Whenever you encounter an issue in your WebRTC-based applications, you need to resolve the defect quickly. Cyara’s qualityRTC solution empowers you to run WebRTC connections tests as often as you need, with just a single click of a button. Within minutes, your support staff will have access to all the insights they need to resolve the issue and improve the system to deliver flawless CX.
Learn how you can combat WebRTC-related issues with just a single click when you use qualityRTC.
qualityRTC offers a wide range of metrics and data-driven insights, which you can use to assist users and overcome potential WebRTC connection issues. By walking through three scenarios showcasing qualityRTC’s Network Quality Score, you’ll gain a better understanding of how these metrics provide visibility into your actual voice or network quality while using WebRTC-based applications.
The Network Quality Score provides a simple yet powerful way to evaluate network readiness by condensing complex network evaluations into a single, user-friendly score (ranging from 1 to 5). Additionally, this score eliminates the need to interpret intricate metrics such as MOS, throughput, jitter, or packet loss. Instead, it focuses on providing a clear, actionable insight into how well your network and device handles voice communications. With the Network Quality Score, anyone—not just IT managers—can assess network performance and make informed decisions quickly and confidently.
The Network Quality Score is the result of extensive analysis of real-world user data, leveraging data science to establish meaningful relationships between various network parameters. Subtle applications of AI help refine these relationships, ensuring the score remains robust and reliable across diverse environments. Tested in real-life conditions—including airports, coffee shops, corporate offices, and home networks—the score provides actionable insights in even the most challenging scenarios.
Understanding qualityRTC Scoring System
The qualityRTC scoring system helps users assess the health of their networks in a straightforward yet meaningful way. While the underlying mechanics of these scores remain proprietary, our goal is to empower you with the insights needed to evaluate your network’s capabilities and choose the score variant best suited to your needs.
Our scores objectify the real-world network conditions by accounting for network instabilities such as jitter, throughput variation, and bandwidth availability. This makes them particularly useful for assessing network readiness in scenarios ranging from remote work to video conferencing.
Key Metrics and Tools
The scores leverage data from our Throughput, Call Quality, and Bandwidth Speed widgets, which are highly customizable to match your unique infrastructure. For example:
- Throughput tests: qualityRTC’s throughput tests measure data transfers between endpoints, empowering you to identify potential bottlenecks and network issues.
- Bandwidth tests: Unlike popular bandwidth tests that often receive prioritization from ISPs, qualityRTC tests generate traffic that isn’t prioritized. This ensures the results are closer to what users experience during daily activities.
- Call quality tests: These tests utilize your own systems and infrastructure, providing a more accurate reflection of real-world performance.
Why are There Different Network Quality Score Variants?
The different qualityRTC score variants—V9, V10, and V7—were created to meet our customers’ diverse needs. Each score is optimized for specific use cases and scenarios, allowing you to select the one that best aligns with your frequent network demands.
- V9 focuses on voice-first environments, ensuring reliable communication for single users or remote workers.
- V10 balances voice and basic video capabilities, making it ideal for small offices or setups with moderate bandwidth needs.
- V7 provides a holistic view for high-bandwidth, multi-user scenarios like video conferencing or shared office networks.
By offering these tailored variants, qualityRTC empowers you to access actionable insights that are most relevant to your unique situations.
V9 – Voice-Centric Score
The V9 score is tailored for single-user environments, focusing on voice calls and basic internet activities. It is particularly well-suited for work-from-home voice agents or professionals who need clear and stable voice communication.
Purpose:
It evaluates whether a network is reliable for voice communication and ensures you can confidently manage communication tasks without interruptions. V9 answers the question: “Is the network good enough to handle a voice call and basic online activities?”
Key Features:
- Prioritizes voice-first scenarios, making it a dependable choice for remote or work-from-home single contact center agents.
- Sensitive to fluctuations such as jitter, latency, and other variances that impact call stability.
- Designed with lower bandwidth requirements, making it ideal for environments with limited network resources.
For setups requiring higher bandwidth, the V10 score—a derivative of V9—is a better fit. V10 supports small office setups, low-quality video, or more demanding network conditions while maintaining a voice-centric approach.
V7 – General Internet Score
The V7 score provides a broader evaluation of internet performance, catering to higher bandwidth requirements and environments that prioritize stability. It is well-suited for video conferencing and other high-bandwidth activities, making it a popular choice for video users or offices with dedicated internet connections for multiple voice users sharing a network.
Purpose:
V7 addresses scenarios where video communication or internet-intensive applications are the focus. It answers the question: “Is the network stable enough for video calls and other high-bandwidth activities?”
Key Features:
- Highly sensitive to network instabilities, such as jitter and sudden bandwidth fluctuations.
- Reflects overall internet performance, making it a valuable tool for predicting how networks handle demanding applications.
- Requires higher bandwidth availability compared to V9, aligning with the needs of environments like offices or video-heavy setups.
Choosing the Right Network Quality Score
Each custom implementation of qualityRTC ends up using one of these scoring algorithms. The qualityRTC score you use is dependent on your specific network environment and requirements:
- V9: Ideal for voice-centric, single-user work-from-home or remote work environments with limited bandwidth.
