Skype video chat is killing my internet connection.

apatia77 · 26 May 2009 at 11:59

Hi guys,
I have this strange problem, every time my brother uses Skype it kills my connection, I get pings from 300-2000, some pages cannot be displayed etc and it disconnects me while I’m playing WoW.

This is very strange as I am on 10mb connection (VM Broadband), I know that my upload speed is bad I think its only 0.5mb.
Now I don’t know where the problem is but I have tried uploading few big files to few different sites just to max my upload speed and during this time my ping was just fine, constantly below 100ms. But when used Skype or MSN video chat (last night my bro tried using MSN to video chat) the connection just goes crazy and it times out etc with massive ping jumps all the way over 2000.
If you have any ideas what I could try to fix this problem that would be awesome.

Many thanks for all your help in advance.

jbloggs · 26 May 2009 at 13:58

I'm not sure what is causing the problem with Skype, but using another webcam conf utility would help, something like ooVoo

apatia77 · 26 May 2009 at 14:20

Thx jbloggs, I'll test ooVoo and see what happens then.

Burnsy2023 · 26 May 2009 at 14:25

It looks like a simple case of you not having enough upload bandwidth which causes you to loose ack packetes for HTTP requests. Can you limit the quality in skype?

apatia77 · 26 May 2009 at 15:23

Yes Burnsy2023 but there weren't many settings, only quality but even with the lowest I had the same problem. Also as I said earlier when I tried to kill my upload connection by having multiple uploads at the same time the connection was fine.

Burnsy2023 · 26 May 2009 at 15:26

apatia77 said:
Also as I said earlier when I tried to kill my upload connection by having multiple uploads at the same time the connection was fine.

Skype is constant streaming high bandwidth traffic, that's hard to recreate

apatia77 · 26 May 2009 at 15:53

Im going to try ooVoo, it seems to have few setting for video quality like FPS, quality, resolution. This should be enough to manage the upload speed to about 25-30kb/s

miniyazz · 26 May 2009 at 15:53

Burnsy2023 said:
Skype is constant streaming high bandwidth traffic, that's hard to recreate

I don't use it but as I understand it, it routes calls etc through other people's computers for some reason; for that reason my University blocked it. Have you checked what bandwidth skype is actually using? May be you're acting as a router for other people's calls..

apatia77 · 26 May 2009 at 16:03

I have once but it showed 60kb/s even though my upload speed at that time was apparently only 35kb/s max. And also the quality and fps seemed to be extraordinary, its like watching tv, that smooth, and no option to lower fps.

EDIT:

I have tried using ooVoo last night and my connection was just fine. Thanks for suggestion.I will give up on Skype/MSN when video chatting.