Skyping between Australia and UK

[lestag]

said:

So the problem is with how Skype moves its data across long distances, rather than distance itself.

Skype is a peer to peer system, so yes

[Dakkon]

Lived in NZ for a year, Skyping from Auckland, we frequently had really good calls, followed by really bad calls for no adequately explained reason.

[Famous Graham]

Skype my Dad in Melbourne from Boston a fair bit and also experience shonky reliability.

Skyping friends and colleagues in the UK - never misses a beat

[pikey]

After two weeks of testing, using a VPN to Skype from Sydney to England DEFINITELY makes a huge difference.

I would say the reliability has increased by about 70% and the quality by about 40%

I tried HideMyAss as a VPN provider, but didn't get the throughput. Then changed to vpnuk.info and it's a winner every time.

So there we go !

[audi321]

So are you saying it's your Aus ISP that is slowing down Skype?

[pikey]

audi321 said:

So are you saying it's your Aus ISP that is slowing down Skype?

Nope, because my testing has included Skyping from my house, neighbour's house, coffee shop and relative's house (in a different state).

It's something related to how Skype passes the call over long distances.

[200bhp]

said:

After two weeks of testing, using a VPN to Skype from Sydney to England DEFINITELY makes a huge difference.

I would say the reliability has increased by about 70% and the quality by about 40%

I tried HideMyAss as a VPN provider, but didn't get the throughput. Then changed to vpnuk.info and it's a winner every time.

So there we go !

How are you getting on with this now? I'm looking at a VPN for the same reason.

[AKT]

200bhp said:

said:

After two weeks of testing, using a VPN to Skype from Sydney to England DEFINITELY makes a huge difference.

I would say the reliability has increased by about 70% and the quality by about 40%

I tried HideMyAss as a VPN provider, but didn't get the throughput. Then changed to vpnuk.info and it's a winner every time.

So there we go !

How are you getting on with this now? I'm looking at a VPN for the same reason.

In theory the ‘best case’ speed for VPN is half the speed without VPN. I’d be sceptical about VPN being the reason your Skype has improved - as your speedtest shows VPN slows your connection considerably.

Skype can be a little hit-and-miss but I would think it’s more likely to be your wifi at home than Skype, especially if you’re in an area with lots of wifi networks.

We regularly Skype from NZ to the UK with the odd dodgy connection but it’s largely fine.

FaceTime may give better quality/reliability than Skype but not sure there’s a lot in it.

A

[XJSJohn]

Uk to Australia is about as far as you can go on the Internet, your route is probably across Atlantic, USA and pacific to Japan, then down to Hong Kong or Singapore before down to Australia. That's a long way with a lot of different carriers in the way and many potential weak links.

Video will be using the most of that bandwidth, also have a think about when you are skyping, are you going across USA at 9am when business traffic is starting etc? Try different times until you find a slot that works better.

[scorp]

said:

Ok, so have done some more testing.

OpenDNS didn't make a difference, but I thought of something else. I got a VPN connection through to the UK and this gave me the following:


Did a further Skype test through this VPN and it's fine.

So the problem is with how Skype moves its data across long distances, rather than distance itself.

Your problem would be low upload speeds ?

[Puggit]

We regularly Skype from UK to NZ without any issues, and Skype is my company standard from Russia to US. I'm not convinced with the long distances being responsible alone.

[Snoggledog]

The quality of a call / video chat via Skype is dependent on the number of connections between the peers on the call. If the call quality is crap, end the call and try again. In theory you should get a better 'route' between peers.

[200bhp]

Well, we now seem to have isolated the problem to our Windows computers. Both of our laptops suffer the same issue and they're both running the same version of windows and the same AVast virus protection. Something somewhere has changed with one of those and its the cause of the problem.

The Skype app on my Samsung Galaxy Tab2 works perfectly - My in-laws have said the picture quality is much better at their end too.

[davepoth]

Switch off the anti-virus, it'll likely work fine.

[lestag]

200bhp said:

The Skype app on my Samsung Galaxy Tab2 works perfectly - My in-laws have said the picture quality is much better at their end too.

Picture quality is more to do with the camera you have on the device and how you have it set (for resolution)

[AKT]

lestag said:

Picture quality is more to do with the camera you have on the device and how you have it set (for resolution)

Skype does degrade the picture quality in lower bandwidth situations.

A

[lestag]

AKT said:

Skype does degrade the picture quality in lower bandwidth situations.
A

Yeah sorry, I assumed the tablet and the pcs used the same internet connection

[200bhp]

lestag said:

AKT said:

Skype does degrade the picture quality in lower bandwidth situations.
A

Yeah sorry, I assumed the tablet and the pcs used the same internet connection

They do.

We can see no difference in picture quality at our end (in the view of ourselves on Skype) so can only assume that Skype is degrading the video transmission.

[lestag]

200bhp said:

They do.

We can see no difference in picture quality at our end (in the view of ourselves on Skype) so can only assume that Skype is degrading the video transmission.

The view you see in skype of yourself is quite small IIRC, so whether you have a vga HD or full HD image , at a small picture size you won't see the difference.
The picture you transmit may be due to the different resolution of the camera on the PC and on the Tablet, therefore a red herring. That why I suggest you check the resolution you are transmitting to rule different resolution cameras out of the picture <pun intended>

Any chance you use google DNS servers? on the PC and not on the tablet?

[Fletch79]

Try a google hangout just after for a comparison