Troubleshooting

These are not hard and fast numbers, as it depends on the activity of the viewer. If the viewer is not broadcasting any webcam, the amount of upstream bandwidth used would be less than 0.5 Mbits/sec.

A good way for users to check their bandwidth is to visit speedtest.net. The results from speedtest.net give the user’s actual bandwidth. This actual number is important because a user may report that their ISP provides them 0.5 Mbits/sec upstream bandwidth; however, speedtest.net may report an actual number that is much lower. The difference may be throttling by the ISP and background activity on their computer (such as background downloads, file sharing clients, etc).

For presenters, we recommend as much upstream bandwidth as possible. For example, if the presenter shares their desktop, then the platform’s desktop sharing will attempt to publish their desktop updates as quickly as possible to the server.

Using public WiFi is not always best. It may be OK for surfing the web, but the latency and packet loss might be insufficient for real-time transmission of audio or video.

For hardware, we recommend a dual-core CPU with at least 2G of memory. We recommend any operating system capable of running the latest versions of Google Chrome and Mozilla FireFox.

For browser, We recommend running either FireFox or Chrome because both browsers provide excellent support for web real-time communications (WebRTC), which is a better audio framework. Safari, IE, and Edge will work as well, but FireFox and Chrome will deliver better audio in lower bandwidth conditions.

In short, if the user is having any problems (such as audio is garbled or they are periodically getting disconnected), we recommend trying both browsers. If the problems persist, it’s likely an issue with their network. The AGF Tutoring platform will give them notifications to help troubleshoot.

If the presenter needs to share their desktop, then we recommend running FireFox.

If you upload a Word or Power Point document that has special fonts, such as Chinese language, the document must first be converted into PDF. Unless our server is configured to have the necessary fonts, then you will see empty spaces (or boxes) for the missing fonts.

If you encounter this problem, try the following:

• Click ‘upload presentation’
• Close the File Open dialog box
• Click the (+) button next to the file name for the presentation (the File Open dialog box reappears)
• Select a file to upload in the File Open dialog box
• Click ‘Open’
• Click ‘Upload’

These steps trigger the opening of the File Open dialog box by a user action, which seems to work better than the automatic display of the File Open dialog box when there is currently no presentation loaded.

To keep the presentation windows in sync, when you upload a presentation (landscape or portrait), the size of the presentation window becomes a ratio of the presentation. You and the viewer may have different sized windows, due to the sizes of your respective monitors, but you both always see the same content. This mode is equivalent to always running in “fit to page” mode. A presenter can zoom in and out, and when you zoom out completely the platform shows the entire page.

For landscape documents, the “fit to page” approach works well. Monitors are landscape, so presenting a landscape document makes good use of the screen space.

However, for portrait documents, the “fit to page” approach means that text is usually too small to read. The presenter can zoom in to a portion of the document, but the platform does not change the width of the presentation window itself – it’s keeping that ratio to ensure both presenter and viewer are in sync.

• Right-click within the AGF Tutoring platform
• Choose “Settings…” from the flash pop-up menu
• Click the microphone icon
• Try choosing a different microphone from the drop-down list

You see a volume indicator next to the drop down for choosing a microphone. Try selecting a different microphone. When you select the active microphone, you’ll immediately see activity in the volume indicator when you speak.

Close this Flash settings dialog and others in the voice conference should now hear you.

In any event, we always recommend that you have your remote users use a headset with microphone. This will ensure the best audio in a session.

If a remote user is using a laptop with a built-in microphone, you should not hear an echo. However, if two remote users are using laptops with built-in microphones and neither is using a headset and both are sitting close to each other (close enough for the microphone in one laptop to pickup the audio from the speakers in the other laptop), then you will hear an echo. The reason is the built-in echo cancellation only works with the audio coming from the host laptop – the audio coming from the second laptop will be picked up as an external audio source.

If a student is causing echo, the best way to solve this problem, if you are logged in as a moderator, is to mute the user by clicking the microphone icon to the left of their name.

Overall, the best solution is ask all users to use a headset – this will ensure no background noise or echo.

• Your Network connection is poor
  If your internet connection is poor, your audio quality will not be good. We recommend that users have 0.5 Mbits/sec upload speed and 1.0 Mbits/sec download speed. Of course, these are not hard numbers, and the AGF Tutoring platform will certainly work with less bandwidth, but if you have bandwidth in this range, you should experience good audio.

  To test your actual internet bandwidth, visit speedtest.net. The results at speedtest.net will give a fairly accurate test of your upload and download speeds. If these numbers are much less than 0.5 Mbits/sec upload speed and 1.0 Mbits/sec download speed, your audio will be poor. One quick check is to to turn off any file transfer you have in the background (such as bittorrent clients) and run the test again.

  Many times, issues with audio quality can be solved with better network connectivity. If the user transmitting audio is on a wireless connection, they should switch to a wired connection, if possible, or move closer to the wireless base station.

  If a specific user is having poor audio quality (i.e. only their audio is choppy but everyone else sounds good), they should do a speed test.

• Browser issues
  We recommend that users use FireFox or Chrome for transmitting/receiving the best audio. Both these browser support better audio framework than the others.
• Overloaded server
  If none of the above stands, there may be a server issue. We always try to work our servers to a minimum load and take precautions so that they are not overworked. However, in very rare cases their CPU may be overloaded or their bandwidth may be saturated. In general, if all users are encountering audio problems, the issue might be an overloaded server.

If this occurs, the solution is to either disable wireless networking while using the AGF Tutoring platform or switch to FireFox. FireFox uses Adobe Flash Plugin whereas Google Chrome bundles the flash plugin within the browser.

To run this command, you’ll need to enter ‘cmd’ in the program search field (available when you click the start menu). When you type ‘cmd’, you’ll see the ‘command prompt’ appear. Right-click and choose “Run as Administrator”.

The solution is use the Flash security manager to add an exception for AGF Tutoring. Doing so will no longer have Flash prompt for access to the microphone/webcam.

To add an exception, do the following.

• Open the following URL in a browser Flash Security Manager settings. (This will open the security manager settings for the local computer).
• Click on the tab with screen showing an eye (Web Privacy Settings).
• Look through the list for the hostname for your sessions.agftutoring.com.
• Click ‘Always Allow’ radio button.

Now launch the AGF Tutoring platform. You should no longer be prompted for the Flash Security Dialog.