[SOLVED] Troubleshooting zoom connection instability

[cormanaz]

Greetings. For the entire pandemic, my Zoom performance at home has been excellent. Zero problems. Over the past two weeks or so, I have been having problems where the client says "your connection is unstable", the screen freezes, and the connection occasionally drops altogether. This morning I had a 30 minute session where all of the above happened and the connection dropped and reconnected three times.

I just got off the phone with my ISP (Cox) who checked out my modem. My signal levels are good. There are no dropped packets (trying the test 2x). There are no outages in my area. So it looks like the problem is not there.

This leads me to believe the problem could be with my router. It's an ASUS RT-AC68W that is several years old. The machine I just used that had many dropped connections is hardwired to it. It has the latest non-beta firmware (there is a beta available but it requires manual installation and it looks like all it affects is security issues). I have already disabled SIP passthrough, a step recommended by others trying to fix Zoom stability issues.

Is there any additional troubleshooting I can do to determine if the router is the source of the problems?

 

[kanewolf]

Greetings. For the entire pandemic, my Zoom performance at home has been excellent. Zero problems. Over the past two weeks or so, I have been having problems where the client says "your connection is unstable", the screen freezes, and the connection occasionally drops altogether. This morning I had a 30 minute session where all of the above happened and the connection dropped and reconnected three times.

I just got off the phone with my ISP (Cox) who checked out my modem. My signal levels are good. There are no dropped packets (trying the test 2x). There are no outages in my area. So it looks like the problem is not there.

This leads me to believe the problem could be with my router. It's an ASUS RT-AC68W that is several years old. The machine I just used that had many dropped connections is hardwired to it. It has the latest non-beta firmware (there is a beta available but it requires manual installation and it looks like all it affects is security issues). I have already disabled SIP passthrough, a step recommended by others trying to fix Zoom stability issues.

Is there any additional troubleshooting I can do to determine if the router is the source of the problems?

First thing, if the problem device is hard wired, is to put in a brand new ethernet cable. If there is in-wall cabling, then the wall plates are the next place. If there is in-wall cabling, remember there may be two patch cables. One at the router and one at the PC, which should be swapped.

 

[cormanaz]

First thing, if the problem device is hard wired, is to put in a brand new ethernet cable. If there is in-wall cabling, then the wall plates are the next place. If there is in-wall cabling, remember there may be two patch cables. One at the router and one at the PC, which should be swapped.

It's a single ethernet cable pulled from my office through the wall/attic to the router; no wall sockets are involved. It's not easy to replace it but I can try temporarily substituting a cable that just runs across the floor to eliminate the possibility. I will have to order one long enough. In the meantime are there other things I can try? I doubt that is the root problem because the same issues occur when I'm using Zoom on my laptop over wifi.

 

[kanewolf]

It's a single ethernet cable pulled from my office through the wall/attic to the router; no wall sockets are involved. It's not easy to replace it but I can try temporarily substituting a cable that just runs across the floor to eliminate the possibility. I will have to order one long enough. In the meantime are there other things I can try? I doubt that is the root problem because the same issues occur when I'm using Zoom on my laptop over wifi.

What ISP package do you have? You may have insufficient upload bandwidth. Although with Cox (cable modem) usually the minimum upload bandwidth is 10Mbit.

 

[cormanaz]

What ISP package do you have? You may have insufficient upload bandwidth. Although with Cox (cable modem) usually the minimum upload bandwidth is 10Mbit.

Yes, it's 10 mbps up. Also I've had the same package for quite a while and I've only started having problems in the last couple of weeks. I talked to Zoom support who said part of the problem is my CPU is overloaded, but it also notes all these network problems.

 

[cormanaz]

So I got a long enough cable and substituted it for the one going through the wall. I am still having the connectivity problems.

I have checked with my organization's Zoom support to rule out problems between me and Zoom. Cable company says my modem and its connection to them is working fine. So the problem must be somewhere between my machine and the modem. I suspect it's the router, but I wish there was some way to confirm this. I don't want to just go buyng expensive routers only to find that it doesn't fix the problem.

 

[kanewolf]

So I got a long enough cable and substituted it for the one going through the wall. I am still having the connectivity problems.

I have checked with my organization's Zoom support to rule out problems between me and Zoom. Cable company says my modem and its connection to them is working fine. So the problem must be somewhere between my machine and the modem. I suspect it's the router, but I wish there was some way to confirm this. I don't want to just go buyng expensive routers only to find that it doesn't fix the problem.

Zoom should work in Linux. I would boot a portable Linux to exclude a software problem.