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How Can I Limit Skypes Bandwidth Usage??

DoFoT9

DoFoT9

macrumors P6
Original poster
Hey all, hope we are well!

i am getting quite peeved at skype, it keeps using all of my bandwidth from my lengthy phone calls to my GF.

what i want is to be able to limit skype to use 20kbps or something like that, if its even possible. there are no guides on google, nor any programs that i can use.

i have tried a program called "WaterRoof", couldnt understand it at all though. i tried google and searching on these forums with no luck so far.

thankyou all for your help in advance!!

DoFoT9
 
has anyone had any luck with this?? i am still completely in the blue, i have nothing. 😱
 
Lol I have the exact same issue! Skype video / audio with girlfriend long time = 300mb /hr = slowed internet after half the internet month ahhhhh. Anyway I was researching lots too and Water house confuzzled the confuzzle out of me lol. I saw this alternate thing on their site though called Noob Proof so i downloaded it 700kb (good for my slow 10kb/s speed at the moment) and tried. It gives you a set up wizard and you can limit bandwidth for everything or selected ports and the skype port is in 'Skype > preferences > advanced' then just type that port number into the bandwidth limiter there and walah done. I set mine to 30kb/s max so it stays around 100mb/hr that should be good for the time i use it and not kill my internet quota. Hope this helps you. You can also set it to run that new script at start up as well which is handy. You don't have to have that app open it just writes a script.
 
3runjosh said:
Lol I have the exact same issue! Skype video / audio with girlfriend long time = 300mb /hr = slowed internet after half the internet month ahhhhh. Anyway I was researching lots too and Water house confuzzled the confuzzle out of me lol. I saw this alternate thing on their site though called Noob Proof so i downloaded it 700kb (good for my slow 10kb/s speed at the moment) and tried. It gives you a set up wizard and you can limit bandwidth for everything or selected ports and the skype port is in 'Skype > preferences > advanced' then just type that port number into the bandwidth limiter there and walah done. I set mine to 30kb/s max so it stays around 100mb/hr that should be good for the time i use it and not kill my internet quota. Hope this helps you. You can also set it to run that new script at start up as well which is handy. You don't have to have that app open it just writes a script.
Click to expand...

OMG! you are a life saver!!!!! *checks out application*

thanks so much for this man!

i have an upload of about 100KB/s, so yea its a good 400MB an hour just for my video, the video on the other end comes at about the same rate from my GFs house - so yea... adds up!

cheers for this, you're a legend.
 
no prob mate. I got two weeks to go of capped internet because my girlfriend sends me high quality video / audio lol so glad to find this app
 
3runjosh said:
no prob mate. I got two weeks to go of capped internet because my girlfriend sends me high quality video / audio lol so glad to find this app
Click to expand...

oh i completely know how you feel! i have 25GB caps lol. is pathetic.
 
so working all good? I'm still trying to figure out how to just make it limit skype so i can still load websites fast while on camera. Adding the custom port that skype uses doesn't seem to work 🙁 i'm not geeky enough to figure it out haha
 
3runjosh said:
so working all good? I'm still trying to figure out how to just make it limit skype so i can still load websites fast while on camera. Adding the custom port that skype uses doesn't seem to work 🙁 i'm not geeky enough to figure it out haha
Click to expand...

have you chosen port 80 to slow transmision rates? if so, then you cant make your internet experience "speed up", as that is what the HTTP protocol uses.

i have no idea how to change it 🙁 so unfortunately for the moment i have no fix.
 
I have been messing around ever since. The only way i can see possible to do it is to only limit the port skype uses. I have trouble finding out what port it does use and whenever i get a number to try it doesn't limit down to my set bandwidth while in a call. so annoying. Stupid Australian Internet lol
 
3runjosh said:
I have been messing around ever since. The only way i can see possible to do it is to only limit the port skype uses. I have trouble finding out what port it does use and whenever i get a number to try it doesn't limit down to my set bandwidth while in a call. so annoying. Stupid Australian Internet lol
Click to expand...

the preferences shows which port number you use, but its randomly chosen each time you start up.. and thats only the incoming port i think. the outgoing port always uses port 80 🙁 so its kinda hard to block it without stuffing up your internet connection! you could try some sort of proxy but thats getting wayyy too complicated!
 
3runjosh said:
no prob mate. I got two weeks to go of capped internet because my girlfriend sends me high quality video / audio lol so glad to find this app
Click to expand...

High quality audio and video eh??? Last you long whilst she's not here?

P.S - Mind sharing some?
 
Use OS X's builtin bandwidth throttler to limit Skype data usage

Advanced OS X :apple: users know that Darwin comes with ipfw, which can be used to set up a custom firewall. This same service however can be used to also limit bandwidth on specific ports. Try 50KByte/s if you want decent video quality as well as reduced data usage. 😀

Example:
sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 15KByte/s
creates a pipe that only allows up to 15KB/s to go through.

Then:
sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 src-port 80
will attach that pipe to the outgoing traffic on port 80, effectively limiting the outgoing traffic of the web server.
sudo ipfw delete 1
will remove the pipe from the port.

[kirkmc adds: I haven't tested this. Just make sure you remember to turn this off when you no longer need it!]

This content is from http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080119112509736 and I don't own the rights to this information and do not intend to infringe on copy rights. This information is provided as educational purposes only. Please ask macrumors.com administrators to delete this post if it is deemed to infringe on your copyrights.
 
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