Troubleshooting Steps

If you experience lagging audio, choppy video, delays in the connection or other call quality issues, this guide will walk you through the steps to diagnose and resolve the problem.

Step 1: Understanding the technology

The technology used for your video visit is a peer-to-peer system, which means when you connect to other participants through audio and video, that data is being transmitted directly between those peers and not through other servers. This means call quality is almost entirely dependent upon the Internet connections and devices of the participants.

Step 2. Pinpointing the problem

These are the six most common causes of poor call quality, and how you can test to see if it might be the source of your connectivity issues:

  1. Poor Internet connection or high network latency: You can test these aspects of your own network here. Upload and download speeds of at least 2 Mb/s make for the best experience; a latency below 50 ms is ideal, while anything higher than 100 ms is likely to be problematic. Here are some tips for improving your Internet connection at home.
  2. Ability to have a webRTC call: This is the underlying technology of a video visit. Run the automated tests found here; if any of the tests fail, you probably will not be able to hold a call.
  3. Device processing ability: If you are having issues during a call, try closing all unnecessary programs to free up processing power. Restarting your computer before a call is a good way to make sure you are not running any extra applications.
  4. The quality of the camera or microphone: If your equipment is more than 2 to 3 years old, or if it is damaged in some way, it may not be able to support a call. Hardware that is good enough for an Internet video call can be bought for very cheap, consider upgrading.
  5. Browser or Operating System: It is important to keep your computer's software up-to-date. You can perform a simple check online to see if your browser is the most recent version; you can also find out if your operating system is outdated on a Mac or on a Windows computer.

Section 3: Network security settings

In rare cases, the above won't solve the problems. The most likely explanation for this is that your network has security settings in place that are preventing you from making a connection. If you think this may be the problem, you should contact your IT department, so they can make sure the appropriate access is being allowed.