How Skype for Mac and iOS Takes Its Toll on Bandwidth

Research conducted by Mu Dynamics has found that Skype voice calling on a Mac OS X will consume at least 28% more bandwidth and network resources than an iPhone, iPad, Android phone or PC.

The research focused on Skype to analyze its impact on different platforms (both software and hardware) for voice calls and instant messaging.

Their Application Quadrant report tested Skype on the iPad, iPhone 4 (running iOS 4), Android (running Sprint Nexus S 4G), a MacBook running Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard and a PC running Windows 7.

According to Mu Dynamics, the application quadrant revealed that Skype used on a Mac for voice calls will consume at least 28% more bandwidth and network resources than an iPhone, or an iPad.

Using Skype for instant messaging on a Mac will consume at least 30% more network resources. Messaging on the iPad will also consume at least 39% more bandwidth than an iPhone, an Android phone, a MacBook. or a PC.

The goal of disclosing these results was to encourage collaboration between service providers to help make applications more network-friendly.

Mu Dynamics hopes their research will help minimize the network impact while upgrading the user experience.

Commenting on their findings, Mu Dynamics’ chief executive officer, Dave Kresse said: “As the number of bandwidth-intensive mobile applications continues to expand at record pace, operators are faced with the challenge of balancing that bandwidth and the associated network resources that devices use to support them.”

"Over 30 million Skype users today are online at peak times and with so many people using the service simultaneously, bandwidth and resources can be strained to cripple other applications and services,” Kresse added. “By using Mu Studio Performance to rapidly test real application performance, operators can better understand how services such as Skype impact the network based on the various devices."