- V10: Suitable for small offices or setups that require moderate bandwidth to support a handful of voice agents or work-from-home users needing basic, medium-quality video support.
- V7: Best for high-bandwidth scenarios, such as video conferencing or shared office networks with dedicated managed internet connections.
Example 1
Imagine a work-from-home agent running a qualityRTC network test. At first glance, the Bandwidth Test results look promising, with upload and download speeds of 12 Mbps and 37 Mbps, respectively—enough for most online activities. But a closer look reveals some underlying issues. The test detects jitter, and the Throughput Test shows notable variance, hinting at periodic instability in the network.
For this user, the V9 score—optimized for voice-centric environments—comes out to 4.15. This score suggests the network is fairly stable for a single voice agent, even though outgoing calls are experiencing minor packet loss. Though not perfect, this is a solid result, offering confidence that the agent can perform daily voice tasks without much trouble.
However, what if this same network were shared among multiple voice agents or used for more demanding tasks like basic video calls? The V10 score—geared toward small offices or environments with slightly higher requirements—drops to 3.69. While still usable, this score reflects potential challenges when multiple users rely on the same connection, especially if they’re handling video or more complex workflows.
Now, let’s consider a scenario where this network needs to support a high-quality video conference or is part of a managed internet line in a shared office. Here, the V7 score takes a steep dive to 2.31, emphasizing the network inability to handle such intensive demands. The jitter and throughput instability become significant concerns, making this network a poor fit for these high-bandwidth scenarios.
This example demonstrates how qualityRTC scores adapt to real-world use cases. While the network is perfectly suitable for a single voice agent working from home, it quickly reveals its limitations as the demands increase. Each score—V9, V10, and V7—offers a unique lens to evaluate performance, helping users understand what their network can and cannot handle.
Example 2
Let’s look at another example, where the test results paint a very different picture:
In this scenario, a user conducts a network test from a remote location with very low throughput and bandwidth. The upload and download speeds are modest, barely meeting the requirements. However, the Call Quality Test tells a different story. Despite these limitations, the calls exhibit excellent quality with no packet loss or significant jitter. The only challenge is a higher Round Trip Time (RTT), which is expected given the physical distance between the user and the server.
For a single-user scenario, where voice is the primary concern, the V9 score rates this network as Good with a score of 3.6. This reflects the network’s ability to handle voice calls effectively, even under constrained bandwidth conditions. The clean call quality results demonstrate that, for a solo user, this connection is perfectly adequate.
However, if this network were to support additional users or slightly higher demands, such as low-quality video calls, the V10 score drops to 2.91. This is a fair reflection of reduced confidence in the network’s ability to handle increased load without impacting user experience.
Finally, when evaluating this network for high-bandwidth, multi-user scenarios like video conferencing or office setups, the V7 score falls further to 2.23. The limited throughput, combined with higher RTT, makes it clear that this connection isn’t suitable for such demanding use cases.
This example highlights how qualityRTC scores go beyond raw bandwidth numbers to provide meaningful insights.
Example 3
For a final contrast, let’s consider an example of a network with excellent bandwidth and throughput—a solid 100 Mbps connection. At first glance, this network seems perfect for any use case. And indeed, the Call Quality Test confirms excellent voice quality with no packet loss. The Throughput Test also shows a consistent performance, with high upload and download speeds.
However, a closer look at the test results reveals elevated jitter and RTT values. While not critical, these factors introduce subtle variances that could become noticeable in more demanding scenarios.
For a single-user voice-centric environment, the V9 score is almost perfect, reflecting the network’s ability to deliver a seamless voice call experience. However, the V10 score—optimized for small offices or environments with a handful of users—stands at 4.33, which denotes that it’s slightly less than ideal. This is due to the jitter and RTT values, which could impact overall stability, especially when supporting multiple simultaneous users or video calls.
Looking at the V7 score, the rating is 3.67. While this score indicates good performance, it’s a fair reflection of the video systems’ sensitivity to jitter and RTT. Even minor fluctuations can affect video quality, making this network slightly less confidence-inducing for such use cases.
This example underscores how qualityRTC’s scores provide a balanced and realistic assessment of network performance. Even in scenarios with seemingly robust bandwidth, subtle instabilities like jitter and RTT are factored into the scoring, ensuring users can make informed decisions about their network’s readiness across different environments.
Get Started with qualityRTC Today
Whenever an issue occurs in your WebRTC-based applications, qualityRTC is there to help. With Cyara’s WebRTC quality assurance solution, you can gain access to valuable, real-time insights, which you can use to better understand your voice and video quality.
Each contact center and agent environment is unique, so it’s important that your metrics and reporting measures reflect your individualized needs. That’s why qualityRTC offers several different Network Quality Scores, designed specifically to evaluate and showcase how well your systems are performing for your use cases. With this data in-hand, you can ensure your infrastructure is meeting your performance standards to deliver flawless CX.
With Cyara qualityRTC, you can:
- Resolve customer issues with minimal effort on their end.
- Allow users to run self-service WebRTC connection tests.
- Improve your team’s efficiency with real-time updates.
Contact us to schedule a demo and see how you can benefit from qualityRTC today.
