Confusing wireless modem problem

[Heike]

Hello, I'm not really sure if I am in the right place (hopefully I am).

My problem is that I have a wireless modem (usb type) with 8Mbps connection on my laptop. It works very well until I get into a conference call using Skype. The conference call consists of 3, sometimes up to 5 people and nobody uses any web cameras (in case the question pops up). The funny thing is, sometime during the conference the internet vanishes.. The app I am using to connect to my ISP says the connection is excellent while I get an exclamation mark on my network which says "No Internet Access". After about a minute the internet is back and this repeats frequently.

I have asked my ISP to investigate and they concluded that it only vanishes at peak hours and they can't do anything to help me.. I doubt that's the case since it only occurs when I am in Skype conference..

Please help.

 

[AntiZig]

so is this a broadband service? or are you connecting to a router?

my guess is the ISP server doesn't wish to sustain the data stream skype imposes on it so it causes a time out, which results in a reset of connection.

one thing you can try to check, get a bandwidth monitor, and monitor what your up/down usage is during the skype call and note the usage you were at when it disconnects. If it consistently disconnects when you reach certain transfer rate, or after certain period of time of elevated bandwidth usage, then it's probably the ISP problem.

Also, make sure you've got the latest drivers/firmware for your wireless adapter

 

[Heike]

I'm guessing it's broadband as I have no router. This application/driver that I am using to connect to displays live statistics of the bandwidth. The strange thing is that if I am downloading a file, for example, the bandwidth should be quite high as I have no limits attached so it goes full speed, sometimes for hours and no time out.

It is quite late right now so I will check it tomorrow but I am guessing that this might be a forced time out when a certain amount/time is reached.. If this is the case are there any alternatives to use?

And if it is the ISP's problem, how do I convince them as they claim these disappearances occur at peak hours.. :s

 

[Heike]

EDIT:

Did a fast 15min check with 1 person. The average up/down was at about 0,05Mbps, maximum at 0,16Mbps. I doubt the addition of more people will drastically change these figures.. :s


For some reason I was not allowed to edit my previous post..

 

[john-b691]

So here is a outright guess..

The difference between skype and other applications is skype opens a lot of sessions all the time with lots of various addresses. It does this to keeps its directory up to day I think...don't know for sure but you can see these sessions being opened in a sniffer or the nat table. This is in addition to the session it uses to pass the actual call.

I would wonder if there is some form of session limit on your internet connection.

Maybe all bull but just a thought.

 

[Heike]

Can you link me to any of the sniffers and the like? I tried googling it but nothing came out from that.. :| Maybe there is some way to test how many sessions my connection can take (not just from skype)?

 

[john-b691]

Wireshark is the most common. Run bit torrent it is the worst offender ever and why the ISP hate it. There is a lot of perfectly legal stuff to download

 

[Heike]

I have installed Wireshark but have no idea what to do with it.. I did some live capture on my modem but couldn't understand anything.. :s

 

[john-b691]

May not be worth a lot of trouble then. Like I said it is a guess. Skype actually transfers very little data than say watching youtube so it has to be something other than the length of time the session is open or amount of data transferred.

Maybe more relevant would be to see if you get any addition messages in the event log. The message you are getting does not say the physical port is down it says it can't get to the internet, maybe someone knows what causes that message to be produced and what the PC is testing to tell that the internet is not available.