Why not use Skype in the conference room?

There’s no question that Skype has done a lot for video conferencing. Its transition from an audio-only to audio-with-video service has enabled millions of people around the world to embrace this form of video conferencing in their daily lives. Keeping up with friends and family abroad has never been easier and, with a free price, it is a very compelling technology. Many other companies have joined the success of Skype, notably Apple with Facetime and Google with Google+, as well as a multitude of other chat and video applications.

Outside of the consumer world, companies have spent and continue to invest millions of dollars each year improving corporate video conferencing from dedicated video conferencing rooms, telepresence suites to desktop computers and emerging mobile video conferencing. One of the questions we are often asked is why not use Skype?

Skype works with Skype. You cannot make a Skype call to a video conference room. Skype uses its own proprietary communication method There have been some attempts to create video gateways from video conference rooms to Skype clients, but all have had limited success, perhaps things will change on this front with the acquisition of Skype by part of Microsoft, although they may fit even more. and allow Skype to only work with your own Lync offering.

So why not replacing your room system with a Skype integrated smart TV or desktop PCRoom-based video conferencing system comes at a price? They are priced for very good reasons. They use high-quality components to give you the best possible video conferencing experience. Let’s look at the differences between a Skype room setup and a traditional VC room.

Skype room

• Microphones: Integrated webcam microphone. Causes echo, very susceptible to background noise, for example, air conditioning very difficult to hear all participants
• Echo cancellation: The microphone and TV speakers are too close together to allow the windows to provide echo cancellation. Even if the separated echo will cause major problems
• Camera: Imagine that you are on a four-way call. Your meeting room will only take up ¼ of the screen at the other end. Without the ability to zoom and focus correctly, a person sitting at the end of the table will only occupy 1% of the screen space; it could also be using audio.
• Lost packet: Skype calls are affected if packet loss is greater than 5% (very common) Skype typically uses “relays” to communicate, dramatically increasing packet loss and latency, leading to lower quality.
• Resolution: Skype’s resolution may look fine in a small window on your desktop, but when viewed on a large screen, the quality cannot compete with typical Skype calls which are QVGA (320×240) and carry the certified Skype logo.

Traditional VC room system

• Microphones: Multiple microphones so everyone can be heard clearly.
• Echo cancellation: Dedicated echo cancellation
• Camera: High quality PTZ camera.
• Lost packet: Built-in packet loss (method varies by manufacturer)
• Resolution: All recent video conferencing codecs have a resolution of 720p (1280×720) or 1080p (1980×1080)

You can see that there are clearly significant differences between Skype in a meeting room and a traditional video conference room. These factors added really highlight why you would never consider using Skype in a meeting room environment. A recent feature of Skype has been the ability to have more than two people on a video call. Skype group video calls look attractive, allowing up to 10 people to join in a single video call at 6.99 euros per month. Let’s dive a little deeper into the fine print and again compare Skype group calls to virtual rooms.

Virtual Rooms

• Number of participants: 28 per call
• Necessary bandwidth: > 128 Kbps
• Policy of use: Pay per use, pooled minutes
• Mobile devices: Full features on Android, iPhone and iPad
• Encoding by port: Each participant will join their optimal resolution. So a low resolution assistant does not reduce call quality for others
• Moderation: Meetings can be locked, protected with a PIN, noisy participants can be muted, there are multiple layout options, and any device anywhere can join
• Advanced features: Recording, broadcast, chat, annotations, presentation update

Group Skype calls

• Number of participants: 5 recommended (10 max)
• Necessary bandwidth:> 4000 kbps for 5-person calls,> 8000 kbps for 7-person calls
• Policy of use: 100 hours per month, 10 hours per day, 4 hours per meeting (so your meeting room can only be used for 3 meetings per day)
• Mobile devices: Voice only supported for group calls
• Encoding by port: Skype doesn’t use per-port encryption, instead relying on massive amounts of bandwidth and local processing power.
• Moderation: There are no moderation functions. Meetings cannot be locked for privacy reasons, participants cannot be muted, layout control is very limited, and only Skype users can join
• Advanced features: There are no advanced features in Skype other than chat and file sharing.

