Skype voice breaks up but only one way?

[Fred Bloggs]

I have recently set my father up with Skype on his laptop so that he can talk/see grandchildren who are away at university. Testing it today, I could hear him and see him perfectly. He could see me just fine but my voice was breaking up very badly. I have a fast ~30mbps FTTC connection and he has a ~2mbps ADSL connection. I can't understand why his upload to me is perfect but his download from me is virtually unusable. Any ideas what to check for? Thanks.

[AtW]

Check on your end if your upstream is not overstretched - P2P software run by kids or it could be even Skype acting as super node and using up your resources.

Try pinging remote IP to see if latency is abnormal as well - some odd routing stuff can happen.

[Fred Bloggs]

Thanks, I'm not sure I understand a lot of that though (I'm an engineer not an IT guy), I have a solid 8 to 10mbps upload here and there was no other significant uploading going on as far as I know. At my end I tried Skyping form my Android phone and my laptop with the same results from both devices.

[AtW]

It could be some issues with routing between yourself and remote connection, get remote IP (ask your dad to see it on this site: myipaddress.com ) then try in command prompt two things for his IP - x.x.x.x:

ping -n 10 x.x.x.x

tracert x.x.x.x

Post results here without actual IP address - it can be packet loss between two locations due to some odd routing that is outside of your control.

[Fred Bloggs]

Thanks for the help, I'll see if we can do this between us, he's >80 so it might be a bit of a struggle. Cheers.

[AtW]

If he tells you the IP address he sees on that website then you can run the commands from your end (which is the most important anyway).

[Fred Bloggs]

If he tells you the IP address he sees on that website then you can run the commands from your end (which is the most important anyway).

Thanks, I might have to go round and do it. It might take a few days for me to do this. Thanks again for the help.