Zoom presentations

[tonyb]

We tried the Zoom presentation last night for the first time.
It was reasonably easy to get started, but for the first 10 minutes of the presentation the picture and the speech kept dropping out. Then we had messages like not enough bandwidth (we get up to 26 mbs download), then your internet connection is unstable, then it would drop out again. Eventually we had about 30 minutes of uninterrupted presentation. And then when Guy was about to finish it all kicked off again.
Did anyone else have the same problem ?
If not, then any ideas on what may be causing this.

Tony B

[TonyMac]

I sometimes get those messages although I did not get any drop out last night. Are you with BT ? I have been experiences problems with my wifi devices dropping out recently.
BT keep trying to get me to upgrade but I cannot see the point because the upgrade is £8 a month more than what I pay know and does not seem to offer any more benefits except tech support.
I just have a suspicion they may be up to something that may make people upgrade Not sure I have a fast connection also

[tonyb]

We are at the moment with SKY. And have until November with the existing contract which is the Sky Fibre Unlimited.
Not really had any problem since we changed from BT about 12 months ago.

[PhilC]

My connection was in the region of 0.6 mb/s on Thursday evening. I found the presentation more or less OK, though occasionally a message popped up as described. I have used Zoom around 10 times now, including leading my own meetings from home when some have had similar experiences - I have blamed my own internet speed (looking forward to accessing fibre broadband within a couple of months). I don’t understand that some networks claim better speeds when still using the same network infrastructure, it shouldn’t be possible for significant increases by changing provider. The fastest in the village (close to a box) is around 1.5 mb/s, but some people use mobile phone connections for better speed... though a fellow committee member still only gets just over 1 mb/s...

[BrianMet]

Phil
great question too detailed for a response here, but think of it as dual carriageway, officially you can do 70mph realistically you average 50mph or less if stuck behind a tractor, all providers will will cap speeds think of it as a smart motorway, they offer the best service to those paying the most but they won't admit that, at times of high usage speeds get capped even more.

You can help by keeping your PC up to date, switching off any other browsers, check the processor, make sure you haven't got something eating into the memory in the background some malware that may not show up as problem there's plenty around.

I also use mini wifi from EE, it's portable costs me around £35pm and works on 4ghz so it's free of all the other network crap.

Virgin have their own fibre network with high speeds hopefully the others will catch up soon

should also say, are you using wifi, might be better off trying an ethernet cable direct off the hub

[PhilC]

Thanks for reply Brian. Virgin is not available here.
Probably half the members of my (Herefordshire) club struggle to get 1 mb/s. (Just done a consultation).
Connecting via cable makes little discernible difference.
4G is possible, but I have friends 1/2 mile away who find even that is variable.
The exchange is 4 miles away. I’m looking forward to the new fibre network about to be constructed by gigaclear that will be revolution - the cable will go right by my home, so I won’t be at the end of the line.
I do get a discount from current service provider who know that they cannot maintain minimum speeds on the existing network.
Even so, Zoom presentations are OK provided they don’t do av’s or fades between images, even when projecting with a full hdmi projector.
Since fibre is now imminent I’ll wait and see... otherwise mobile 4g ...

[billf]

I have BT broadband having changed from Sky.
I also have had various messages saying internet unstable.
I think ours is WiFi issues, reception better in some rooms than others.
It is a diagnostic challenge to unravel exactly what is causing the problem.
Cheers
Bill

[SimonP]

I agree with Brian's comment re wifi and trying an ethernet cable from your router as it sounds like an intermittent signal or connection rather than supply speed if you can get the Mbps you mention. If you're with Sky you can use their app for checking speed and issues; Speedtest by Ookla is an independent one I use frequently. Whichever one you use though, make sure no other devices - wifi or cabled - are taking broadband supply at the time. Other tips: make sure you have filters on all phone connections and if possible have your router connected to the master socket where it enters the house (even if that is just for a test to see if it makes any difference).

[tonyb]

Thanks for all the suggestions. I have tried most of them already.
Next week I will try moving the laptop around the house to see if we get better reception. Where I usually use the laptop in the living room is only about 10 feet from the router (which is connected directly to the BT master socket) albeit the other side of a brick wall, and I do not generally get any problems with reception from Youtube videos.
Anyway I will see what reception is like on thursday.

[IanT]

I know that this thread is a week old now, Tony, but I thought my tuppence-worth might be germane....

