Question
I followed the instructions in this article and I performed the Twilio network test. However, I am not sure how to read the results. How do I use the Twilio network test to troubleshoot Zendesk Talk agent calls?
Answer
Most Talk or Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) issues come from the speed of a network connection, as well as the stability and quality of the network connection. A fast connection isn't enough for real-time voice communication. Dropped packets or an unstable connection cause issues too.
Perform the Twilio network test to understand if your connection is working. The test ensures you follow requirements, such as a proper network, your ports are open, your browser supports calling, and your microphone and speakers function.
The Twilio network test are divided into two columns:
Twilio WebRTC Diagnostics
For all the above tests, you need to see the green Pass message. A red Fail message may indicate network issues particularly if you get errors with UDP, TLS, or TCP.
- If your agent works from an office environment, those errors can happen because something is blocked. Ensure your network team followed the Talk network requirements and opened the ports and whitelisted IP addresses and domains.
- If this is a home network for the agent, ensure your agents don't have a special setup or home router blocking ports. Additional investigation of their network may be required.
Log Output
The right column of the Twilio network test contains the Log Output.
The above screenshot refers to the elements below:
- Ensure that the logs below appear in green. Red indicates a problem.
- A) Successfully established a UDP connection to Twilio in ___ ms
- B) Successfully established a TCP connection to Twilio in ___ ms
- C) Successfully established a TLS connection to Twilio in ___ ms
-
D) Ensure that even though you may successfully pass the bandwidth test, the results are much higher than the example above. In there, the results represent the lowest threshold in which Talk works reliably.
Note: The numbers in the test are the lowest threshold for Talk.
- E) Check the Twilio Client connected to audit and ensure that you are connected to the right endpoint. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) may connect you to the wrong endpoint, for example, if you're in Germany, but the log shows that you are connected to a US endpoint. Connecting to the wrong endpoint causes latency. Twilio should decide the best route to take, but a VPN may hide the real location or region of an agent. Region can be one of the following:
au1
,br1
,de1
,ie1
,jp1
,sg1
,us1
. For the latest information about regions from Twilio, see the Twilio article: Legacy Regions. - F) RTT (Round Trip Time): Ideally, the RTT should be at 150ms or less. The higher the RTT value, the poorer quality the call is likely to get.
- G) Jitter: The Jitter audit should not be more than 20ms. A high Jitter can cause delays.
- H) Packet Loss: Packet loss indicates unstable connection, and even 1% packet loss can cause issues.
3 comments
Florian
Does the description for G - Jitter really mean the result should not be more than 20ms?
My result on Twilio Network Test is way far away:
Also the result in the articles screenshot is way more than 20ms.
What needs to be done to reduce the Jitter value?
1
Jean-Francois Weston
Hi Florian, to improve the situation, when you have a high Jitter, you could, if you are connected in Wi-Fi change to an Ethernet cable connection as well as verify that the setting of your network are done according to this article https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/115005468288-Talk-network-requirements. Those two steps would be the first to take to improve the situation. Regards
Jeff | Zendesk Advocate | EMEA
support@zendesk.com
0
David
Hey all. Just want to clarify the screenshot above is not meant to be used as an exact benchmark. I would say this is an ideal setup above. If you run this test where it "passes" this is not necessarily indicative of what one would call a quality connection. For example at a minimum I would say for the above, you would want your "lowest" amounts for the above "Simultaneous connections" should be at least 10 or more. Packet loss should be 0, jitter should be low, etc. If your getting packet loss, jitter and your lowest amount of simultaneous connections is 2, you may pass this test barely but your calls are likely to have a lot of problems.
the graphic is just an illustration of what the test looks like and what to be aware of during the test. As Jeff mentions above getting better results on your network connection has a wide variety of factors. The best place to start is with our Talk troubleshooting guide below which has many suggestions like changing to a hard wired connection like Jeff mentioned or running network tests and working with your network admin.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203661086-How-can-I-troubleshoot-Talk-issues-
It's my opinion the majority of problems we see are related to VPN or VDI implementations. Make sure you follow the advice in the networking requirements regarding VPN's. I.E. make sure to exclude traffic for Twilio and Zendesk ips and domains:
In scenarios where using a proxy, MPLS, or VPN is unavoidable, it's crucial to exclude traffic intended for Zendesk and Twilio domains, including your FQDN subdomain.zendesk.com, and the specified IP addresses outlined in the accompanying documentation. This exclusion is critical to ensure the proper functionality of Talk within these network configurations.
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