Re: [PLUG] Skype and QOS

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 5:39 PM, Edmond Rodriguez <erodrig_97@yahoo.com> wrote:

Can I bring back and old topic? I am running Skype in Linux again for a while, and I noticed if I do anything with my machine while it is running the sound gets screwed up.

Skype on Linux is processor hungry (requires 1Ghz), so I changed the priority to the highest, and set my web browser to the lowest. Still issues. Maybe the processor, maybe not.

So I ran iftop and watched the bandwidth usage on my DSL (I have a slower DSL). But there seemed to be lots to spare (on average).

So I ran my ancient machine to give some separation from processor issues. So skype is on my faster machine, running alone, and a web browser on my old machine, both on the same router. I still get sound issues when loading a big web page, which is I guess because the browser initially is steeling all the bandwidth.

I set my router to use "high" priority with Skype in the QOS settings (but my previous experience tells me this is pretty meaningless to set QOS settings on my router).

What router are you using? I use Tomato and the QoS controls seem decent, but the interface is better (definitely more intuitive) than what I remember from DD-WRT. How are you setting the QoS controls? Is there a "Skype" option, or VOIP, or SIP, or are you manually specifying a port range? I'd bet there's a lot of ways you could think you're giving priority to the Skype traffic on your network, when you actually aren't.

So how can I get Skype to not loose bandwidth when I do something else?

Also possible this is your ISP. Given that you say you have "slower DSL," I'd wager this is your problem. Test by Skyping and then copying a several GB file over the LAN. Does your signal still go down? If so, it's the router. If not, it's WAN-related.