AT&T Forum Support: Zoom, Webex, & Video Conferencing Help

Learn why you may be experiencing freezing, loss of Audio, & pixelation

Kids are going back to school. For the best experience possible, learn the ins and outs of video conferencing, the causes of video issues, and solutions.

VPN & Web Conferences

While it does not happen often, your VPN may be causing an issue with your conference. To see if it is, disable your VPN and test your conferences. If it works, you may need to contact your IT group or VPN Host to determine a workaround. Please note, services, like WebEx, recommend disabling VPNs.

• WebEx Recommendations 
• Zoom troubleshooting 

First, you need to understand the requirements

For the best experience, you need to meet speed requirements for web conferencing:

• Zoom requirements for gallery view and/ or 720 HD video is 2.5Mbps.
• Cisco Webex requirements for High-Quality videos are 1Mbps.

Meeting the speed requirements is not enough. You must understand how your plan and the number of devices connected affect your experience. Not just that, your PC needs to meet hardware requirements. 

What can cause a poor video conferencing experience?

The wrong internet plan (Speed)

If you have an internet plan of 6Mbps, 2 devices can use a web conferencing platform with minimal issues. If more people are online, for example, parents working from home, a 6Mbps connection may not be able to handle all devices. You may see issues like:

• Spinning icon on the web conferencing application
• Choppy video and audio
• Timeout errors on websites mimicking out-of-service issues
• Websites loading slower
• High ping
• Slow speeds
• An overall poor experience

Traffic on the server

Depending on the time of day and number of users, the video conference servers may not be handle the additional workload. If your internet experience is fine but you have issues when using a video conference, the issue may be with their servers. 

Too many devices

If everyone in your household is online at the same time, on the wrong plan, the web conferencing experience may suffer. If you work from home and see issues when everyone is online, this could mean your internet will not support all devices connected. Now think about how that will affect distance learning. Our High Ping page has more information, and personal stories, about the affects of too many devices on the wrong plan.

Improve your web conference (Solutions)

There are a few things you can do to improve web conferencing like:

• Upgrade your internet plan - If you are an AT&T Subscriber, upgrade your internet plan now. You can also check to see if your address qualifies for AT&T Fiber (1000Mbps internet service). Please be aware, not all address qualify for AT&T Fiber.
• Prioritize online time
• Consider reducing the quality of the stream. Instructions for Zoom and Webex.
• Optimize your modem and internet settings (These tips work with most internet providers)
• Test your ping – a good way to determine the cause of issues
• Reduce the number of devices in use
• If you are seeing issues with a VPN Connected, try conferencing with it. 
• Know your internet plan

Test your web conference

Check the internet connection with:

• Zoom
• Webex

Are there issues with the web conference?

Search for issues your web conference may be having online. Many users report issues via peer-to-peer outage trackers.

Heads Up: When testing, connecting other devices that may be in use during the time you will be working is a great way to determine if your connection can handle the extra internet traffic.

ChrisZ, AT&T Community Specialist