Once again, once you look at the fine print and take a look at the real-world corporate environment, the case for Skype comes down once again. I can’t really imagine having a Skype video conference room that can only be used for 3 hours a day. However, these limitations really have little to do with the consumer world, where you just want to chat or catch up.

Security also becomes a concern with Skype. Not the actual transmission, which contrary to popular belief has 256-bit AES encryption, but security on the corporate network. File sharing is an integrated component of Skype that many organizations do not want to allow. The instant messaging features built into Skype, while at the core of consumer benefits, contravene many enterprise security editions, particularly as they are written communications that may need to be legally recorded and archived. The Skype client itself also provides bottom advertising. Today Skype uses this for its own advertising, but without control over the client, what is to stop inappropriate Skype advertising? Finally, there are the supernodes of Skype. The Skype network relies on a large number of PCs with the regular Skype client installed to act as super nodes. These supernodes act as directory services for other calls to be made. In the consumer world, this probably doesn’t matter too much, as it is part of your donation for using a free service. In the company, although this effect would be absolutely undesirable and additional measures must be taken to avoid it (via GPO, for example)

Watching desktop-to-desktop video calling. This is probably the closest thing to using Skype in the consumer world. Again, however, there are important differences between a standards-based desktop video conferencing client and using Skype on the desktop.

Desktop VC Client

• Interoperability: You can make calls to any device anywhere (depending on the customer, you may need a firewall crossover)
• Resolution: Various resolutions Up to 1080p 30 fps
• Broadband: > 128 kbps
• Group call: Encoding by port, number of participants depending on the service, not the bandwidth
• Reliability: Highly reliable traffic routing within the enterprise can be prioritized through QoS
• Scalability: Scalability depends on the backend infrastructure. Multipoint calls use much less bandwidth than Skype due to the encoding of multiple streams in the MCU.
• Mobile devices: Same capabilities as desktop
• Control: Corporate address books, monitoring, moderation

Skype desktop

• Interoperability: Only other Skype users can be called (default port is 80 and 443 for firewall traversal)
• Resolution: Standard: 320×240 15fps, High Quality: 640×480 30fps, HD: 720p 30fps
• Broadband: Minimum of 300 kbps up to 8000 kbps for 7-person calls
• Group call: Maximum of 10 (5 recommended) without encoding per port and very high processor and bandwidth requirements
• Reliability: Routing is not under company control, relays can be external, and bottlenecks can often occur at company exit.
• Scalability: For group calls, scaling is extremely limited and requires a lot of bandwidth. For multiple point-to-point connections within an enterprise, controlling traffic routing will present real problems.
• Mobile devices: You can only participate via audio for group calls
• Control: Self-maintained friend list, no monitoring reports, metrics, or moderation

The final area to consider is service and administration. When things go well, they are great, but when something goes wrong, what happens?

With Skype, you have no control over the network infrastructure running the service, there is no helpline you can call, and support is really limited to crawling the forums. With business video conferencing, the organization is in control of everything and, if managed by a third-party provider, will provide live technical support and assistance. Within a business environment, it is important to be able to measure and monitor the quality of the services provided, as well as to understand the impact that one service has on another. With Skype, you don’t have any of these controls. For example, if someone complains that email is slow, how would helpdesk know that this is because 2 people are making 5-way Skype calls, limiting the bandwidth available to them as a result. Other users? Or take the case of December 2010, when almost the entire Skype network was affected for almost 24 hours. How do I know who my top video users are and how do I know if they are having problems? There is no service management with Skype, you are using a product, not a service, so you just don’t get the metrics and support that you get with a service.

In short, like all things in life, you get what you pay for. Yes, I love Skype and use it on a daily basis to keep in touch with friends and family, but today, but for the foreseeable future, I could not advocate for the widespread adoption of Skype within the company.

• Video calls limited to other Skype users
• Many technical issues limiting use of Skype within meeting rooms
• Bad resolution
• High bandwidth requirements for multipoint calls
• No moderation features in group calls
• No live technical support
• No monitoring, service management, or metrics
• No video when making group calls with mobile devices
• Many business security and compliance concerns
• Requires administrator rights to install
• The P2P architecture used is not well suited to corporate networks.
• Skype only works with other Skype clients