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Making the Most of the Skype for Business Network Assessment Data

In my prior blog, I covered how to automate the process of running a Skype for Business Online network assessment. You can read about it here.
A network assessment using the free Microsoft tool generates a CSV file which is used to record the results. You can download the assessment tool from here.
We will be using Excel and some simple graphs to illustrate the results.
Let’s start by looking at our performance targets provided by Microsoft. For the best experience, we obviously want to meet or exceed the published metrics.

Metric Internal Client to Microsoft Edge Customer Edge to Microsoft Edge
Latency (one way) <50 ms <30 ms
Latency (round-trip time) <100 ms <60 ms
Burst Packet Loss <10% during any 200ms interval <1% during any 200ms interval
Packet Loss <1% during any 15s interval <0.1% during any 15s interval
Packet Inter-Arrival Jitter <30ms during any 15s interval <15ms during any 15s interval
Packet Reorder <0.05% out-of-order packets <0.01% out-of-order packets

 
We will use the target values and the actual values in Excel to graph the results of each metric in an easy to digest format. Let’s start with results file generated when I ran a quick analysis:

CallStartTime PacketLossRate RoundTripLatencyInMs PacketsSent PacketsReceived AverageJitterInMs PacketReorderRatio
2/15/2018 7:52 0 21 851 851 6.456347 0
2/15/2018 7:53 0 21 851 851 4.320866 0
2/15/2018 7:53 0 21 283 281 3.147392 0
2/15/2018 7:54 0 21.5 283 283 2.805307 0
2/15/2018 7:54 0 21 851 851 8.556069 0

 
The sample data was taken from a computer connected to the Microsoft Edge, meaning I am not going through an on-premises Lync or Skype for Business Edge server. It was connected to the Internet via Wifi to a home router. The goal for me is to meet or exceed the “Internal Client to Microsoft Edge” target metrics. Granted, the data consists of a very small sample size. Normally a network analysis is run through an entire workweek before the data is collated and analyzed. I will be graphing actual data taken over the course of a week.
 
It is clear from the graph that my home network did quite well on round-trip latency as the all measured values fall below the target line shown in orange.
 

Moving to the next measured value, packet loss rate you can see once again the network exceeded the target values. The blue line for the actual measured value is not displayed as it was zero.

The last measured value is packet reorder ratio. Once again, my home network did quite well when measured against the target value. The blue line for the actual measured value is not displayed as it was zero.

 
You may have not have noticed, Microsoft publishes some additional values like burst packet loss which the tool isn’t capable of capturing. Likewise, the free tool cannot deep dive into the root cause of any item outside the recommended values.
What do you do if you want a deeper analysis, or your measured values do not meet the requirements? This is where Perficient can assist you with a professional services engagement. Perficient has partnered with Integrated Research better known as IR to deliver Skype for a Business Online network assessments. The network assessments are run using IR’s UC Assessor tool to deliver outstanding value. You can read more about IR’s UC Assessor here – http://www.ir.com/skype-for-business-assessment
In my next blog post, I’ll cover using IR’s UC Assessor and how it delivers exceptional value as part of a network assessment services engagement.

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Daniel Dorgan

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