On Aug 21, 2005, at 4:50 PM, Chris Bagnall wrote:
> As a general rule, even with BitTorrent running full whack I can make 
> quite
> acceptable IAX/g729 calls. The key (at least, I found) to an effective
> traffic shaper config is getting your upstream bandwidth pipe size 
> perfect.
> Use an online speed test utility to find out exactly what throughput 
> you're
> getting - do *not* use the figure your ISP tells you you're getting.

I have found this to be the case too and actually had to give a lower 
figure to the magic shaper than what I actually was getting. With a 
3000/768 line, I get around 600 upstream. I found that I had to lower 
the figure that I gave the Magic Shaper to around 430 in order to make 
it work well. I'm not sure if it was a limitation of the DSL, but when 
saturating the line at 600, ping times (and hence delay) would go up 
quite a bit.

To test quality, I would make a call to a landline and listen to spoken 
voice (the phone was put on a speaker) while uploading from at least 1 
computer. Listening to a call, you could tell that it was being 
degraded. By lowering the upstream bandwidth to 430 in the magic 
shaper, ping times would stay much more consistent and calls were much 
better when doing heavy uploading.

- Aaron