How to Avoid Skype Connectivity Issues and Dropped Calls

Who hasn’t used Skype so far? I thought so… It’s one of the oldest platforms still available that lets you connect with your coworkers, business partners and family with high quality audio and video. And it’s been growing as well as their competitors when the Coronavirus outbreak in 2020 sent people to work from home.

As you might guess, many people have Skype connectivity issues. Sometimes the video turns into a strange, pixelated mess, or you don’t even get there, as Skype is not connecting calls. Even worse, sometimes the whole Skype call drops. How to avoid this from happening? Read below to find out.

Unless it’s their servers – which may very well be the case – it’s the quality of your Internet connection. If that’s the case, most of the time:

1. Other apps are hogging the internet bandwidth. At some point there might not be enough left to send and receive the audio and video packets that Skype needs;
2. Your Internet is slow. Some Internet connections just aren’t fast enough to send and receive the Skype streaming packets;
3. Your packet loss rate is high. Internet connections are dropping network packets, so Skype misses parts of the audio or video. This usually happens at the edge of the range on wireless connections like Wi-Fi and cellular.

And if you’re moving while using the Internet – riding on trains and buses for example – you can experience all of these things in one call. That’s because the coverage varies as you travel through hills and tunnels and bridges.

So – you need better Internet that should be either faster or more reliable or, in most cases, a combination between the two. And we have just the perfect tool to get this.

Speedify is a fast bonding VPN that uses channel bonding technology to combine 2 or more Internet connections together simultaneously. In Streaming Mode, Speedify automatically detects audio and video streams. It does that by looking at packet headers, and the patterns in the packets being sent and received.  By watching the flow of packets, Speedify can determine:

• how much bandwidth Skype is trying to use, and
• whether or not it is getting the capacity it requires.

Once Speedify has identified the streams, it does several things for them:

1. Maintains Quality of Service (QoS) to make sure they get the connectivity they need versus other services. Speedify prioritizes Skype streaming traffic over other types of web traffic. Things like web browsing, backups and software updates won’t mess up your calls and live streams.
2. Bonds connections for faster Internet speed. Speedify can split single Skype streams across multiple available Internet connections. It can send some packets on Wi-Fi, some on cellular and some on a wired Ethernet connection, if available. Speedify also reassembles these packets so the app just sees a faster Internet connection. By moving network packets through all available connections on a computer, smartphone, tablet or other supported device, Speedify can get up to 95% of the speed of the combined connections.

3. Minimizes packet loss using redundancy. If your Internet connections are dropping network packets, then Speedify can detect this. It will start sending the packets redundantly, on all available internet connections at the same time! Speedify only delivers whichever packet gets through first.
   By sending the same data on several connections, and then only delivering whichever copy gets through first, Speedify provides the best reliability of all connections and the lowest latency of any of your connections.
   So, Speedify helps you survive network drop outs, avoid bad latency, and make sure that everything gets through, even in the worst conditions.

Here’s what happens under the hood of Streaming Mode. Speedify adds timing information to every network packet, so it can gather statistics in real-time. As connections change, and other apps start or stop sending data, Speedify adjusts its strategies on the fly. So, you might be bonding connections on the bridge, but Speedify will automatically switch to Redundant Mode as soon as you enter the tunnel. You don’t need to worry about it. Just make your Skype call: if there’s any way to get it through, Speedify will make it happen.

To activate Speedify’s Streaming Mode:

• click the gear icon in the main user interface to go to the main Settings menu.
• click on “Bonding Mode” under the Session Settings section.
• it currently defaults to Speed, but you can click it to change it to Streaming Mode. This will take effect immediately.

To learn more about Streaming Mode check out the Speedify Knowledge Base article.

Tired of calls dropping or other connectivity issues on Skype? Update to the latest Speedify version and switch to Streaming Mode!