Is your home network “Work from Home” ready? Although your internet may seem stable because videos and webpages load without issue, there may be internet quality problems that are not noticeable until you use services that are sensitive to network congestion. Services such as business phone, VPN, and video conferencing may perform poorly even if internet download and upload speeds are fast.
Find Hidden Network Problems
Visualware’s “Work From Home Assessment” tool will unmask some common problems that affect phone and video conferencing quality. Your computer should be connected using a wired connection for the best results.
- Go to Visualware.com’s Work From Home Assessment
- Download and install the plugin in step 2.
- Choose the location nearest to you.
- It’s safe to leave the defaults for step 4.
- Start the test.
Understanding the Results
Call Jitter
Jitter is caused by data from the internet arriving out of order. Unlike pre-recorded video, live streaming of business phone and video is sensitive to high amounts of jitter. Low amounts of jitter are normal. However, as the amount of jitter rises voice and video quality will become choppy.
Call Loss
Sometimes the information traveling on the internet never makes it to its intended destination. Call loss measures how much information is lost. Business phones and video conferencing will be choppy if data loss is too high
Call MOS
MOS or Mean Opinion Score is a number value between 1 and 5 that is a predictive measurement of the quality of your conversations. Although MOS is used primarily to measure call quality it is a good indicator of video conferencing quality.
| Excellent | 4.3 – 5.0 |
| Good | 4.0 – 4.3 |
| Audio delays become noticable | 3.6 – 4.0 |
| Conversations are choppy | 3.1 – 3.6 |
| Conversations are extremely choppy | 2.6 – 3.1 |
| Not recommended | 1.0 – 2.6 |
SIP ALG
SIP ALG is enabled on many home routers. It should be disabled if you are using business phones at home. Some common problems caused by SIP ALG is no audio, one-way audio, and incoming calls dropped. Encrypted SIP is not affected by SIP ALG.
Round Trip Time
The time it takes for data from your computer to get to the destination and back. If the Round Trip Time is over 150ms, the audio will be noticeably delayed. Once the Round Trip Time is over 300ms audio will begin to be choppy.
Capacity
This measures if you have enough bandwidth available to run multiple services such as VPN, business phone, and video conferencing simultaneously. Theses services require a stable internet connection and are often used together when businesses allow employees to work from home.
Summary
Having a very fast internet connection does not mean that business phones, video conferencing, or VPN connections will function properly. This test will help you isolate potential problems that may be hiding on your network.
Need help diagnosing problems with your internet connection? Give us a call at (888) 304-0124.
