greg wm wrote:
> hi,
> 
> how can i best protect whatever bandwidth is needed by our skype 
> connections?

Google for QoS.

> 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.

Ping is a lousy test, it is basically only valid as a connectivity test 
for ICMP. There are lot's of other factors that can affect performance 
which ping will give no indication of. If you really want to know, and 
have the time, there are a variety of tools for determining network 
usage and other statistics.

> 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..

Google for QoS, that is more or less what you are describing.

Josh