Forum Discussion
Hosting skype meetings on small DSL lines
Hi Jesper,
one important concept to understand when it comes to meetings is, how the call flows look like:
- Meetings are alwazs hosted on O365 (for Skype for Business Online) respectively on your Conferencing Server (if you have SKype for Business Server on premises)
- Each participant has a basically a direct media connection to the service/server
- On the service/server all media is mixed and send out to all participants
- This means that no matter how many users you have or if these users are internal or external, since all communication is just between the individual user and service/server
- Only when it comes to video, the number of attendees will affect the bandwidth: Skype for Business is able to display up to five video streams plus a panorama video, so you would require more bandwidth for video in a meeting with 5 users, than in a meeting with 3 videos (well, actually it is more complicated as it also depends on the size of the video window)
If you need more information on network planning, I recommend to look at the Skype Operationsframework network readiness section: https://www.skypeoperationsframework.com/Offers/?pageState=NetworkReadiness
hth,
thomas
MicrosoftMy home circuit is roughly this configuration - I think throughput I get down to the workstation is less than what the wireline speed of my upload is but this is definitely in the same ballpark. I both host and attend meetings in my home office and don't have the same experience. While there are definitely cases where I can top out on my bandwidth and the experience starts to degrade (splitting out incoming video on a separate monitor & going fullscreen, etc.) I haven't found basic functionality to be compromised.
Except....when I connect to the wrong AP. I have two radios with different SSIDs and one afternoon was having horrible SFB problems. Took me way to long to discover that I was actually hooked up to the radio at the far end of the house, not the one a floor above me.
The reason I bring this up is that yes while the raw bitspeed of the circuit is a factor, there are many more. The inside wire, any RF that's going on, the workstation being used and the devices connected to it all can be a part of a poor media experience.
WIth every call and conference join the client reports back quality information that can be used to debug this further. Have you looked into the Call Quality Dashboard at all? If you're online, details are here: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Turning-on-and-using-Call-Quality-Dashboard-in-Skype-for-Business-Online-553fa13c-92d2-4d5c-a3d5-41a073cb047c?ui=en-US&rs=en-US&ad=US