Executive preview
Reality: Agents do not just place voice calls. They run apps, screen share, record, and use agent-assist. Most of that rides on WebRTC.
Gap: Traditional assessments and short tests skim the surface. They miss the actual route through SD-WAN, policy hubs, and CCaaS, and they do not hold load long enough to expose real failure modes.
Fix: Use the testRTC Network Saturation tool to generate real WebRTC load from each site, on the production path, for long enough to see the truth. Certify sites against explicit bandwidth and quality targets, then keep an eye on drift with light observability.
The stack in practice: We pair Network Saturation with CVA on-prem and Cruncher for voice and CTI flows, plus watchRTC for telemetry, so you get both proof under load and evidence you can trust.
This is a repeatable approach to contact center network testing and WebRTC network testing that turns BPO onboarding into measurable busy hour network validation.
Introduction
Contact centers live and die at their busiest hours. Agents need stable voice, crisp screen share, and responsive desktops at the same time. Today, that stack is WebRTC-heavy. Yet most programs still validate networks like it is 2005: a quick speed test, a couple of audio calls, and a “network assessment” built from diagrams and interviews. Then Monday hits. Screens freeze. Audio turns robotic. Dashboards stay green.
The 2005 network assessment playbook vs WebRTC contact-center reality
What it is: A structured consulting project that inventories devices, reviews policy, collects SNMP/NetFlow, and draws topology diagrams.
What it does well: Documents the network, produces clear diagrams, and records current state.
What it usually misses:
- Does not generate real WebRTC media on the production route
- Uses short synthetic checks that average out micro-bursts and never hold concurrency
- Lacks WebRTC-level observability, so you do not learn where or when media fails
So what: the business impact
When the path is unproven, busy hours turn into a revenue event. CX and QA scores dip, incentives and reimbursements get hit, Average Handle Time (AHT) climbs, and agent burnout rises. We have seen large insurers watch ratings and payouts move when contact center quality slipped at peak. The cure is simple and strict: certify the real route at concurrency, then keep quick checks in place so Monday at 10 a.m. is boring.
Common failure patterns in BPO network readiness:
- Speed tests show big numbers, then packet loss spikes a few minutes into real work.
- Voice is clean in the lab, then goes choppy when 200 agents work together with recordings and screen share.
- One site “passes” while a near twin fails because the exit path is different.
- A failover changes the route and quality suffers.
Why legacy tests and “network assessments” miss it
Wrong path: Most speed tests ride a clean public route, prefer TCP, last seconds, and average away micro-bursts. They never follow the same SD-WAN, secure service edge, or private peering path your agents actually use, which is why SD-WAN performance testing needs to be validated on the production path, not a clean internet path.
Example target path: BPO site → private WAN → AWS Direct Connect (US-East-1) → CCaaS.
Wrong traffic: Audio-only simulators ignore the extra 1–2 Mbps per active agent from screen share, video tiles, and recording. That is the contention that breaks CX. This is the real contact center bandwidth testing gap.
Wrong duration: Five minutes is not a busy hour. Short checks will not trigger queue build-up, NAT quotas, thermal throttling, or idle timeouts.
Wrong visibility: “Test passed” tells you nothing about where degradation begins, how it spreads by site, or whether media was forced onto relays.
Wrong instrument: General traffic generators push TCP or generic UDP floods. WebRTC is different: timed packets, congestion control, keyframe bursts, screen-share spikes, and strict sensitivity to jitter. Floods do not validate ICE, TURN reachability, region pinning, or the exact route an agent will take.
Net of it: What matters is CCaaS network validation under real media behavior, on the real route, for the duration that matters.
Where the testRTC network saturation tool changes the game
Real media. Real routes. Real time: Not a ping. Not a lab toy. We generate timed WebRTC video and screen-share from each BPO site on the same SD-WAN, SSE, VPN, and cloud path your agents use to reach your CCaaS.
Hold a true busy hour: Run for long enough to see what actually breaks. Queue build-ups, region drift, NAT quotas, idle timeouts, device heat. Short tests miss these. We don’t.
Instrument the timeline: Track bitrate, RTT, jitter, packet loss, and relayed percent as a timeline, not a snapshot. Find the exact minute quality bends, and why. Typical pattern we surface: everything is fine to ~80 agents, then loss climbs 10–15 minutes in.
Certify sites with confidence: Set explicit pass or hold targets per site. Publish an executive-ready readiness report that operations, networking, and leadership can all read and trust.
Problem snapshot: packet loss in a “clean” network
Let’s look at a brief example of how packet loss can negatively impact your ability to deliver quality customer interactions.
Scenario: 2-hour test using probeRTC Load Generator
Load: 400 Mbps of continuous WebRTC video
Condition: Off-peak hours, no competing traffic
Despite the idle network, we can still observe intermittent spikes of heavy packet loss, pointing to fundamental stability issues in the WAN/MPLS connection. That’s the value of running realistic, long-duration WebRTC test.
