Is it just me or is skype slow

E

EK63

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Hi,

i do a lot of international calls with skype and have noticed lately that after a few minutes the other party can not hear me and often the call is dropped or I have to call the other party again.

Has anyone else experienced the same problem ?

I have an uncapped 4096 mweb line and wonder if the problem lies with Skype or with Mweb ?

Thanks in advance
 
I suspect as much, i am sure they are throttling skype
 
EK63 said:
Hi,

i do a lot of international calls with skype and have noticed lately that after a few minutes the other party can not hear me and often the call is dropped or I have to call the other party again.

Has anyone else experienced the same problem ?

I have an uncapped 4096 mweb line and wonder if the problem lies with Skype or with Mweb ?

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Exactly what i have. I doubt mweb shape skype though? I have tested it on another account but it is random so one night it works fine then the next night it has issues, bad line, the other person cannot hear me and then it just drops. All randomly of course. On sat i could not even dial out but then my father who uses a different account could not dial either. I don't think it is an mweb problem. If it was mweb it be consistent surely?
 
I'm on Telkom and my boet's on Cell C. Same problem. Some days we get max line upload speeds (almost 1 Mbps each way), but other days we barely get 100 kbps, well below the max line speed. Cell C's max line speed varies, but not that low.

I'm switching to Windows Live Messenger because we've both got Microsoft HD webcams and Skype won't give full resolution on those cameras. I'll report back once I've tested it.

Otherwise, is it a port thing - are Skype ports shaped? Can I set up a VPN? <-- don't answer that. Would an encrypted VPN help?
 
Thanks everyone, i guess we are getting mixed responses here that its part local ISP and part skype problem.

I have been with Skype since when they started and am really a power user and never experienced such latency problems. At over 26 million users using their system i firmly believe that skype's infrastructure is buckling under the amount of users, the local ISP do not help the situation.
 
I just did a test with speedtest.net, based in JHB:

CT : Ping 49 ms, DL 3.25 Mbps, UL 0.42 Mbps
LA : Ping 417 ms, DL 0.50 Mbps, UL 0.14 Mbps
HK : Ping 542 ms, DL 0.67 Mbps, UL 0.27 Mbps
LDN : Ping 263 ms, DL 2.92 Mbps, UL 0.36 Mbps

Dl = Download UP = Upload

I remember when i joined MWeb when they just started with their uncapped free for all that i was getting a ping of 128 ms and DL of close to 4Mbps and upload close to 1 Mbs

I am so frustrated
 
I'm also with Mweb and I'm noticing the same thing. High-use things like VOIP seem to be degrading.
 
killadoob said:
Hi use things like voip? That is low usage surely?
Click to expand...

I don't think so. I can't run VOIP over a slow connection. Anything less than 1Mbs and it doesn't work well - I get stuttering and disconnections.

I'm also having problems with games. Defintley high-bandwidth.
 
I switched to Windows Live messenger, and video improved dramatically. Overall bandwidth went up to 300 kbps each way. Two problems though, I need even more bandwidth for HD, and Windows messenger's audio is absolute crap. It doesn't prioritise audio like Skype does, so the audio breaks up severely and regularly.

Oh my kingdom for everyone to be on a landline and Cisco umi to be ubiquitous. Then I start to wonder whether all the effort we put into getting video conferencing up to spec is worth it, and decide not to invest any more time and money in this problem.
 
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