Unstable connection on Zoom

[#1]

I upgraded from FTTC to FTTP Full Fibre.  I get the good speeds I was promised but i've noticed that I now get occasional freezes on Zoom when it says "your internet connection is unstable".  This happens maybe once or twice an hour and last for between 3 to 10 seconds.

So what could be going on?

I pretty much only use Zoom on a wired device.  I was using the Plusnet Hub Two but (partly because of the Zoom drops) I have moved to my own OpenWRT router (GL.iNET Flint 2 GL-MT6000).  This is pretty much overkill for my fairly modest demands.

When Zoom blips there is usually little or no other usage on the network (checked using network stats).  But, just in case, I eliminated any buffer bloat.  So I now run SQM (piece_of_cake) and get a Bufferbloat of A+ on the wired device I use for Zoom:  https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat?test-id=0d14c02b-32a4-4741-8643-9fde16b7111a

In the end I guess this might be something to do with Zoom servers or the internet outside of Plusnet and so I just have to put up with it.  The only reason I doubt that is that the problem is definitely worse since I moved to Full Fibre.

Any thoughts or suggestions?  Is there an easy way I could track latency over time and see if there is anything going on outside of my Zoom calls?

[#2]

To track latency over time you can use the ThinkBroadband quality monitor - see https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality

That gives a pretty good picture of your connection's latency over time - however, not all routers respond to pings and ideally you need one that does. If you have a router that doesn't then you can route ICMP requests to another device on your network that can reply instead.

[#3]

Thanks - that's really helpful - I've set one up.

I'm now wondering if the problem is actually not Plusnet but the Mac on which I run Zoom.  I noticed that although it is wired it also has wireless switched on and connected.  I wonder if that could be causing problems.

If I can see the BQM during a Zoom blip - and maybe a Mac local ping test at the same time - that could narrow the problem to Zoom, the Mac, or Plusnet.

[#4]

What's the order of network connections in settings?
If you're using ethernet that should be first e.g.

macOS will honour that and only use WiFi for things like Find My

[#5]

Yeah - thanks - the ethernet is definitely first and that's definitely the connection that's being used most or all of the time.  I just wondered if maybe the OS was just occasionally sending some packets down the other one just to check it's quality - i suppose that can't be how it works.   Or maybe some other weird intermittent interruption triggering some use of the wifi - presumably if the ethernet dropped then it would switch to wifi?   There's also a corporate VPN (but I think it's split so I don't think it should be affecting the Zoom traffic) and a Trend Micro Content Filter VPN.  So there's all sorts of complexity in the setup, I guess.

I'm clutching at straws a bit.

It's just that every measurement I make of my connectivity is really good but I am still seeing Zoom telling me there are problems every now and then.  

[#6]

I don't have a final resolution and the intermittent instability is still present.  But it seems most people in the company are also experiencing similar issues even on the corporate LAN.

So the finger of suspicion has moved to Zoom rather than the client connectivity and other people are investigating further (to the limited extent that they can).

I think my connection is fine and I will just grit my teeth next time my Zoom freezes.

[#7 · Accepted solution]

IN case it helps anyone we have all upgraded our Zoom from 6.1.0 to 6.1.5 and that seems to have more or less fixed the problem and so it seems like it was the program not the broadband.  Plusnet FTW 🙂