Testing the strength of a Zoom connection

During a Zoom session, you can get stats on the strength of your connection to help anticipate if the video and audio will be stable throughout the call.

In a Zoom call, click on the menu for the video icon and select 'Video Settings'

On the left side menu, you'll be able to click on 'Statistics'. It will give you metrics for the audio, video, and screen sharing connection.

Latency (or the data speed from source to recipient) of more than 100 milliseconds); packet loss (data that doesn't reach its destination, which is what can cause screen freeze, make the video pixelate or seem jumpy) of more than 2%; or jitter (how the latency goes up and down over time) of more than 30 milliseconds, will indicate that you’re going to have a problem with the connection. 

There’s also an option in Zoom to do an advanced test of a specific domain.   During a Zoom session if you press SHIFT + ALT CTRL + D, Zoom's Network diagnostics tool will come up. It has an array of tests that you can run.

On the 'Advanced Test' tab, you can run a test targeted at a specific domain for a meeting.

An MTR test is a mytraceroute test, which combines a ping and traceroute test. Ping simply measures how long it takes to send and receive data from another server. Traceroute tracks each host the data goes through from the source to the destination.

In reviewing the results for a MTR, keep in mind how RTT compares to latency. Latency is the speed going one way, and RTT is round trip time - how long it takes the data to go there and back again.