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I've been bothered lately with an excessive number of freezes and dropouts when trying to conduct meetings on Zoom. As many as 10 freezes with 5 dropouts in 15 minutes.
I installed a tool to monitor my connection from my PC. In 4 hours, it gathered the following stats.
Disconnects, today: 23
Availability, today: 98.78%
Downtime, today: 0:02:58
Disconnects, total: 23
Availability, total: 98.78%
Downtime, total: 0:02:58
Latency:
It also shows time plots of Online status and latency. The plot below shows the latency seen by my PC when downloading on my phone. Both share the modem and connection. Watching that plot, I have seen the latency go as high as 8000ms (8s) for periods as long as 30s. The dropouts, mostly seem to be preceded by long latency.
When streaming video, for example Netflix, the buffering seems to mask all such problems and no pauses or dropouts are noticed. But a Zoom meeting must be real time, not buffered.
My modem is Netgear, and it claims to be certified with up to 200 Mbps. My ISP is Xfinity/Comcast and I pay for 75 Mbps. They also offer 200, 400, 800, 1000, and 1200 Mbps speeds.
Here are my questions.
To reduce my problems should I:
I installed a tool to monitor my connection from my PC. In 4 hours, it gathered the following stats.
General stats
Online for 0:13:28Disconnects, today: 23
Availability, today: 98.78%
Downtime, today: 0:02:58
Disconnects, total: 23
Availability, total: 98.78%
Downtime, total: 0:02:58
Latency:
It also shows time plots of Online status and latency. The plot below shows the latency seen by my PC when downloading on my phone. Both share the modem and connection. Watching that plot, I have seen the latency go as high as 8000ms (8s) for periods as long as 30s. The dropouts, mostly seem to be preceded by long latency.
When streaming video, for example Netflix, the buffering seems to mask all such problems and no pauses or dropouts are noticed. But a Zoom meeting must be real time, not buffered.
My modem is Netgear, and it claims to be certified with up to 200 Mbps. My ISP is Xfinity/Comcast and I pay for 75 Mbps. They also offer 200, 400, 800, 1000, and 1200 Mbps speeds.
Here are my questions.
- Does the ISP reprogram my modem to set the speed, or is the speed controlled outside my house?
- When the speed limit is reached, how is it enforced? Increase latency? On/Off toggling like PWM? Something other method?
- I see discussions about "throttling" on the net, and it sounds different than setting the speed. They make it sound like throttling kicks in when a threshold of GB is exceeded. Many of the sources also say that using a VPN allows you to bypass throttling. But I expec that VPN does not allow you to get 1200 Mbps performance when paying only for 75 Mbps. What is the difference between speed control and throttling?
To reduce my problems should I:
- Forget WIFI for my PC and run an Ethernet cable from PC to modem?
- Get a better modem?
- Rent the modem from the ISP?
- Pay more money to the ISP?
- Use a VPN?
Use a different ISP?(not an option at my location.)