Why they can occur and what can be done about it
When you experience dropped calls, there could be many potential causes. From our investigations, the most common reasons are:
- Bandwidth Peaking
- Quality of Service
- Poor internet connection leading to packet loss
- ISP Bursting
- Call dropped on the caller's side
Bandwidth Peaking
Bandwidth peaking is when the users on your network generate enough traffic to exceed your internal or external (ISP) network. When this happens, the voice packets are dropped and the call is subsequently dropped. This is a very common problem.
When working with more than 10 users, you need to work with your ISP to ensure you have bandwidth that will support your needs.
The best way to determine if this is the cause is to pull your bandwidth logs from your router and look for any peaks like below:
QoS Hardware
Quality of Service (QoS) is a technology which typically runs on a router that controls the flow of traffic. It will analyze and drop packets of information depending on what it considers (and has been configured) to be most important.
If your QoS is not configured to prioritize Jiminny call traffic, you may see it dropping calls. Find out more about configuring this in ourĀ separate guide.
Packet Loss
There is a myriad of reasons that could cause this. We can check individual call examples to help quantify and determine the presence of packet loss.
ISP Bursting
ISP bursting is a temporary allowance of full network speed for 15-20 seconds. After this time, the ISP limits traffic depending on their policy. This can cause packets to be lost (due to the non-redundant parameters of UDP packets) and hence a call to be dropped.
The call dropped on the caller's side
If calling over a phone, cellular network issues could cause their call to drop. If they're using Web Audio in a conference, the network issues described above could also cause the call to be dropped on their side.