MCPS Zoom audio glitches

[Anonymous]

Our child's teacher is having a lot of audio glitches on the call. She points to some zoom issues, but my wife is in the other room using Zoom now with no issues, and she is on Zoom all day. Moreover, none of the other people in my son's class are having audio issues. I can hear all of them clearly. It's got to be the teacher's WiFi. What's the remedy here? You can barely hear anything at times.

[Anonymous]

You can join Zoom audio over the phone while joining video with your computer. If you are tech savvy and she is not, put together a simple tutorial and help her enable this.

[Anonymous]

It's possible it's on the host's end but Zoom is getting absolutely hammered right now with the volume of meetings they are trying to host. We have about 200 business accounts and they seem to be still working well. Zoom is likely throttling bandwidth for the free accounts as they've seen a major spike in usage. I'm not sure how MCPS is licensed for Zoom but this will likely get worked out quickly. I will just add that if you are going to call in via phone, don't use the toll-free number if you can avoid using it. There is actually an added per minute cost to use those numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's possible it's on the host's end but Zoom is getting absolutely hammered right now with the volume of meetings they are trying to host. We have about 200 business accounts and they seem to be still working well. Zoom is likely throttling bandwidth for the free accounts as they've seen a major spike in usage. I'm not sure how MCPS is licensed for Zoom but this will likely get worked out quickly. I will just add that if you are going to call in via phone, don't use the toll-free number if you can avoid using it. There is actually an added per minute cost to use those numbers.

When every kid and the helper can be heard perfectly, but not the teacher, chances are it's a problem at the teacher's end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's possible it's on the host's end but Zoom is getting absolutely hammered right now with the volume of meetings they are trying to host. We have about 200 business accounts and they seem to be still working well. Zoom is likely throttling bandwidth for the free accounts as they've seen a major spike in usage. I'm not sure how MCPS is licensed for Zoom but this will likely get worked out quickly. I will just add that if you are going to call in via phone, don't use the toll-free number if you can avoid using it. There is actually an added per minute cost to use those numbers.

When every kid and the helper can be heard perfectly, but not the teacher, chances are it's a problem at the teacher's end.

Do you know which audio codec is being used and is the processing of the hosts audio and the participants audio being offloaded to cloud based services or being managed on the primary host?

[Anonymous]

Not enough bandwidth?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's possible it's on the host's end but Zoom is getting absolutely hammered right now with the volume of meetings they are trying to host. We have about 200 business accounts and they seem to be still working well. Zoom is likely throttling bandwidth for the free accounts as they've seen a major spike in usage. I'm not sure how MCPS is licensed for Zoom but this will likely get worked out quickly. I will just add that if you are going to call in via phone, don't use the toll-free number if you can avoid using it. There is actually an added per minute cost to use those numbers.

When every kid and the helper can be heard perfectly, but not the teacher, chances are it's a problem at the teacher's end.

Well, thanks for figuring this out. Can you give us a latency and jitter check from Zoom? Should look something like this:



Video corruption should occur long before audio disruption as the amount of bandwidth use is exponential. But you know that. Thanks!

Also some details on the hosts Wifi would be good. A lot of home Wifi systems are being bombarded by nearby users who don't know how to set up wireless fencing. You should make sure you contact the teacher and explain wireless security boundaries. Thank you for taking the lead on this.

[Anonymous]

Child has not been able to join any Zoom classes today and yesterday.

[Anonymous]

There is nationwide zoom outages.

Please also contribute to Khan Academy. They need to get more capacity in their servers because of this unprecedented demand from around the world.

[Anonymous]

I'm a teacher and my home WiFi has always been spotty. Now with everyone in the area working from home, it's extremely spotty. I have been using my phone as a hotspot, but I really don't want to have to use all of my data just to do my job. I put my name on a list for a MiFi and was told I can pick it up at central office on Monday. Hopefully it will solve the problem, but it's not like MCPS installed super speedy internet at all MCPS teachers' houses in the past two weeks. We're doing the best that we can with what we have.

[Anonymous]

If the county expect teachers to work from home, they should pay for the technology needed to do that job. Until the county is willing to do that, you will just have to accept that her Zoom class won't work. Hopefully she is posted other lessons/materials that your child can access. This is NOT the teachers fault. She should not have to spend money to to make her internet connection better. There is nothing that be done to fix the issue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If the county expect teachers to work from home, they should pay for the technology needed to do that job. Until the county is willing to do that, you will just have to accept that her Zoom class won't work. Hopefully she is posted other lessons/materials that your child can access. This is NOT the teachers fault. She should not have to spend money to to make her internet connection better. There is nothing that be done to fix the issue.

Definitely not the teachers fault, but is the superintendent fault for poor planning. Teachers work at home all time extra ; they should always have a technology stipend negotiated

[Anonymous]

FWIW, the following is a summary of an investigative report released by Citizen’s Lab on Friday, Citizen's Lab being a well-respected cybersecurity institution (part of the University of Toronto). They are well known in the field as objective researchers looking into exploitable weaknesses that pose a risk to a sector, or holistically (https://citizenlab.ca/2020/04/move-fast-roll-your-own-crypto-a-quick-look-at-the-confidentiality-of-zoom-meetings/):

1. Zoom misrepresents the encryption it uses, calling it “end-to-end” encryption. In April 2020 Zoom released a blog post clarifying that their encryption is between an individual’s device and the Zoom server, NOT the entire communication. IOW, not "end-to-end" encryption as industry uses the term

2. Zoom uses custom encryption which does a poor job of masking everything (in the report, you can still make out the outlines of an encrypted picture encrypted using Zoom's algorithm), and is predictable. And Zoom's keys are weak; AES-128 vice traditional AES-256

3. In making Zoom idiot-proof (called "low friction") Zoom created a number of vulnerabilities, some of which have been discussed in the press the past few days

4. Even with all parties to a call in the US, encryption keys come from China, creating the risk that Chinese govt can force Zoom to share keys and gain access

5. Nation states are now well aware of Zoom’s vulnerabilities and likely targeting users

6. Zoom provides 0 transparency about what it shares when served with legal process

7. Zoom's Waiting Room has a vulnerability (not publicly disclosed b/c they want Zoom to fix before ppl take advantage)