How in the Tech

Simple Change that May Improve your Skype Quality

By Adam Myers ⋅ February 5, 2009 ⋅ Tags: Multimedia

Skype is without a doubt the gold standard when it comes to Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) software. It’s free, reliable, and highly efficient with it’s network usage. The sound quality can be fantastic with minimal initial tweaking or setup. As you can probably tell, I love Skype and everything it has to offer – I literally use it daily. However, as magical as I’ve made it sound, it’s not all moonbeams and sunshine. Over time, you may notice your voice call quality has degraded. This can be quite a complex problem to address as there are many factors that contribute to the overall experience. I have one quick suggestion that actually worked for me.

Skype utilizes supernodes – computers that have publicly routable IP addresses that act as a conduit between both client endpoints when they are behind firewalls or NAT devices. Plainly, they route your Skype call through the node in order to connect the call. The supernodes host information is cached and stored locally on your computer in the file shared.xml. It’s quite feasible that over time, this file does not contain the most up to date information, and thus, your Skype call routes through a node on the other side of the world – even if you are just calling across the state. Thankfully, it’s pretty simple to update this file with the latest node information.

1. Close Skype.
2. Locate shared.xml in Windows Explorer. On my main Vista machine it is located in C:\Users\A Myers\AppData\Roaming\Skype. Under XP, you may find it in C:\Document and Settings\username\Application Data\Skype.
3. Delete shared.xml.
4. Restart Skype. Skype will rebuild shared.xml by downloading an updated version from the server.

Did this help your call quality? Let me know in the comments!