will work it out for me, but as I am not limiter with my ISP there is not a problem here.

For information my connection is 512 download and 128 upload and the PC is connected 24/7 to the internet

[size=18]UPDATE

I will try and update this post later with some more figures after I have monitored Skype longer.

[size=18]UPDATE AT 01:30hrs 29/01/2005

Download 174,357 Bytes
Upload 205,705 Bytes

This has been monitored from 16:00hrs 0n 28/01/2005 till 01:30hrs on 29/01/2005 and Skype has not been used at all in that time just sitting there listerning.

Hi, i've just read this forum and can attest to my ""usage" going sky (no pun intended).

My previous ISP plan allowed for 1 gb a month, for me that was enough, usually only using half that. Then along came skype and I was merrily chatting to my friends overseas, when one day the bill cam and I'd exceeded my quota within 3 weeks, i then started checking everyday, through the ISP's web site and tracked it down to Skype. boy it cost a bomb.

I how have unlimited downloads.

I have noticed a high bandwidth consumption myself so I installed NetLimiter to watch Skype. For a comparision I also downloaded Woize http://www.woize.com - and today between 08.00 and 12.00 (GMT+1) I did get the following results:

08.01 to 11.15 a consumption of 40,58 MB
11.15 to 12.01 a consumption of 00.04 MB

Total today so far 40,62 MB.

During the same period Woize has used 8,99 kB.

Bonbons asked for some information:

I am on a T1-line (fiberoptics), with public IP using WinXP Sp2. My processor is a P4 3,0 Prescott no NAT. Usually online between 08.00 and midnight (GMT +1). Port 56774 and box ticked for 80.