How is Skype recently

[fergus]

Is it just me or has skype gotten really junk recently. I'm on a web africa adsl account and it seems that in the last week or two skype has got really bad compared to how it used to be, which was perfect. Maybe now would be a good time to read the thread about Telkom shaping skpye :mad:

[Lipe123]

My view exactly!!! the dialup users totally kick adsl ass with their skype, i HATE it.

I got a proxy from openweb to try and make it better, but skype's proxy settings is CRAP and it refuses to use the proxy or something.. useless.

[bekdik]

I just tried the skype test call and it played back perfectly.

Cape Town, 384.

[Daveogg]

I have finally thrown in the towel with Saix shaped and skype.

I got a 1 GB unshaped account and use that for skype. The difference is astounding. No more "sorry you breaking up", "what was that", "sorry again?".

Its really pstn quality and thats to New Zealand.

The only issue is to remember to change back to your shaped account, and when you get a call, you generally on the "wrong" account and have to disconnect and phone back.

[leonb]

I dumped my shaped SAIX account, and switched to IS. The quality difference is amazing - 0% packet loss on IS.

I can't understand why some people on SAIX say their Skype works fine?? I can think of a few reasons maybe:
- they have an unshaped account (by mistake maybe)
- they use Skype only for local calls (local bandwidth is unshaped)
- they are in denial, or just don't know any better.

To everyone having problems with Skype on a normal shaped SAIX account: it's not only you, or a few isolated cases. EVERYONE has **** call quality. It's not possible to make a useful call if you have 20%+ packet loss.

[fergus]

I dumped my shaped SAIX account, and switched to IS. The quality difference is amazing - 0% packet loss on IS.
Cool! Where do I get one?

[CrazyBob]

I dumped my shaped SAIX account, and switched to IS. The quality difference is amazing - 0% packet loss on IS.
Yer, please do tell - I'm planning a return to SA soon, but want to stay in touch with ppl over here in NZ via skype without paying the crazy prices for unshapped if I can help it.

Do some ISP's use IS and some SAIX?

[Daveogg]

Yer, please do tell - I'm planning a return to SA soon, but want to stay in touch with ppl over here in NZ via skype without paying the crazy prices for unshapped if I can help it.

Do some ISP's use IS and some SAIX?

CrazyBob.
Simple answer to your question is yes atm only saix (telkom) and IS offer adsl bandwidth. UUnet are apparently coming out with a solution imminently although it does not look to hopefull for any price cuts. As far as skype is concerned it works well on unshaped Saix. I use skype extensively to NZ both Skype-skype and skypeout.
Saix shaped is generally cr@p due to packet loss.
I have not used IS although plan to give it a try in the near future. The issue with IS is that it is satelite bandwidth and therefore has slightly higher latency although apparently it is effectively unshaped so you wont be dropping packets.

If you want a quick link to check out the various ISP's offerings then www.hellkom.co.za is the place to look. Otherwise has a look around here at some of the isp postings. Web africa / Saol / Nukecap / Openweb

[CrazyBob]

Thanks Daveogg,

So maybe I'll give an IS ISP a try then if it's gonna be a whole bunch cheaper than unshapped SAIX - do you know which ISP's use IS? Pity I'm gonna have to give up online gaming most likely.

And something else... if I got this right, for your 1GB unshapped line, you're paying:
R679/699 for unshapped line rental from Telkom
+ the service provider fee, something like R150 for 1GB?

And that's on top of your other adsl line & isp, just so you can use skype?

[Daveogg]

Thanks Daveogg,

So maybe I'll give an IS ISP a try then if it's gonna be a whole bunch cheaper than unshapped SAIX - do you know which ISP's use IS? Pity I'm gonna have to give up online gaming most likely.

And something else... if I got this right, for your 1GB unshapped line, you're paying:
R679/699 for unshapped line rental from Telkom
+ the service provider fee, something like R150 for 1GB?

And that's on top of your other adsl line & isp, just so you can use skype?

OK a few adsl basics from good ole RSA. Its going to sound a bit strange coming from NZ!!!

Line rental comes in 4 Flavours.

192kbps - R270p/m
384kbps - R359p/m
515kbps - R477p/m
1024kbps - R680p/m

Your Isp Charges are then on top of this line rental. You have to pay telkom a line rental even if you are using an IS isp.

As far as unshaped SAiX bandwidth - i use Web africa which will sell you one Gig for R120 and it will roll over month to month untill all used. I then use a different (shaped) account for browsing etc as the bandwidth generally works out about R75 for shaped.

IS has two main advantages, you get 30gb of local access once your international is capped and little or no shaping, the disadvantages are going via satelite and the rather bizzare fact that telkom and IS dont seem to like each other very much and so are argueing over their local peering link. The net result of this is that local latency IS<--->Saix can be up to 300ms and even at times go via the international routes. Obviously bad for gaming as the local servers are saix based.

[CrazyBob]

Ahhh, I see - you've cleared this up nicely :) ...

Not quite as bad as I thought then - so I could pay eg.:
R477 for a 512kbps line rental
+ R120 for a GB of unshapped SAIX
& + approx. R225 for 3GB of shapped SAIX
=R822 total
Not a bad idea you've got there, if not a tad inconvenient as you say.

Why oh why they have to make it so complicated. Here I pay one amount of roughly R300 for a 2mbit cable connection with 10GB free, no cap but pay 4 extra Gig's, and no **** shaping of course.

So it seems that the price per Gbyte is not terrible, but it's the line rental that's the real killer.

PS. Sorry for taking this a bit OT.