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There are plenty of general broadband tests like speedtest.net. But are there similar tests around skype, which can say like "the problem is on side B, between 1.1.1.1 and 2.2.2.2, too narrow: 1.2 kbps", so I will be able to call ISP and show the evidence without hearing dull recommendations like switch your firewall off and reinstall the OS.

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What about the Skype test in Skype itself?

When you open the conversation window, on the lower right there should be Call quality information button. Click on it and it will show you information like on which side is the bottleneck, which side has a bad camera and so on. This works while you are talking to someone. It should have several white bars of different height which will change to blue once you move mouse over them.

There's also the check settings button which you can click and go to connection. That panel will tell you information about your connection and you'll have an option to take speed test too. To get to it, double-click on any contact and it should be there. It should have several green bars of different heights. If it's not there, get newest version of Skype.

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All your ISP is concerned about is your connection to them, not your connection to anywhere else. Your ISP will likely want you to direct connect to your ISP provided device and run a speed test. You can also ping your primary DNS and look for latency and packet loss (you should see less than 3% packet loss and latency no more than ~100ms for an average home connection.

The user on the other end can check this same thing with their ISP. Any networks you traverse along the way that are not controlled by either ISP are out of your control. You can run a traceroute or MTR to see where along the way ping times increase.

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  • I completely agree but this does not give any solution to the problem. I think this software should try to send a speech using the same protocol as skype does and the check what has arrived on the other end. This will give at least an evidence of a problem.
    – Nerd
    Mar 10, 2011 at 20:44
  • There is no real way to replicate that even using another service with the same protocol because you are traversing different networks. IP telephony requires a server, you would need to send the data through skype's servers to have an accurate test model with that methodology, which isn't going to happen unless you use their clients.
    – MaQleod
    Mar 10, 2011 at 20:55
  • Except for logins, Skype doesn't go through a server; it's a peer-to-peer protocol: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_protocol . It's correct that you can't deterministically replicate the route, though.
    – JRobert
    Mar 10, 2011 at 21:54
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If you're on Windows you may want to try out the PathPing command.

If under Linux you could check out mtr.

These will trace the route and ping each hop along the way so you can determine where the packet loss is (if any).

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