I've been working from home in a call center role, and I'm facing frustrating issues with dead air when I answer calls. After reviewing the recordings, I can hear customers asking if I'm there, but it sounds like I'm not connected on my end. My service provider claims there are connectivity issues on my side. I suspect it's related to significant packet loss, but I'm not a tech expert and the issue is sporadic. How can I tackle this packet loss? Are there other potential factors I should consider?
I'm using the speed test from Cloudflare, and my setup includes:
- Orbi RB760 (up to date)
- ISP: Xfinity (1G service)
- WPA3 security
- Automatic DNS from my ISP
- Default MAC
- 2.4GHz channel 03
- 5GHz channel 48
- Open NAT filtering
- Port forwarding enabled
Here are some recent packet loss percentages I recorded:
- 04/15 9am: 37.9%
- 04/15 9:17am: 36.2% (359mbps down, 39.8mbps up, 30.1ms latency, 18.3ms jitter)
- 04/15 9:32am: 41.6% (476mbps down, 30.3mbps up, 30.4ms latency, 12.8ms jitter)
- 04/15 10:05am: 39.5% (400mbps down, 41.2mbps up, 36.4ms latency, 19.8ms jitter)
3 Answers
It sounds like you’re already on the right track with measuring your packet loss. I’d recommend running a test on both wired and wireless connections to see if there's a notable difference in performance. Also, make sure that your router’s firmware is updated. For further tests, you can use commands like ‘tracert’ to specific IPs—like you mentioned with 8.8.8.8—to check where the issues might be occurring in your connection chain.
I hear you; dealing with this kind of issue can be so annoying! It’s good that you’re already testing your connections. Just confirm that your LAN drivers are up to date and make sure no other devices are hogging bandwidth. If the packet loss happens through both wired and wireless connections, you might need to check with your ISP if they can run diagnostics on their end.
First off, figuring out where the packet loss is happening is crucial. If you're on WiFi, I suggest you test your connection using a wired setup—it’s the easiest way to determine if the WiFi is at fault. If the packet loss persists over both WiFi and Wired, I’d recommend using some CMD commands like ‘tracert’ or ‘pathping’ on Windows. These can help you trace the network hops and see where the latency is occurring, which is essential for narrowing down the issue.
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