Anyone experienced problems with Skype?

[pcmaczone]

Just trying to narrow down what the problem is here. I just set up Skype which seemed to go ok but when I am speaking to people the sound keeps dropping out cutting off the end of words and occasionally doubling words etc. It's not the mic's. I have three headsets here plus a stand alone mic and they all record fine within windows. Other's I have spoken to including my brother here in the UK who is with BT and my sister in the US don't have any problems. They report that it's just like using a normal phone, no glitches or dropouts at all when speaking to each other.

So now I'm thinking it's down to the internet connection. My neighbor who is also with Entanet is having exactly the same problems. I have also noticed over the last few days that latency in World Of Warcraft has made it almost unplayable at times. A quick reboot of the router usually sorts it and then it gradually get's worse again.

Of course other's who use voip and are with Entanet don't report these problems. I'm at a bit of a loss here as to what is causing the problem. Can anyone shed any light on what it could be?

[James]

That's strange. I think Skype is different to normal VoIP as it all goes theough their server and then to the destination? Not 100% sure on that of course.

What are your normal ping times like, and do you have interleaving enabled? Additionally, some routers are very poor at handling constant upload traffic.

[pcmaczone]

Well the Router is a D-Link DSL G6040T. Not had any problems with it so far but of course it's possible that is the cause.

My normal pings in Warcraft are below 100 usually between 26-78. Recently it's been regularly above 300 which whilst not as bad as some, still presents a noticeable delay which causes problems in the game.

I understand Skype use their own servers but of course the traffic still has to arrive at their server from me. I'll try a few others who have Skype and see what their experiences are.

[jamesp]

I use Skype quite often, sometimes when there is an update to a new version there are issues / bugs etc, but also I find and it seems the same reading the Skype forum that older versions of Skpe seem to work better for some people than others depending on what computer they have, OS, router, drivers etc etc.

So what I did was downloaded a few different versions of Skype until I found the one that worked best for me.

I also found that when I was on the ADSL24 Max rate adaptive service (now on fixed half a meg due to external noise on my line that seems impossible to get anyone to do anything about it) that Skype constantly dropped out audio wise, so you might want to check for noise on your line as well as it dont like it, now I'm on the half a meg fixed speed I have a much higher SNR margin to cope with the external noise and have no probs using Skype.

Here is a website with loads of versions of Skype that you can try........

http://www.filehippo.com/download_skype/tech/?2306

[pcmaczone]

Well here's an odd thing. During testing of Skype using their automated system it was nigh on unusable. Thought I'd call my brother tonight just to see what it was like in the real world so to speak and it was almost 100% perfect. There was a bit of echo occasionally but nothing that you don't get using other voip services.

Thanks for the tip about different versions. I will definitely give those a go. Will try a few more calls tomorrow and report back.