configuring network for skype

Im trying to get the most out of my upload speed that i can.
I'm a frequent Skype user and i can get a good quality coming from the person im talking to, but my voice tends to cut off and become distorted for the other person receiving it
i ran a speed test and my results were
6.15Mb/s download
.33Mb/s upload

its not great i know, but its the best my isp has to offer for my area
but .33Mb/s upload should be more than enough for me to send a high quality voice call
i have already set QOS to make Skype a top priority, im not sure if that has any
effect on upload

is there anything i can/should change to help?
someone recommended i use tcp optimizer, but others said i shouldnt try that with windows 7

any help will be appreciated

neilq5 said:

Im trying to get the most out of my upload speed that i can.
I'm a frequent Skype user and i can get a good quality coming from the person im talking to, but my voice tends to cut off and become distorted for the other person receiving it
i ran a speed test and my results were
6.15Mb/s download
.33Mb/s upload

its not great i know, but its the best my isp has to offer for my area
but .33Mb/s upload should be more than enough for me to send a high quality voice call
i have already set QOS to make Skype a top priority, im not sure if that has any
effect on upload

is there anything i can/should change to help?
someone recommended i use tcp optimizer, but others said i shouldnt try that with windows 7

any help will be appreciated

You are probably having issues due to using a router and NAT [Network Address Translation] which enables many computers to share one IP address with the world. What happens is a connection comes in and says hi I was requested by computer C and the router says OK for this session I will route all info to computer C. Sounds awesome right? Well lets say something happens either a network blip [some other device in east gybyp goes out and the route changes or you stop the conversation and re-start] it needs to do this again [called handshaking]. This almost always causes issues with streaming and gaming when you want the connection solid and the buffering or other mechanisms meant to hide this drop/reconnect are not working. You will need to port forward the ports Skype uses to your specific machine and I bet you will have rock solid conversations. Remember you will need to assign a static IP that does not change so your router always knows your computers IP will not change [some routers get around this with DNS addresses in port rules but up to your router]. Basically port forward skype's ports to your computer and I bet it is all cleared up. Every router differs and I believe Skype can be set to use custom ports. In any case Google Port Forward <Router model> and Default Skype Ports via Google and you will get the info you need [or some routers have a list of apps that they know the ports for when setting up port forwarding so you could check that out as well.

StalkeR said:

If you are downloading/uploading something it will be good to cancel that. Also what's that .33Mb/s?
I have this connection,and don't have any problems with skype even when I'm downloading torrent


I think that upload speed is not real,but should be over to 5-6.

UPLOAD SPEEDS ALWAYS CHANGE AND ARE ALMOST NEVER AS AN ISP ADVERTISES. Keep in mind that your IP gives you the CAPACITY to Upload UP TO XMBps [be it 5 or 6 or 100MBps], but there is all kinds of things that come in to play like if the download bandwidth of the server you are sending to is lower than your 5 - 6 MBps then it can't upload at 5 -6 MBps to that server no matter what you try. You also have the network itself [is the server farther away, are there many hops [netowrk devices] between me and that server, even how many people are using the same backbone [Comcast is a big one on this your speeds are pooled with your neighborhood area so you could get 25MBps right now, but as soon as your neighbor hops online you are now splitting speeds with them [I have FiOS and I know they make a big deal out of single Fiber to your House and not as shared, but there is still some affect to your speeds as they handle more or less clients through out the day [like I bet you notice your internet browsing is slower round lunch as everyone even if they dont have comps at their desks tends to want to read their own email, news, what have you during lunch ] and ALL of this goes in to affecting how fast your download or upload speed is at any given time. If speed testing [or downloading or gaming] tyr to choose a router that is closest to you for the best speeds and try multiple server to verify your results as errors happen and networks [ESPECIALLY the INTERNET are VERY DYNAMIC AND CHANGE ALL THE TIME it's not like I lay this 100MBps cable and that's it. How many machines am I connecting? How far is the cable run from it's connection, how much bandwidth is each connected machine trying to utilize, how old is the cable, are there Electromagnetic interferences along its path [TVs, refrigerators, Computers, anything with electric has an EM field and can mess with a data cable to some degree [albeit it most of the time not much, but thats why you want to buy shielded cable and try not to run it right ext to a bank of fluorescent lights or a huge magnet LoL]

AmbrosialPariah said:

neilq5 said:

Im trying to get the most out of my upload speed that i can.
I'm a frequent Skype user and i can get a good quality coming from the person im talking to, but my voice tends to cut off and become distorted for the other person receiving it
i ran a speed test and my results were
6.15Mb/s download
.33Mb/s upload

its not great i know, but its the best my isp has to offer for my area
but .33Mb/s upload should be more than enough for me to send a high quality voice call
i have already set QOS to make Skype a top priority, im not sure if that has any
effect on upload

is there anything i can/should change to help?
someone recommended i use tcp optimizer, but others said i shouldnt try that with windows 7

any help will be appreciated

You are probably having issues due to using a router and NAT [Network Address Translation] which enables many computers to share one IP address with the world. What happens is a connection comes in and says hi I was requested by computer C and the router says OK for this session I will route all info to computer C. Sounds awesome right? Well lets say something happens either a network blip [some other device in east gybyp goes out and the route changes or you stop the conversation and re-start] it needs to do this again [called handshaking]. This almost always causes issues with streaming and gaming when you want the connection solid and the buffering or other mechanisms meant to hide this drop/reconnect are not working. You will need to port forward the ports Skype uses to your specific machine and I bet you will have rock solid conversations. Remember you will need to assign a static IP that does not change so your router always knows your computers IP will not change [some routers get around this with DNS addresses in port rules but up to your router]. Basically port forward skype's ports to your computer and I bet it is all cleared up. Every router differs and I believe Skype can be set to use custom ports. In any case Google Port Forward <Router model> and Default Skype Ports via Google and you will get the info you need [or some routers have a list of apps that they know the ports for when setting up port forwarding so you could check that out as well.