The following graphics show how one-time bandwidth tests or generic throughput tools would miss such instability.
What actually failed in production: where legacy tools and third-party assessments fall short
A large U.S. healthcare program had “green” dashboards and failing calls. Its validation stack exercised audio only, with short snapshots and bandwidth measured on generic paths. The real agent load was voice plus screen recording over the same backhaul, and the failure modes appeared after ramp-up, not at start. Our shift was simple: emulate the full agent footprint, on the actual route, long enough to expose stability, jitter, loss, and RTT behavior under pressure.
The issue?
Legacy voice testing tools only simulate audio, leaving majority of real-world agent traffic bandwidth untested (including screen share, video, or desktop recording apps). The third-party assessment the healthcare provider commissioned relied heavily on usage / architecture theoretical reviews, interviews, and short protocol-level tests but not on actual traffic behavior.
After we ran the full Cyara program on their real routes, 90% of existing sites were flagged as under-provisioned or unstable for their target load. This was despite prior voice-only tooling and a third-party network assessment.
How Cyara solved it: real traffic, real insights
To overcome these obstacles, the healthcare provider turned to Cyara’s integrated testing stack:
- Cyara testRTC Network Saturator for realistic, high-bandwidth video/screen simulation
- Cyara Cruncher + Cyara Virtual Assistant (CVA) on-prem for voice load and computer telephony integration (CTI) validation under stress
- watchRTC for real-time quality of service (QoS) telemetry and observability
This shift from passive assessments to active emulation unlocked the next level of visibility. Specifically, it enabled:
- Saturation and soak testing: Stress-testing business process outsourcing (BPO) circuits at full capacity for extended periods, revealing instability that short tests miss.
- True agent load simulation: Emulating 1 Mbps per agent of WebRTC traffic, which closely matches actual usage across voice, screen share, and desktop tools.
- Data-backed site readiness certification: Clear pass/fail outcomes tied to SLA metrics like available bandwidth, round-trip time, packet loss, and jitter ensuring sites are production-ready, not just theoretically compliant.
The Cyara testing stack: realistic load meets real-time visibility
testRTC Network Saturation tool: emulate real load at scale
The load generator is designed to fill in the gaps traditional tools leave behind by simulating actual WebRTC traffic at the volume, duration, and behavior patterns seen in real-world contact centers.
Key capabilities:
- High-bandwidth WebRTC emulation: Launch hundreds of concurrent video sessions at configurable bitrates.
- Remote control and post-test visibility: Easily start and stop probes across distributed locations and review detailed history logs for each test window.
- Stress test, soak test, and validate the entire agent bandwidth requirements and not just a theoretical number on a dashboard.
Cyara Virtual Agent (CVA): on-prem voice and CTI testing, minus the guesswork
Think of CVA as your test-ready agent capable of running real call flows and interactions without the need for human intervention. With CVA on-prem, you can:
- Simulate real agent workflows: Test how calls are routed, data is delivered, and CTI interfaces respond, just like a live agent would.
- Validate skill routing and call metadata: Ensure your agents receive the right calls, with the right data, every time.
- Capture step-by-step workflow details: Receive full insight into each simulated interaction for deeper troubleshooting.
- No more weekends with real agents standing by: CVA runs these tests any time, from any site, saving cost and increasing accuracy.
watchRTC: observability that changes the game, not just pass/fail
watchRTC, Cyara’s media-layer observability engine turns load tests into diagnostics tools. Together with probeRTC and CVA, you can rest assured that every test is run with full telemetry because of:
- Graphed metrics, including bitrate, jitter, round-trip time (RTT), packet loss and other WebRTC parameters
- Per-stream analysis, allowing you to drill down to call level
With watchRTC, you gain the ability to:
- Detect and diagnose latent issues that surface only during peak periods.
- Correlate quality degradation with specific network segments or time windows.
- Proactively tune and certify sites before problems affect customers.
While competitor tools stop at “traffic sent” or “test passed,” watchRTC shows how your network is behaving at all times.
Testing modes: choose what you need
There are many different testing modes you can leverage, but not every testing mode is equal. Depending on your organization’s individual needs, you should choose the best testing mode for your use cases, such as:
A. Network saturation testing
Goal: Validate usable, stable bandwidth under full load.
- Simulates full peak load conditions, e.g., 1200 Mbps sustained for four hours on a site supporting 600 agents
- Ideal for SLA-based certification of new or upgraded sites
- Traffic follows the real production path, such as private WAN → AWS → CCaaS provider
- Helps identify saturation points, circuit constraints, and underlying network instabilities well before they impact live operations
This test mode enables long-duration stress and soak testing, offering unmatched visibility into how the network performs when pushed to peak levels.