In an urban area like yours there are many people connected to the BT cabinet which is in your street or nearby. All those people share the bandwidth available to the cabinet, which will max out at about 300Mb/s if it's not throttled further upstream. OK, your data rate might be 26Mbits/s but that's the burst speed for the little chunks of data which occupy your 'share' of the time available for data exchange with the cabinet and the average data rate can be quite very much lower than that. Let's say that there are 40 folk attached to that cabinet (usually 50 is the maximum) and a large proportion of them are watchning Netflix or YouTube - occasionally therefore, the true average data rate will sink to 7-ish Mbits/s and possibly even lower than that because your local cabinet shares its incoming bandwidth with other cabinets emanating from the same exchange. Throttling will undoubtedly occur. YouTube, Netflix et al will not really suffer from this throttling becasue they demand relatively low bandwidth, buffering the incoming data and shifting it out slower than they take it in - you might have noticed their picture quality degrading a little occasionally: the software recognises the slowness of the incoming data and backs off its speed of reception, at the cost of picture definition. Zoom probably doesn't do this because it has to maintain a real-time (or nearly so) connection with folk on the other end so that a face-to-face conversation can take place without great delays. With Zoom, usually, the first to go will be the video as this requires most bandwidth, leaving just the sound - this seems to happen regularly with Bill F's signal but I think that's more to do with the data rate to his WiFi.

The situation will not be helped by using WiFi for a couple of reasons: 1) the data rate from the Wireless Access Point (your router, I'm guessing) will fall off dramatically the further you get away from it - the inverse square law applies. This will cause asynchronicity of data reception becsuse the router does not buffer the incoming data and expects you to take it immediately. If after some handshaking (to-ing and fro-ing several times beteween the router and your PC so as to establish delivery of a data packet) you haven't received it, your PC will then have to request it again, further slowing things down. 2) Is your router being contended by other routers in the neighbourhood? If it's a 2.4 GHz beast,they operate on 14 channels (= frequency bands) and unless you explicity define which one, routers will simply work on channel 1 meaning that there will be 'fights' for airtime. (5 GHz WiFi has a lot more channels, has less range and is still prone to contention). This will result in many attempts to get data if you are close to another router on the same channel, which is likely to be the case in an urban street, maybe trhough the wall to next door both sides, and accross the street. You can check this with a smartphone app like WifiAnalyzer, which gives you a picture of all nearby routers, what channel they occupy and how strong is their signal (see pic attached). This will allow you to pick a blank (or less used) spot in channel list and you will almost certainly see an improvement in data flow. Of course, this demands that you can change the channel on your router, which will require logging in to it and managing it directly. I'm sorry, but I can't haelp you with that - that's the domain of the outfit which provided it. If you can't get help from them, then the next best option is to buy a Wifi Access Point box which will have access to its management screen (I can suggest one if you go this route), plug it into your router and use the new box for your WiFi, leaving the router WiFi to disrupt everyone else's reception!!

The other pic, btw shows the icon of the wifi analyser I use, bottom left - look for that in your app store. It's free.

[tonyb]

WOW. I understood about 10% of all that.
Thanks Ian, this technology lark is way out of my league.
I have just spent over an hour watching my computer screen while an Adobe Technician took control to sort out my problem with Photoshop and Lightroom. After the latest updates were installed they would not let me open Lightroom edits in Photoshop. Anyway it is now hopefully sorted.
Getting back to ZOOM, last weeks Joe Cornish presentation worked perfectly.

[billf]

Thanks Ian. As always a very thorough explanation.
I've down loaded the WiFi analyser which is quite intriguing.
Our router is in the living room where the BT line comes in and the PC is about 6/8 metres away with two chimney breasts and two walls to go through. I've placed a Netgear WiFi booster half way between the router and the router and the PC to see if it will help.
BT are offering a WiFi extender AC2600 at £49 (normally £99) which they say will "choose" between 2.4 or 5GHz
Do you think this would address the issues I have with "stuttering" Zoom experiences or is it a problem of data entering the system rather than a WiFi issue?
Thank you as always for your explanation and advice.
Cheers
Bill

[BrianMet]

Actually Ian isn't quite right, each cabinet has it's own fibre link.
Wifi extenders don't work they only boost the crappy signal you already have, but I am assured by colleagues who have the latest wifi extenders the ones looking like white discs as advertised on TV work very well

[IanT]

Actually Ian isn't quite right, each cabinet has it's own fibre link.
Wifi extenders don't work they only boost the crappy signal you already have, but I am assured by colleagues who have the latest wifi extenders the ones looking like white discs as advertised on TV work very well

They do, Brian, but the cabinets in an area are fed from a hub which shares its bandwidth around the cabinets. Individual cabinets will serve up to 100 properties, whcih share the cabinet bandwidth. The hubs share bandwidth from the exchange. The knee bone's connected to the thigh bone....