On Tuesday 27 September 2005 04:27 pm, Josh Paetzel wrote: > On Tuesday 27 September 2005 16:08, greg wm wrote: > > 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 > > There's alway the hardware solution, which may come in a blue box with > that neat-o golden-gate bridge emblem on it. (cisco) Which is to say it is a software solution running on different hardware. Traffic shaping (QoS or other methods) is your best bet. I am not familiar with traffic shaping using iptables, but as long as you have the basics of iptables down I doubt it would be that hard to setup/configure QoS into your iptables config. I use openbsd's packet filter (PF) for traffic shaping. Presumably you already have some sort of firewall, maybe it already has this functionality built in?