Running the Network Assessment tool

The Skype for Business Network Assessment tool provides a simple and comprehensive option to check the network performance and understand if your network is prepared for handling Skype for Business and Microsoft Teams calls.

Start with downloading from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/confirmation.aspx?id=53885 and run the installer:

 

Check where the software is installed:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Skype for Business Network Assessment Tool

Or C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Skype for Business Network Assessment Tool

(Later Edit: With the new Microsoft Teams Network assesment tool, the current path is “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Teams Network Assessment Tool\”)

 

Open Cmd and navigate to the appropriate folder:

Cd ”C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Skype for Business Network Assessment Tool”

or for Teams: Cd “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Teams Network Assessment Tool\”

Run tool with .\NetworkAssessmentTool.exe

If requested, allow the executable in the Windows Firewall

You will be presented with the initial outputs of the test, containing network values.

For example:

Now, you can access https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/skypeforbusiness/optimizing-your-network/media-quality-and-network-connectivity-performance

And you can compare the values obtained above with the reference values presented in the above article:

Metric Target
Latency (one way) < 50ms
Latency (RTT or Round-trip Time) < 100ms
Burst packet loss <10% during any 200ms interval
Packet loss <1% during any 15s interval
Packet inter-arrival Jitter <30ms during any 15s interval
Packet reorder <0.05% out-of-order packets

 

As a best practice advice, the assessment should be run 3 times:

  1. When customer is connected to wi-fi (see this quite a lot) -> lack of QOS might cause Call Quality issues
  2. When customer is connected with ethernet cable.
  3. When customer is connected to outside network where traffic is not passing through firewall performing blocking/inspection/packet analysis.

 

Tips and Tricks:

Running .\NetworkAssessmentTool.exe /connectivitycheck /verbose will display the ip addresses and ports against which tests are being performed. This is a good starting point to check if some ports are being blocked in your network.

Sabin.

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