My first attempt at using a Net phone service reminded me of listening to a wobbly old cassette of David Bowie's 1971 album Hunky Dory. Specifically, it reminded me of listening to that album's "Andy Warhol" track. For those of you who aren't former glam-rock hippies, this song opens with Bowie apparently getting snippy with his engineer for mispronouncing "Warhol," and the engineer getting back at him by turning on a delay effect on Bowie's vocal. Before Bowie starts singing, you can hear his voice saying, "Waugh-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw. Andy Waugh-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw-aw."

On the wobbly, cheap old cassette where I first heard this album, there was also a healthy dose of hiss and wow. The tinny speaker didn't help the sound quality much, either. And that's almost exactly how my VoIP trial sounded on the overworked T1 network connection where I first tried out Skype.

	"What will I be doing in six months' time that will require that much extra bandwidth?" The answer: Internet telephony.

I'd like to point out from the outset that the problem was not Skype's. The load management on this corporate network was seriously messed up. As I traced the Ethernet cable back from my PC, I found the culprit: my PC's Ethernet cable was stuck into an ancient six-outlet Netgear hub, sharing the bandwidth of a single network connection with five other high-volume users.

This was an extreme case of overloading, to be sure; at this point I hit upon a new way to test bandwidth on Internet connections. Oh, I'll certainly run CNET's Bandwidth Meter speed test, but for a really visceral read on how much bandwidth I get, I'll be listening very carefully to a few trial VoIP calls from here on out.

How broad is your band?
I'm a speeds-and-feeds kind of a guy, so I pay attention to the figures when someone offers 6Mbps cable Internet vs. 3Mbps DSL or 768Kbps DSL. But here in the Entropy Zone, my home office, these figures don't mean much. Oh, sure, I'd accept 6Mbps without hesitation. But when you actually pay proportionately more for the extra bits per second, signing up shouldn't be an automatic response. After a special introductory offer period, Comcast, in most markets, charges around $40 per month for 6Mbps Internet. Verizon charges in the mid-$20s for 3Mbps and in the midteens for 768Kbps. The price difference between the broadest broadband and the narrowest is around $25 per month, or $300 per year. So if I can get away with cheap, narrow broadband and spend the difference on something that counts, like a weekend away from the computer, I'll do it.

Downloads, e-mail, uploading sites, streaming a video or audio track or two--these are all real-world applications of how broad your broadband experience is going to be. But if you don't have any real gripes about that, and someone's telling you that you can get twice the bandwidth for less than twice the price, you have to wonder, "What will I be doing in six months' time that will require that much extra bandwidth?" The answer: Internet telephony. If you're not doing it now, the promise of saving 20 bucks or more a month on long-distance calls will certainly tempt you to try VoIP.

Skype's the limit
So there I was at my desk in the Entropy Zone, at one of four computers sharing the same DSL access point, ready to put its narrowish broadband to the test. Installing Skype is a quick and easy process--one 6MB download, an install, and you're ready to talk (and listen to that pin-dropping, bandwidth-busting sound coming back down the line). Best of all, this real-world test is free, if you happen to have any Skype-enabled buddies to talk to, or at least cheap at around 2 cents a minute for Skype-to-non-Skype-buddy conversations.

	Best of all, this real-world test is free...or at least cheap.

Now, the cheap factor is Skype's big advantage as a bandwidth-testing tool. You can buy $10 of talk time at the SkypeOut service, which takes voice from your desktop application across the transom to someone's actual phone line, and leave yourself a voicemail message. Listen closely to that message for any clipping, buzzy-sounding sibilant sounds, popping Ts and Ps, and overall lousy sound quality. Then trot your Skyped-up notebook to your 6Mbps neighbor's desk and ask if you can jack into his network for a quick test. (You'll always want to hard-wire this connection, because voice over Wi-Fi is a different and much less reliable beast altogether.)

The Skype effect
If you do this test, bear in mind that Skype hasn't always come across well when compared directly to other VoIP solutions. The best you might get from a broadband Skype connection may not sound as good as you want it to. If your 768Kbps DSL carries voice sounds that are free of pops, sibilant Ss, and skipped syllables, and it doesn't sound like a 30-year-old cassette recording, then your bandwidth is good enough. You may just need to step up to some other VoIP system.

In CNET's VoIP-off, we found that Vonage had better sound quality overall. But it's not such a great bandwidth diagnostic tool because you have to commit to paying $35 per month for Vonage and drag around a piece of hardware to sit between your broadband modem and a phone. That's no way to find out that you need to pay more for a broader DSL connection.

And if it turns out--as it did on my DSL connection--that Skype does the trick nicely (thank you very much), you can always upgrade a basic Skype account to include the beta of SkypeIn--in which you can apply for a phone number. In the space of an hour, I migrated from chatting Skype-to-Skype with my editor to making half a dozen international calls at 2.1 cents a minute. I then set up a phone number in Europe so that my old housemates from college could call me on a local number instead of suffering an expensive transatlantic call.

At that point, the Skype experiment had moved way beyond broadband testing and settled into a life-changing experience. I was almost 50 bucks down, with a year's rental on a European phone number, but I was ready for callers and didn't need to upgrade my DSL bandwidth to get them. You can't beat that.

Hang him on my Warhol, orhol
Oh, and as a quick side note: That bizarre delay effect I noticed when I first tested Skype on the corporate network had nothing to do with Skype or the crummy bandwidth available to the computer I was using. The culprit was a Windows sound-system setting designed to boost microphone performance using software. Mic Boost doesn't sit well with any VoIP client, it seems, but it was possible to turn it off by double-clicking the volume icon in the system tray, then clicking through to the advanced Recording subsystem properties. After that, Skype was (almost) as clear as a bell--on my up-to-3Mbps DSL connection, at least.

Is Matt Lake's mental bandwidth in the same narrow band as his DSL? What kind of connection does your VoIP use and how does it sound? Let Matt have it in the feedback section below.