Call quality

Choppy audio, one-way audio and dropped calls are almost always the network between the phone and the internet, not the phones and not the platform. Who is affected says where.

The test any customer can run

1. Press Start, type cmd, press Enter. A black window opens.
2. Type ping -t 8.8.8.8 and press Enter.
3. Leave it running while you make a call or two. When a call acts up, press Ctrl+C to stop it.
4. Send us a picture of what it shows.

On a Mac the command is ping 8.8.8.8 and Ctrl+C stops it the same way.

Reading it: steady times under about 50 ms with no losses means the connection is clean and the cause is elsewhere, a device, an app, or our side. Times jumping into the hundreds, "Request timed out" lines, or any loss above 0% means the network or the internet is dropping packets, and that is the cause; your own IT or internet provider takes it from there.

What the network usually is

Upload matters more than download: your voice has to go out, and a backup running, a cloud sync, or a video upload can saturate it. Weak Wi-Fi, an overloaded router, and a change to the router or the firewall are the other usual causes. After a network change, phones need a power cycle. See phone will not register for the registration side.

Filters and firewalls

Content filters and aggressive firewalls sometimes interfere with Webex: one-way audio, calls that connect with no voice, calls that drop after a few seconds. Test Webex from a device off the office network, a cell on its own data for instance. Fine off-network and bad on-network means the filter, and your IT allows Webex through. A filter that is ours, on a WebSafety account, is our job; tell us.

The desktop app keeps disconnecting

A Webex desktop app that shows its phone services disconnecting, or signs the person out and back in, is usually a second computer, not the network: the phone service side of Webex signs into one computer at a time, and a login open on another machine or a remote desktop takes the line back and forth. Sign out of the copy not in use. See Webex problems and what fixes them.

The mobile app

Calls that drop or go silent on the Webex mobile app are the phone and its connection at that moment: the location, the cellular signal, public Wi-Fi, or a phone that put the app to sleep. When the same person's desktop app holds calls fine that day, that is the answer, and a ping test on the office network says nothing about it. For someone who takes calls on the go all day, the reliable setup is Office Anywhere: the cell rings over the cellular voice network instead of the app.

Getting help

Run the test, note who is affected and on which device, and call 718.395.1550 or send it in. We can read which device was on each call and how long it was connected, so we can usually name the layer in a few minutes.