Microsoft Teams Quality Issue

[QuantumPhys]

Hello all,

I've got an odd issue which I'm hoping someone can offer a steer on.

I have the EE 1.6 Gb Full Fibre Busiest Home package with a Smart Hub Plus.

All seemed to be working fine until my original Smart Hub Plus failed in Jan 2025. This was attributed to a bad firmware update, and a new hub was sent out. I connected this up and again everything appeared to be ok, until colleagues at work started complaining that my video during MS Teams calls was regularly freezing. On my end, I didn't see any issues - I could see and hear everyone else fine so it came as a surprise. Setting up a test meeting that just included me, I recorded myself and when playing back immediately found that the video and audio both freeze and stutter. This is readily reproducible, although sometimes the performance is extremely bad with the video completely frozen. Strangely, this only affects the MS Teams desktop app, with connections via the web browser still being good quality.

So far, everything else seems ok - stable and fast connection (getting around 1.6 Gbps routinely).

Here's what I've tried so far:

• Updated Teams and all drivers on laptop.
• Direct cable connection to router with WiFi turned off and all other devices disconnected. No difference.
• Laptop on WiFi on corporate network - absolutely fine, no surprise.
• Laptop on WiFi in various coffee shops and on friend's home broadband - all much slower connections than mine and Teams is absolutely fine. Often extremely good.
• Used phone as 4G hotspot - absolutely fine - extremely good video and audio.
• Replaced the Smart Hub Plus with an old Asus router I used with a previous ISP - connected to ONT. Connects via PPPoE fine with reasonable speed (around 750 Mbps although using 2.5G port as WAN port, so a little surprised it's not faster).  Connection appears very stable and no obvious issues shown by ThinkBroadband BQM. However, Teams behaves exactly the same as with the EE router - terrible video and audio.
• Configured Hotspot VPN on Asus router - set location to South England. Connection speed is around 100 Mbps. However, Teams now works absolutely fine. Very good audio and video. Turned off VPN - fast connection restored and Teams video and audio revert to being terrible.

This suggests to me it might be some network infrastructure issue, rather than a problem with the Smart Hub Plus or with the laptop / Teams. Could the route the traffic is following make a difference? If so, how would I go about pinpointing this? The Microsoft 365 connectivity tests don't flag up anything obvious.

After much testing to convince myself there was an issue with the connection I called EE and an engineer visited. He indicated there had been some problems with the Smart Hub Plus on fast connections, tried to run a series of tests but these didn't complete. Reason unclear. However, he was confident that the new Smart Hub Pro would resolve the issues although he wasn't allowed to issue one himself.

Engineer left, job appeared to be closed, then I got a message from OpenReach asking me to arrange a call so that equipment could be delivered. I did, got put through to EE, with the guide saying that I really should have had the Smart Hub Pro already and that he'd get one sent out, although the process for doing this was very difficult. That was almost a couple of weeks ago. Being concerned this wasn't being progressed I got back in touch - over multiple calls now, once I get past the agent telling me I've got a very fast connection and they can't see an issue or find open jobs, when they review previous notes there's a record somewhere to an order being placed, but no-one can find out what. It appears I'm now down as a new customer and something needs to be progressed by the "New IT" team, even though I've been with EE for over a year.

So, perhaps a Smart Hub Pro will be sent out, which will be good because it sounds like I'm entitled to one on my package.

However, I'm not convinced the hub itself is the issue, given that the Asus router performs similarly, except when a VPN is active.

Does anyone have any thoughts about what might be happening?

Thanks!

 

[mmccart3]

Hi Paul,

there are two workarounds:

1) Use the web version of Teams but this has some limits on functionality.

2) Install and use a VPN which will by pass your local exchange and give you full functionality with a very small overhead in speed.

Mark.

[Paul197725]

Thanks Mark, I had seen your suggestion. Not sure how adding a VPN will play ith my companies Security Layer and our own VPN but will ask around.

Does feel like EE should be acknowledging the issue and looking for a fix. I certainly won't be renewing with them once my contract comes to an end.  The fact they blame Microsoft speaks for itself, a collaboration tool that works fine for a pretty large proportion of the world, but not EE routers.

[Tryfan_Tamer]

Morning, all

Since I've demanded the move back to the original BT router I've had  ZERO issues at home.  In my opinion they should be releasing a fix for the router via firmware.  I firmly believe this is the router trying to prioritize packets and failing miserably.  I won't be renewing with EE either at the end of this contract, to push the blame back to Microsoft and not own this isn't acceptable.

Rob

[deezle]

Thing is, it's not only the EE router that has this problem - it never once used it but my Deco mesh has the same issue. 

[Tryfan_Tamer]

I use a DECO Mesh & disable the Wifi on the EE Router.  The Router was STILL the issue. 

[deezle]

Oh sure - I know some folks are having success reverting to the old school BT router. But people who don't use the EE router and never have also have this problem, so it's not as simple as a router issue - something more fundamental is at fault here.

[Tryfan_Tamer]

Might be different for different people Deezle?  I'm a ex-network engineer & for me the Audio Packet Loss issues I found pointed immediately to the router hardware.  I didn't have any 'In house' network congestion, I was directly wired to the router & my laptop works perfectly elsewhere. 

If the issue is 'downstream' for others then this could well be something inside EE network & the way they are handling 'tagged' packets & as you suggest something fundamentally wrong with they way they are handling priority packets. 

Either way, the buck should stop with EE & they should be investigating this as a priority especially as a large volume of people work from home now & rely heavily on Teams/Zoom/Webex (all of these failed for me). 

[Paul197725]

I have requested an old router a few times through the engineers and the complaints route and they won't give me one. Not EE ots Microsofts fault is the default answer.

[HomeNetworkGuy]

I'm a network engineer too. I have the same problem with Webex (Cisco's equivelent of MS Teams). I found that if I use the browser client it works fine, but the real Webex application has issues. No issues on the app if I use my Vodadfone 4G phone as a hotspot. No download or upload issues for anything else.

I would guess the EE router in the exchange has congestion and insufficient bandwidth allocated to the queues where they are sending DSCP 46 for audio and DSCP 34 for video (defaults in the Webex app).  I see a lot of packet loss for both DSCP values.  The browser client for Webex leaves the DSCP at 0 (default class).

I'm guessing this is set in the local exchange router?  As the issue doesn't sound to be network wide. I guess it could also be at the peering routers, with some regions using one peering point but other regions using a different peering point..

[jonathan_c]

If you have Intel Connectivity Performance Suite installed on your device can you confirm:

Advanced Connection Manager -> turn off Advanced Connection Manager

If that helps? We're 2 for 2 at this point so looks promising.