## Problems: regular pauses in output

If you hear regular pauses in output you receive, or the person you're talking to reports the same in audio you send, the most likely causes are:

1. Your network connection isn't fast enough to send real-time audio with the compression modes you've chosen. Try additional compression to reduce the volume of data you're sending

2. The compression mode you've selected (usually GSM, LPC, CELP, or LPC-10) requires more computation than your computer or the computer of the person you're talking to) can perform in real time. Choose a less efficient but faster form of compression. The performance benchmark can help determine which compression modes are within the computing power of your machine.

3. You've chosen encryption mode(s) which require more computation than your computer can do in real time. Use fewer or less computationally intense modes of encryption. DES is the slowest form of encryption, IDEA (also used by PGP key exchange) is intermediate in speed. Key file encryption requires virtually no computation. If you've selected multiple encryption modes, the computation required is the sum of each of the individual modes. Note that DES encryption is much more time consuming in RTP and VAT protocols. The performance benchmark can help determine which encryption modes are within the computing power of your machine.

4. Your machine may be sufficiently slow that the mechanism Speak Freely uses to guard against system hangs due to overload is itself creating delays which cause packets to be lost. You can disable the system hang protection with the Options / Workarounds / Network/ Disable Message Loop Insurance menu item, but it's unwise to do this before you're absolutely sure the compression and encryption modes you're using don't overload your computer.

You can experiment with various compression and encryption modes without disturbing other users by connecting to one of the Speak Freely echo servers.