Skype troubleshooting tips: just one of many 'Net telephony eHows

For four years, that archive was preserved on the Web as a frozen moment in time, a monument if you will, to betterdays.

eHow was revived as a Wiki in 2005.. In recent months, eHow has been vigorously updated with new content, mostly from a community of volunteer editors. There are now more than 55,000 articles posted on this underappreciated site.

Surfing this afternoon, I decided to see what how-to articles eHow has to offer on VoIP, Skype, etc.

To my surprise, I found at least a few hundred. Some read like cut-and-pastes from Help pages, but there are some good articles, too.

Let's just focus on one. It's a 17-stepper entitled,  How To Troubleshoot Skype VoIP.

Accepting the caveat that Skype is far more P2P than VoIP, we can see that each step is accurate in its description and taxonomy.

I certainly don't want to give away the store (actually, no store, because eHows are free), but here's Step 1 of 17:

Perform the following tasks if you are unable to connect to the P2P network through Skype (Error # 1101, 1102 or 1103). Alter internet settings. If you are connecting the internet via your office, school or corporate network, you could be behind a firewall. Learn more on how to install a firewall and how to configure it. To configure the firewall, first exit from the Skype program, then go to Start menu and click on Settings, Control Panel. Proceed to choose Windows firewall. Uncheck ‘Don't allow exceptions’ and go to Exceptions. If Skype is listed in the Exceptions list, delete it. Resume the Skype program when done.

Sixteen steps to go, which are found here.

Congrats to eHow on reviving and re-inventing yourselves. Either goal is hard. Doing both successfully, as you have done, is quite difficult. But in my book (actually in my blog) you've passed with flying colors.