Webcam with dialup connection - any problems?

Question

Hi Everybody - quite new to this.....

I have yahoo messenger for Mac and I'm thinking of getting a webcam for it......

I am only on dialup connection and can't see myself going to broadband in the near future....

Will the webcam just have a slower frame rate with dialup?
- meaning will the people i see appear slower to me and does it only effect the transmission at my end? - will they see me as per normal for the connection they have?

I'm not too concerned about sound (at this stage)....

any advice or comments would be appreciated....

Thanks

Thanks everyone - I'm in New Zealand...
I have viewed peoples cams before and it was fairly slow but not incrediably annoying (although I guess I have nothing to compare to)
I can always get the cam now and then a faster connection down the track

Thanks again

Answer 1

It will be affected both ways. Web cams and dial-up don't go well unfortunately.

Answer 2

Lots of problems, so I will explain.

Say that you have to feed the baby elephant and the straw is above her, in the loft.

A dial up connection would be like this one inch diameter hole that you have to poke the straw through. The poor baby elephant would starve before you could manage to push the necessary 200 pounds of hay to her, each day!

That Web cam is like the elephant. It needs about 5kbs bandwidth per frame. We want at least 5 fps (notice how everything is "per second"?). So you want about 5 kilo bits per second X the 5 frames per second, which = 25kbs!

A 56kbs modem really transmits and receives at a total maximum, with perfect wires, and no interference, of 44kbs, and has to split that between the transmit, and the receive. So 44kbs divided by the two directions, leaves about 22 kbs each way.

There are functions that must transmit and receive, like parity checks, handshaking, and other forms of 'housekeeping', so there really is only about 4 to 8 kbs remaining to use each way.

I have seen a good dial up connection bring a web cam picture in that is of 320 X 240 pixels in resolution, in three minutes! I think that is some kind of record, actually.

A dialup connection is lucky to get 5kbs after all the hand shaking and overhead and housekeeping that is required to just keep the connection alive!

Higher resolution settings, or trying to force a higher frame rate, only acts like you trying to poke too much hay through the one inch hole, in a hurry and flurry of activity, to feed the elephant! It clogs up and stops until it all gets cleared up!


Yes, you can run a web cam on a dial up, but, it will seem very s - l - o - w, a - n - d painful, and, forget sound. You will be lucky to get to type a s- l - o - w m e s s a g e!

My father-in-law has Bellsouth.net for $4.95 per month. It is 50 times faster than that AOL dial up connection he used in 2005, for less than 20% of the expense! That gets to run a webcam, and sound, and typing!!

Answer 3

In which country ?
You can first view the video send by the other person .
If you can view it, Your dialup can transmit also.
I have used Dialup in INDIA 56Kb and could use the webcam.
Nowadays Broadband connection 2 Mbps Bandwidth
available for US $ 8 PM try DATAONE.

Answer 4

I've only one thing to say, a webcam will be almost useless on a dial-up connection. Save the money you were going to spend on it and get broadband, then we'll talk about webcams.

Answer 5

Hi. The frame rate will be slower for both send and receive, but you may like it anyway.

Answer 6

slower ,and the feed will be jerky..