How to test your network performance before join Skype for Business meeting call?

Most of the time, Skype for Business Audio/ Video call quality issues are related to Network performance. If your network is congested, packet loss high and latency is high then no matter, how your configured you Skype for Business on-premise and Skype for Business Online environment users experience will be degraded.

As an Admin when you receive audio / Video quality issues from end user when you ask user for their network, they always say their network is excellent and issue is from the backend.

It is very difficult to prove to user that their network is causing audio/ video quality issues. Microsoft Introduces Lync 2013 Pre-Diagnostic Tool (PCD) long ago, which is very helpful for Skype for Business and some extent Microsoft Teams as well. Below is the Pre-Call Diagnostic Tool (PCD), which is very useful to know how users experience going to be the call or meeting which they are going to join.

Whoever complain about quality issues, you can ask them to run this tool before call and compare result with mentioned score result details. This tool is useful in Lync 2013 / Skype for Business 2015 / 2016 and Microsoft Teams as well.

Steps to install test Pre-Call Diagnostic:

1. You download: Pre Diagnostic Tool (PCD)  (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=40733)
2. Simply click on run and install with next -next (no extra steps required).
3. After installation, simply search “Lync 2013 PreCall Diagnostic 1.1 Desktop” and Open it.
4. Open it open click on “Start Test” and type your email address and click OK. Like below mentioned in image. E.g. bilag@bloguc.com

Read below to understand the result:

• Network MOS: This is Mean Opinion Score, Score under 3 considered as poor experience and Score above 3 consider as a Good.
• Packet loss: Packet loss is typically caused by network congestion and this impact your audio and video badly. Score between 0 t 0.2 considered as good and above 0.04 considered to be poor.
• Interarrival Jitter (ms): Jitter is essentially the variability in packet delay.  It means that the packets will not be received in the same order or maybe dropped entirely on the way. Jitter that exceeds 4 ms will cause severe deterioration in call quality. Above 6 considered as bad. Refer below image.

Here is the result:

Thank you.