I live in a holiday village where we have several different committees and meetings, for those not present to attend the meetings we do video conférences using voip.
A few years back the prefered system was skype, we changed to whatsapp last year as we tend to use its messaging facilities and its free.
We have a company who manages our accounts, they prefer using teams, paid for version as they can invoice us for its use … typical accountant.
My question, does it make any difference in band width or speed using one voip against another ?
Today we are on copper using adsl into the building and then wifi but on antother floor below the meeting room. We will get fibre by the end of the year. I have asked for ethernet connection in the room, but that was turned down due to cost of cable and fitting, dismissed as ”use your telephone mobile” … they know only money.
Does one voip work better than another, for me no difference but perhaps you know better ?
From my experience, and limited knowledge, VOIP is only 8 bit mono - so it shouldn’t use a huge amount of data, or need much bandwidth… my two bob’s worth…
One thing I forgot to mention - was latency and QOS…
Most VOIP hardware - will prioritise VOIP traffic over other packets…
I should say - not necessarily VOIP hardware - routers and switches etc, on the edge, will probably provide some QOS (quality of service) priority for VOIP traffic over other packets, e.g. video streaming from things like youtube, or TV-streaming like netflix…
In the end we chose whatsapp mainly as we were all android phone users and were using that system for messages both on large groups (300) and within our committee.
But end of season, election of new president, secretary, Trésorier…… who are all windows users so a move to teams as its microsoft product replace skype, first meeting with 4 members on voip failed some connected some vision only some sound only, after the *experts* said change to google meet everyone connected but 1 hour later cut off point.
My turn to just move to whatsapp rather than waste more time and effort with those other voip solutions that had problems and issues. No problem.
But my question now is cross platform connections, 3 windows users, 2 linux, rest on android. All using whatsapp are there speed or connection issues which may cause me issues down the line if we mix technology ?
Also the windows users *Experts* are only on 4 gb memory and a mix of 10 plus 11.
I star experts as they know everything, talk the talk but really know nothing. We have all met them in life. Such as difference between hard disks and memory when I questioned them about capacité of memory.
Whatsapp is quite robust. If you don’t trust Meta (the owner of Whatsapp), you can switch over to signal. Signal is open source and functions on both desktop as well as mobile. That being said, the “experts” may forget their pin.
Yes very much so, there have been negative comments on signal and its owners and development mainly about the country of origin. No big deal for me or us. Dont think anyone cares if we have a DJ or a group next friday, which is what we mainly choose. Or the price of beer…. Not earth stopping.
My question Really is about platform mix windows, Linux, mac, android and any bottle necks or choking. We are already limited by copper into the building and the internet box in another room to the meetings. Promise to resolve by next year…. But that Promise started 4 years ago !
When we use our mobile at home, it connects to the internet via our modem, and I presume it uses VOIP.
Is that what you mean by VOIP , or are you talking video links?
I dont think there are varieties of VOIP… it is just a protocol.
Yes most provider are changing to voip instead of land lines for calls.
I am thinking more along the lines of applications and in effect vidéo conférence where several members can view each other and join the conversation. Your screen is cut into several boxes each containing a délégation. One platform hence whatsapp, google meet, teams etc.
Part of the process and why we were going down the google route is our share of documents. That procédure difficult as some documents (membership list) is only shared between select parts of the group where the event planning is shared larger but again not to all,
Just finished installing lmde 7 on my laptop and going through all the apps I need on it to work, not a big task as I dont do that much, just the usual fidèle with sites and passwords.
But my big issues for today is whatsapp for linux.
In case you did not know whatsapp is moving from a standalone application to being web based
But this does not offer voice or vidéo calls on the browser (perhaps it will come)
The help centre suggests you go to the microsoft store to download the app, they dont hold a copy on there own site. But if you got to microsoft store on a linux machine the option is not available the button says you are not using windows go away.
As more and more apps come through the store and not direct going to be a pain.
I had thought download, run through wine and job done. I have several windows apps on wine and occasionally a screen misses a button or display but I work around that no big deal.
The linux mint application centre offers so many different choice as yet not tried the suggestions instead of whatsapp thats on my to do list for compatibles
We dont have a server too small to need one. Tend to use google docs and sheets to share things otherwise everyone does his own thing.
Will try your suggestion and see how i get on, suspect the reaction will be NO ….. there is a power struggled going on between president of our association and another in our village so these things like communications tend to take a back seat. They just look to me as the tech guy who knows nothing.
