Why are my video conferences stuttering?

Bring stability and professionalism to your meetings

Covid-19 changed forever the way businesses operate. If there’s one thing every business person knows now, it’s that video conferences, online meetings and digital standups are here to stay for the near future. Still, many are experiencing hangups, call-drops and that evergreen statement, “can you hear me now?”. We’re here to tell you - it doesn’t have to be this way forever.

How video conferences work

In order to know why your video conferences are turning into an experience of delayed frustration, you first have to understand how video conferencing works on a technical level. Don’t worry - we’re not going to start throwing too many acronyms your way. In fact, it’s quite simple once you understand the basics.

In its simplest form, a video conference requires connectivity between two computers with speakers and a webcam. However, today, video conferencing also allows communication through mobile devices like laptops, tablets and smartphones, or any digital screen with accompanying cameras and microphones.

No matter which mediums you select, the video input from the cameras and auto input from the microphones are instantaneously converted from analogue to digital by the video conferencing software you use. It is then compressed and “packetized” to help it move across the internet.

Once the data arrives on the other side, it is decompressed back to its original size and converted back to analogue - as in something we can see, hear and understand. Today’s video conferencing software is so advanced that this process hardly has an impact on quality at all - so why do you keep lagging?

The answer is the connection.

The Connection Challenge

Quality video conferences need quality network connectivity. For our intents and purposes, this means dealing with three primary elements.

Network Latency

Network latency refers to the time data travels from one location to reach another. The less time it takes to travel, the more responsive and less laggy the video conference experience. Typically, if the delay between a person speaking and the other person hearing the audio is too large (over 200ms), the ability to hold a flute conversation diminishes.

Jitter

Jitter is the variation in the time between data packets arriving. This is usually caused by network congestion, route changes or unstable connections. The longer data packets take to transmit, the more jitter affects the quality of a call.

Packet Loss

Many large and small packets that are transmitted over the course of a video call. If some of these packets fail to reach their intended destination, this is called packet loss. For users, packet loss manifests itself in the form of network disruption, slow service and even total loss of network connectivity. In terms of video calls, this leads to stuttering or lost video and audio.

How to improve your video conference quality

With so much at work, conducting video conferences can be a little overwhelming for businesses and people working from home to understand and cope with. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot you can do to guarantee a strong, stable connection when you’re dealing with the internet as it is. Sometimes, you will encounter a slow connection or have no connectivity at all for reasons that are beyond your influence.

However, that is not to say that there is nothing you can do to improve your video conference quality. We understand that businesses need to guarantee conference quality to avoid embarrassing and disastrous consequences when dealing with their clients and peers.
This is where Next-Generation connectivity comes in.

We have entire articles written about what Next-Generation Internet is and what it means for businesses. However, Next-Generation Internet as offered by Anapaya has a unique advantage that enhances video conference quality and virtually eliminates the possibility of lag in a video call.

Anapaya’s solutions offer multipathing functionality that, when automatically optimized for performance, selects the most stable pathing for your video conferencing. What this means is that your packets are transmitted through paths with sufficient bandwidth, lowest possible latency, jitter, and packet loss, leading to an always smooth video conferencing experience.

How Next-Generation Internet helps

• Extremely fast fail-switchover
• Multipathing for optimal performance and stability
• Complete security from external interference
• Ensures a lag-free, low-latency video conference experience

Find out more about Anapaya

Fortunately, the Next-Generation Internet is available for businesses right now. From as early as 2009, the concept has been explored, experimented with and since implemented for different users and industries.

Anapaya Systems is a Swiss company whose goal is to develop and support industrial-grade components and to build an international ecosystem providing Next-Generation services. They have supported companies around the world that require reliable and highly secure connections for their daily business operations.

Through Anapaya CONNECT, Anapaya can guarantee video conference quality for companies who rely on remote workers, virtual meetings and online conferences.

Contact Anapaya today to find out more about Next-Generation Internet services and gain access to a better way to connect, today.