Diagnose
The connection is fine. The call still falls apart.
The first ten minutes are perfect. Then the video goes soft, your voice starts clipping, and someone says you are breaking up. Everyone blames the internet. The pattern, first ten minutes fine and then not, is the signature of a machine hitting a limit, not a network.
What the report tells you
Three figures, each with its reading.
Sustained CPU
%
A video call is a long encode. What the machine holds after minutes is what your call gets in its second half.
Consistency
%
Encoding is unforgiving of variance. A machine that wobbles produces exactly the stutter people describe as a bad connection.
The shape
curve
A curve that falls where your calls fall is a strong hint. If it is flat, look at the network and at what else is running.
The diagnosis
The shape of the curve, read for your case.
01Flat through the whole run
Not a thermal problem. Look at the network, at background sync, and at how many other applications hold a camera or a microphone open.
02A slide that starts a few minutes in
This matches the complaint almost exactly. The machine is thermally limited and the encoder is the first thing to suffer, because it is the work that cannot wait.
03Noisy and inconsistent from the start
Something else is competing for the machine. Backup software and security scans are the usual pair, and both love the middle of the working day.
Every class comes with a stated confidence and the measurement’s own noise floor. How the shape is read
Where a browser stops
What it cannot tell you.
- It does not test your network, and a genuinely bad connection produces similar symptoms. Rule that out separately; a call quality panel in the app is the fastest way.
- It cannot measure your camera, your microphone or the specific application. It measures the machine those run on.
- No temperature, so it shows the effect of a thermal limit rather than proving one in degrees.
Which run
Deep, 8 minutes.
Calls fail in their second half, not their first. The deep run holds the load for three minutes, which is where the failure you are chasing actually lives.
Both kinds are free. The choice is on the set-up screen.
Questions
Asked in these words.
- Everyone says it is my internet. How do I tell?
- By the timing. Network problems are erratic: they come and go, and they do not care how long you have been on the call. A thermal limit is punctual, arriving at roughly the same point in every long call and never in a short one. If it is always the second half, suspect the machine.
- Why does it only happen on long calls?
- Because heat takes minutes to build. A ten-minute stand-up never gets there. An hour-long review does, and by then the machine has quietly stepped down to a level where real-time encoding no longer fits.
- Does closing my camera help?
- Often, and that is itself diagnostic. If turning the camera off recovers the call, you were short of processing headroom rather than bandwidth, which points back at the machine.