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