FaceTime question

[ccrunner_tj]

Hello all. I have a question about FaceTime. I have an iPhone 4 and we recently purchased an iPad 2 for my mom. My mom thought it would be cool to be able to do a FaceTime call from her iPad to my iPhone, say, if she's in the basement and I'm upstairs in my room, and we could talk to each other if she needed something (one of those totally unnecessary but cool things . The problem is, we have satellite Internet which is terribly slow and has a very low download limit accompanied by a terrible latency. So, video calling from our house to an outside network is out of the question for those reasons. My question is, if we were to do FaceTime calls only on our home network, would that still use up data towards our monthly limit? I did a test call for just a few seconds, and the latency was not there; the call seemed to be in real time. So if it doesn't use up our monthly download/upload limits, then I think we should be good to go. Any thoughts?

 

[Thetonyk123]

Upgrade your internet To make sure though check each time you facetime

 

[ccrunner_tj]

Ha I wish! We've looked at every other option for Internet, even regional WISPs. That's probably what we'll do, just keep tabs on our usage. Hopefully it refreshes itself pretty quickly.

 

[dotme]

Once the connection is established, I believe the call is device-to-device, so you shouldn't be using Internet bandwidth if you're both on the same wifi network.

Connect a call, unplug your Internet modem, see if call keeps going...

 

[Applejuiced]

Once the connection is established, I believe the call is device-to-device, so you shouldn't be using Internet bandwidth if you're both on the same wifi network.

Connect a call, unplug your Internet modem, see if call keeps going...

FaceTime is only available on wifi, not carrier data.
So if he unplugs the modem the call will stop and fail.
It doesn't use up any of your wireless carrier data amount.

 

[ccrunner_tj]

FaceTime is only available on wifi, not carrier data.
So if he unplugs the modem the call will stop and fail.
It doesn't use up any of your wireless carrier data amount.

Right, it won't use carrier data, but the download limit is on our actual home wifi service. It's 7.5 GB per month :-/

And I tried what you suggested, dotme, and it worked! When I unplugged the modem but left the router in, the call was still in progress. So that must mean that once started, the call doesn't upload/download anything from the satellite, which would explain the absence of the latency. Sounds like it won't be an issue at all.

 

[Applejuiced]

Right, it won't use carrier data, but the download limit is on our actual home wifi service. It's 7.5 GB per month :-/

And I tried what you suggested, dotme, and it worked! When I unplugged the modem but left the router in, the call was still in progress. So that must mean that once started, the call doesn't upload/download anything from the satellite, which would explain the absence of the latency. Sounds like it won't be an issue at all.

That doesn't make sense though.
You were FaceTime on wifi and you turned off your modem and you could still continue? And it does use data while the video call is in progress. It has to both upload your stream and download the other persons video and audio at the same time.

 

[ccrunner_tj]

That doesn't make sense though.
You were FaceTime on wifi and you turned off your modem and you could still continue? And it does use data while the video call is in progress. It has to both upload your stream and download the other persons video and audio at the same time.

Yeah, surprisingly it worked just fine. It's true that it sends data, but since the call continues to work after the modem is unplugged, the call must not send data to and from the satellite which is what counts towards our data limit. So, it must just send data back and forth through the router to the 2 devices.

Something else is that I tried this same test (unplugging the modem) while playing Fruit Ninja between the two devices, and it resulted in the same way: the game continued without lag even after it was unplugged.

 

[Applejuiced]

Yeah, surprisingly it worked just fine. It's true that it sends data, but since the call continues to work after the modem is unplugged, the call must not send data to and from the satellite which is what counts towards our data limit. So, it must just send data back and forth through the router to the 2 devices.

Something else is that I tried this same test (unplugging the modem) while playing Fruit Ninja between the two devices, and it resulted in the same way: the game continued without lag even after it was unplugged.

If you say so, that doesnt make any sense.
The router cannot send anything to the 2 devices if you unplugged the modem and there is not internet data available.

 

[dotme]

If you say so, that doesnt make any sense.
The router cannot send anything to the 2 devices if you unplugged the modem and there is not internet data available.

The OP said both devices are on the same WiFi network. Facetime is peer-to-peer, so the direct path from one device to the other never goes across the internet. It stays in the building.

@ccrunner_tj - Glad it worked out!

 

[Applejuiced]

The OP said both devices are on the same WiFi network. Facetime is peer-to-peer, so the direct path from one device to the other never goes across the internet. It stays in the building.

Oh on the same wifi.
Wouldnt it the wifi still need to have a connection to the internet though?
And why would you want to make facetime calls when both devices are that close to eachother?

 

[dotme]

Oh on the same wifi.
Wouldnt it the wifi still need to have a connection to the internet though?
And why would you want to make facetime calls when both devices are that close to eachother?

Big house, I'm guessing?

I'm no Facetime guru, but I think an internet connection is needed to initially establish the call (so one device can locate, identify the IP address, and connect to the other) but once the connection is made, if both devices are on the same LAN/WiFi, the conversation traffic would flow between the devices and never leave the network.

 

[Applejuiced]

Big house, I'm guessing?

I'm no Facetime guru, but I think an internet connection is needed to initially establish the call (so one device can connect to the other) but once the connection is made, if both devices are on the same LAN/WiFi, the traffic flows between the devices and never leaves the network.

True, that makes sense.
The internet connection needs to be there for the call to go to Apple's servers and routed properly.
Then use the wifi without internet, still doesnt make much sense to do that and impractical on the same network.
Either way since on the same wifi I dont think it will use up any of its satelite data amount so pointless to unplug the modem.

 

[ccrunner_tj]

Oh on the same wifi.
Wouldnt it the wifi still need to have a connection to the internet though?
And why would you want to make facetime calls when both devices are that close to eachother?

No real reason, just for the cool factor more than anything else. However since it appears to work with more than just FaceTime, ie a multiplayer game, there may be more useful applications of this.