Is it me or them?

[Geek_wannabe]

I tried to use Skype for the first time today to someone in London. Now, I thought that everything would work fine, but no. I could hardly make out what the other person was saying because everything was...whats the english word....in afrikaans: Dit het geklink asof dit elke halwe sekond hak.

So, it didn't work. Now, my tekom speed test says this:

* Download time: 7.781 seconds
* Size of file: 500 KiloBytes
* Estimated line speed: 524.4 (kilobits/second)
* Estimated line speed: 64.3 (kiloBytes/second)

And my line speed is 384 with telkominternet.

The other person is on 56K in UK. Now, was this thing my fault or theirs, because I sure hope this is not my fault. Can someone with DSL cal me on Skype to test, unless everyone can assure me that this is not because of my line.

 

[Turbo_Aspiration]

SAIX traffic shaping hectically degrades the voice quality on skype.. basically unusable

 

[Franna]

You need better latency than bandwidth to make a good VOIP call. Like T_A said: SAIX traffic shaping is responsible for this.

Do a ping test from your side to "www.bt.co.uk". Ask the other person to do a ping test to "www.telkom.co.za". Whoever has the lowest average ping time has the better connection.

 

[Geek_wannabe]

So it is my fault. Poo.

 

[Geek_wannabe]

Oh, and, how do you do a ping test?

If I go to command promt and type "ping www.bt.co.uk" I get:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\****>ping www.bt.co.uk

Pinging www.bt.com [62.7.244.127] with 32 bytes of data:

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

Ping statistics for 62.7.244.127:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

 

[Gnome]

You need better latency than bandwidth to make a good VOIP call. Like T_A said: SAIX traffic shaping is responsible for this.

Do a ping test from your side to "www.bt.co.uk". Ask the other person to do a ping test to "www.telkom.co.za". Whoever has the lowest average ping time has the better connection.

Doesn't work that way at least I don't think so,Telkom shapes on packet level(And probably on port level also). Meaning a ping won't tell you anything.

In the good'ol days of 2004 you could just change to port 80 or 21 and you'd have a brilliant 50kb/s on kazaa,emule,ect but in these troubled times you can change the port to your hart's content with no impact whatsoever.

Don't know if it's changed (I'm on IS now) tho.

 

[gkm]

You need better latency than bandwidth to make a good VOIP call. Like T_A said: SAIX traffic shaping is responsible for this.

Do a ping test from your side to "www.bt.co.uk". Ask the other person to do a ping test to "www.telkom.co.za". Whoever has the lowest average ping time has the better connection.

Ping (part of ICMP rather than TCP/IP or UDP) is not shaped, so is not a valid test for trying to find the effects of shaping.

 

[Wolfling]

Oh, and, how do you do a ping test?

That is the correct way of doing it.

Request timed out. means your connection is so bad that the ping do not get through...

Although, as others mentioned, this is not a good test to see the effects of latency or shaping, it does show that your connection is virtually non-existant to bt.com (same as bt.co.uk). However where exactly the problem lies is not clear. It can be your ADSL, bt.com or any of the hops in between.

For a clearer picture type 'tracert www.bt.com'. It gives similar results to ping but one hop at a time.

 

[neio]

I think the BT connection is bad, if I ping www.google.co.uk I get better responce.

 

[Geek_wannabe]

Yeah. I can ping google perfectly. I can ping everything perfectly. And as I said, lok at my telkom speed test in my first post.

I am going to go to my local telkom direct on saturday. Hopefully I can get some results. They know me by name already.

 

[supersunbird]

If by "them" you mean Telkom? Then yes, its their fault.

 

[bekdik]

Funny, I don't have an problems with Skype. Used it to Canada, locally and New Zealand in the last few weeks and in all cases had a brilliant connection - far better than a local cell call!

I'm using 384Kb from Telkomsa, the local connect was 512Kb also Telkomsa, New Zealand and Canada were broadband on their side, but I'm uncertain of their specs.

You said

The other person is on 56K in UK

and I would suspect that this is where the problem lies.

 

[Geek_wannabe]

Well, that is good. She is getting ADSL. She ordered yesterday and is getting it Saturday. Cool, huh?