i set up port forwarding, i know im to set the port i want Skype to use myself but is there a specific range i should go for?
like right now the port is set to 45302, but i've seen people talking about other software saying to use a port between say 30000-31000

neilq5 said:

AmbrosialPariah said:

neilq5 said:

Im trying to get the most out of my upload speed that i can.
I'm a frequent Skype user and i can get a good quality coming from the person im talking to, but my voice tends to cut off and become distorted for the other person receiving it
i ran a speed test and my results were
6.15Mb/s download
.33Mb/s upload

its not great i know, but its the best my isp has to offer for my area
but .33Mb/s upload should be more than enough for me to send a high quality voice call
i have already set QOS to make Skype a top priority, im not sure if that has any
effect on upload

is there anything i can/should change to help?
someone recommended i use tcp optimizer, but others said i shouldnt try that with windows 7

any help will be appreciated

You are probably having issues due to using a router and NAT [Network Address Translation] which enables many computers to share one IP address with the world. What happens is a connection comes in and says hi I was requested by computer C and the router says OK for this session I will route all info to computer C. Sounds awesome right? Well lets say something happens either a network blip [some other device in east gybyp goes out and the route changes or you stop the conversation and re-start] it needs to do this again [called handshaking]. This almost always causes issues with streaming and gaming when you want the connection solid and the buffering or other mechanisms meant to hide this drop/reconnect are not working. You will need to port forward the ports Skype uses to your specific machine and I bet you will have rock solid conversations. Remember you will need to assign a static IP that does not change so your router always knows your computers IP will not change [some routers get around this with DNS addresses in port rules but up to your router]. Basically port forward skype's ports to your computer and I bet it is all cleared up. Every router differs and I believe Skype can be set to use custom ports. In any case Google Port Forward <Router model> and Default Skype Ports via Google and you will get the info you need [or some routers have a list of apps that they know the ports for when setting up port forwarding so you could check that out as well.

i set up port forwarding, i know im to set the port i want Skype to use myself but is there a specific range i should go for?
like right now the port is set to 45302, but i've seen people talking about other software saying to use a port between say 30000-31000

I did some googling [I personally dont use Skype I just use built-in vid cha in Pidgin for Aim or Yahoo and have RaidTalk for gaming.

basically Skype can be port forwarded but apparently does not like it as it is not a "Standardized" VOIP implementation, but from what I have read try the following with the default settings

Prococol TCP
Local port : 21047
remote ports : ALL
application: skype

Make sure to include UDP as another rule or same [some routers do TCP and UDP some you need more than one rule]

than on ports 80 and 443 specify UDP only
so
Protocol: UDP
Local: 443
Remote: ALL
App: Whateva name you want

29015 - specify both TCP and UDP

This rule is a "Server" rule and it must be placed immediately before the rule used to block incoming TCP connection with the flag SYN...

Skype states every port above 1024 should be open [but is never realistic with a shared internet connection setup. The above ports seem to be the service defaults with big mentions for the 443 [as this is SSL encrypted unlike 80] and 21047. 29015 was found on another forum and mentioned by a couple users and it does seem certain versions of Skype behave slightly differently. If all else fails open Skype options and specify your own ports [stay above 1024 I would recommend something like 10000 - 10025 [most of the core networking features of TCP/IP reside below 1024 and many 3rd party apps use from 1024 - 10000 leaving 10000 - 65535 as the most open range [of course apps can use these ranges they just try to leave them as open as possible for custom port arrangements and all. So basically I would start there and if some game or app stops working or is odd, try 10200 - and so on [I live in the 10000 - 10500 range for my forwards [but I dont do a ton of gaming either]. Hope all this helps. I just really suggest you try out Raidtalk [not to mention these apps not only are meant to host voice over PC games, but can do things like tell you what games a friend is playing [and raptr as thats the one a friend had me use for a bit] even allowed me to launch and join my friends current game [of course you have to have it installed its not like you can just play for free cause your friend has it]. I think Raid Talk does this as well just again I dont do gaming [and the gaming I do I prefer solo games I hate having to rely on others being online or around just to play a game when i want to play specially since I keep odd hours

so make sure this is one of your first rules and each of the next of any you try as [and you could also download a system tweaker like x-setup [stopp support but fully compatible with Windows 7 64-Bit and free and search there tweaks in that app for Syn Flood protection and make sure it is set to at least 2 [no more really trust me malformed syns should not happen and more than 2 is an attack, but I believe M$ has begun setting Windows to not allow any Syn by default so allowing the trigger to be set to 2 will allow some syn.

apologies for the really late reply, after messing around with it for a while, i've found disabling the original firewall on the router works best, i dont think the router i have handles port forwarding very well
i'll be looking into external ones to add very soon
its still not perfect but i think its the best i'll on my bandwidth

but nonetheless, thanks for your help!