B. Hybrid load testing (voice and video)
Goal: Measure customer experience (CX) and agent experience (AX) under realistic, layered traffic conditions.
- Receive 100% voice call simulation with CVA and Cruncher.
- probeRTC Load Generator adds high-bandwidth video and screen-sharing traffic to saturate the site up to full production load.
- Tests how voice quality, responsiveness, and agent workflows behave under bandwidth contention and congestion.
This mode is particularly effective in identifying how interactive applications and voice performance are impacted when multiple concurrent services are in play, revealing network bottlenecks that isolated voice or video testing might miss.
C. Auto-scaling and failover verification
Goal: Validate infrastructure resiliency and dynamic scalability under load.
- Combines network saturation and hybrid load modes to simulate real production-scale demand spikes.
- Verifies whether cloud resources (e.g., CCaaS, SD-WAN) can auto-scale gracefully without service degradation.
- Confirms failover logic triggers correctly and backup paths maintain acceptable media quality (voice and video).
This mode is critical for testing disaster recovery posture, validating capacity buffer thresholds, and ensuring business continuity under edge-case load and failure scenarios.
Lessons we’ve learned
- WebRTC load ≠ just voice: Real agents use multi-monitor setups, screen share, and video, so any test must simulate this full behavior to be reliable.
- Sustained testing matters: Packet loss and congestion issues may not appear in short tests. Soak tests provide true stability validation.
- Routing paths must match reality: By targeting the actual destination (e.g., CCaaS endpoint in AWS), tests reflect real-world performance instead of artificial lab conditions.
Failure patterns we keep seeing
1) Ramp-up never settles
What you see: After 7 to 10 minutes of ramp, jitter and loss rise instead of flattening.
Why it happens: Under sustained load the network reweights paths, policers kick in, queues grow, and buffer bloat starts shaping media.
2) Bitrate whiplash at the top end
What you see: Bitrate hugs the target, then swings high to low.
What it means: Available bandwidth is not steady. Media is starved in bursts, so quality jumps and drops.
3) Loss shows up after minute five
What you see: First minutes look clean, then loss events return in waves while load stays flat.
Why it happens: Background jobs start, micro-bursts hit shallow buffers, and tail drops begin.
4) High RTT on a “private” path
What you see: Loss is low, yet round-trip sits around a few hundred milliseconds, people talk over each other.
Why it happens: Backhaul and cloud hairpinning add distance, and inline inspection adds delay. Private does not always mean short.
5) Policy looks open, reality is flaky
What you see: Calls connect only sometimes, or media keeps taking the relay path when it should be direct.
Why it happens: Incomplete permissions, media allowed only over TCP, or a route that is not the same one agents use in production.
Looking ahead: a new standard for BPO network readiness
This approach has now become a repeatable certification model for onboarding new BPO sites or validating upgrades or doing quarterly SLA verifications. It ensures:
- Improved customer and agent experience (CX + AX)
- Lower troubleshooting overhead
- Faster issue identification
- Stronger SLA governance
Live monitoring with probeRTC: ensuring production stability
Initial testing and certification are only the beginning. To ensure network performance stays consistent in production, Cyara enables continuous monitoring using the same probeRTC agents.
With live monitoring mode, teams can:
- Track SLA-critical metrics such as bandwidth availability, round-trip time (RTT), and jitter continuously over time.
- Detect performance drift or degradations early, before they impact agents or members.
- Correlate monitoring data with actual call traffic and support tickets to identify root causes faster.
- Maintain audit-ready compliance across distributed BPO sites for bandwidth guarantees and uptime commitments.
This capability ensures that what passed in a test environment remains valid in production, effectively closing the loop between pre-certification testing and real-world performance.
Whether it’s a seasonal surge or a quiet period, live probeRTC monitoring keeps a close watch on every site’s readiness, so support and operations teams can stay ahead of outages and SLA violations.
As the leader of AI-powered CX assurance, Cyara helps leading global brands navigate rising customer demands and increased contact center complexities. With Cyara, you can gain visibility into every stage of the CX development lifecycle and deliver error-free omnichannel journeys, regardless of the channels your customers choose to interact with.
Contact us to see how you can benefit from omnichannel CX assurance or visit cyara.com for more information.
FAQ
What is BPO network readiness?
BPO network readiness means a site can handle real agent traffic during peak periods, not just pass a one-time bandwidth test.
What is busy hour network validation?
Busy hour network validation proves the network stays stable during sustained concurrency, when queues, policies, and real-time media behavior are stressed.
How is network saturation testing different from a network assessment?
A network assessment explains what you have (topology, QoS intent, configs). Network saturation testing proves what it can actually handle under load.
Why is WebRTC load testing important for contact centers?
Because modern agent work is WebRTC-heavy (voice, screen share, recording). WebRTC load exposes jitter, loss, and latency failure modes that short tests miss.
