hi,

how can i best protect whatever bandwidth is needed by our skype 
connections?

skype works great usually.  probably where it breaks down is when other 
activity loads down our connection.

is there any fairly easy way to address this?  if it's too complicated i 
suppose i may have to just punt and get a second connection.  but even 
that would require some serious setup, in order to divert the skype 
connections.

i had an experience a year ago or so where i noticed that under heavy 
(down)load, ping turnaround could take upto nearly 15 seconds.  i 
interpreted that to mean the pings were waiting in a crowded packet 
queue.  i imagine these sorts of considerations could indeed make voip 
bandwidth protection a thorny issue.

one supposedly simple idea that comes to mind is to somehow throttle 
packets as necessary so that there is always some headroom left in our 
connection bandwidth.  but i confess i wouldn't know offhand how to do 
even that..

i'd like to see recommendations, pointers, experiences, ...

tia,
greg

Greg Whitley Mott
IT Coordinator
NonviolentPeaceforce.org