A stable network connection between the Aircall application and the media servers is key in order to have good call quality. Instability can easily impact quality and one rather common source of instability is the local network, between the device running the Aircall application and the machine giving access to the internet (very often some router).
There is a quick and easy way to confirm if the local network is generally unstable: the ping command. We have create separate articles for Windows and Mac as the syntax is slightly different for both. Follow the steps below if you are using Aircall under Windows.
The procedure
1.-Open the terminal to run the commands: Click the Start button and type “command prompt”:
The terminal window should open up.
2.- Type the following command:
ipconfig
You should see an output similar to this:
Write down the ip address you get in the “Default Gateway” field (framed in red above). We will call that value A.B.C.D. in the next steps.
3.- Use the ip address from step 2 (A.B.C.D, whatever value you get) in the following command:
ping -n 180 A.B.C.D > pingRouterTest.txt
And wait some 3 minutes (the 180 seconds you see in the command above). A file called pingRouterTest.txt will be created in the folder shown in the terminal prompt.
Understanding the results
The results of the test will be in pingRouterTest.txt file. Open it and check a few things to see if there is an issue with the local network that needs fixing:
- Check the "time" values in each line (at the end of line) and ensure they have similar values (fluctuations of a few dozen milliseconds are fine). This means the packets received from the router as an answer to our packets sent with the ping command take roughly the same amount of time to arrive: the transmission is then uniform, which is good for call quality. If you see big changes, then the transmission is irregular and that will introduce jitter (usually perceived as distortion in the audio).
- Check the times are not too long. When pinging the router from within the local network, the time values should be a few milliseconds only. If you see larger values, there is delay in the transmission, which will cause delay (latency) in the call audio.
- Check the packet loss count at the bottom of the file (second line from the bottom, typically) and ensure that it is zero. If there is a non-zero value there it means that some of the packets are getting lost in transit and for the call audio that means part of the voice is lost, the audio will sound choppy.
If packet loss is zero and the time values are low and roughly the same value, you can rule out transmission problems in the local network as the source of your bad quality
Suggestions
If the local network is wireless (usually wifi), run the tests again over ethernet (you will need an ethernet cable and possibly an adapter, both cheap and easy to come by) and compare the results. If test results are good over ethernet but not over wifi, the wifi stability or signal strength needs improving and we can give some suggestions on how to do that. If the results are also bad over ethernet, usually the problem will lie in the router itself: try rebooting it out of business hours as a first step.