The Smart Connectivity Test runs in a standard browser and measures round-trip time, throughput, and packet loss under simulated WebRTC session load. It visualizes data generated by endpoints and provides powerful analysis tools to aid your team. Metrics can be filtered by SiteID, Local User ID, TURN Provider, time interval, and more. In addition, it can be configured to operate continuously for conducting site surveys and is non-disruptive. It works in the background, between calls, to measure infrastructure provider performance. You can test multiple TURN servers at intervals as short as 30 seconds.

Key Features of the Smart Connectivity Test

The Smart Connectivity Test features site-level call quality assessment, dynamic endpoint-level call quality assessment, and endpoint call quality indicators.

Site-level Call Quality Assessment

A site-level call quality assessment provides engineers with information to optimize call quality in a specific location. When there are multiple infrastructure providers available to connect a site in your network, it can be difficult to evaluate their performance and choose the best among the alternatives.

Smart Connectivity Test continuously tests all network infrastructure providers so that configurations can be optimized to deliver the best call quality. It reports detailed performance metrics to the callstats.io dashboard where administrators can use powerful visualization tools to perform a head to head comparison and identify the service with the best call quality.

Most site survey tools operate at layer 3 and don’t typically provide a reliable indicator of the call quality a network infrastructure provider can deliver. The Smart Connectivity Test operates at the application layer and simulates active WebRTC sessions. It measures KPIs (throughput, packet loss, and round-trip time), providing a realistic indicator of the call quality delivered by an infrastructure provider. Furthermore, though it is difficult to isolate and optimize the performance for multiple separate ISPs and TURN service providers, the Smart Connectivity Test enables you to test and benchmark the performance of different ISP/TURN combinations so that you can select the optimal configuration.

Dynamic Endpoint-level Call Quality Assessment

A dynamic endpoint-level call quality assessment uses an API to give applications a real-time recommendation for the best provider to use for a call. Configuring endpoints to take advantage of the best available infrastructure providers is a time-consuming manual process that interrupts normal operations and reduces end user productivity. The Smart Connectivity Test API enables application developers to create smart endpoints that evaluate multiple infrastructure providers prior to each call and automatically select the best.

The API uses a simple javascript interface and has the flexibility to specify multiple TURN service providers, streamlining the process of configuring the endpoint. It tests each provider and analyzes the results before returning a recommendation to the application.

Endpoint Call Quality Indicators

The same API can be used to provide an endpoint call quality indicator. Contact center agents may answer or initiate calls with customers when network performance is temporarily impaired, resulting in a bad experience. The Smart Connectivity Test API enables contact center app developers to present agents with a visual network quality indicator prior to answering or initiating a call so that agents can ensure customers receive a good experience.

The connection recommendation callback delivers KPIs (throughput, loss, and round-trip time) to the application in real-time, which it can use to present a graphical indicator of anticipated call quality. The Smart Connectivity Test API can be executed within a browser and doesn’t require a plug-in, making it easy to run in conjunction with a web app at the time of a call.