AnyRTC monitor Hall is a solution of full-cycle call quality monitoring, backtracking and analysis provided by anyRTC for enterprises and developers. It is committed to helping enterprises and developers find problems in time, locate causes, and ultimately solve problems to improve user experience. This product is a big data analysis product that enables enterprises and developers to have a comprehensive understanding of their end user experience. We hope to provide enterprises and developers with safe and worry free real-time audio and video interactive experience through monitoring the lobby.

Do a monitor lobby facing challenges

There are many technical challenges to achieving this quality tool, and we summarize them as follows:

The first is data collection

Our calls are distributed in different parts of the world, and runtime metrics need to be collected from users’ devices everywhere. Our transmission network covers all countries and regions in the world, and we also need to collect network status information of end users from these nodes. At present, we can collect call status data from users all over the world. In other words, in addition to its own real-time transmission work, there must be a global network of reliable data collection.

The second is data integration

The data collected by us are scattered, including the use of SDK in client terminals, network transmission quality information of calls, communication quality between sender and receiver, device status and other information. In order to realize the analysis and diagnosis of problems, we need to put these data on the same “page” to analyze, to connect the data, so the biggest challenge is how to integrate such a huge amount of data.

The third is data scale

We are now dealing with a huge amount of data every day, which is a challenge for the platform, not only to store the data every day, but also to receive it in real time and process it in time. Many users need to investigate problems as soon as they are discovered.

The fourth is real-time data retrieval

In addition to performance indicators, there is also a lot of call information, user device model information, etc. We need to enable developers to quickly retrieve this information to detect the problem of which call, so as to solve user quality problems.

Audio and video quality analysis process

The quality analysis path is divided into coordinated customer service solution and independent solution. The two solutions have different paths, but the investigation process is the same, which is obtained through the monitoring hall to investigate the audio and video quality data of the whole link.

Coordinate customer service to solve the problem: send the channel ID and user ID of the problem to the customer, and the customer will collect the whole link data of the user with the problem according to the monitoring hall of the background for analysis and draw a conclusion.

Independent solution: Log in anyRTC console, click the monitoring hall, and obtain the call list according to the time, channel ID or user ID. From a specific call as the entrance, check the release and subscription of each user in the channel, equipment, audio and picture quality, user events and other information. Based on the above information, you can basically determine the user’s call experience, what problems occur, and what causes them.

Query entrance

Locate the two faulty users based on the perspective of the receiver

Analysis of whole link data problems of two users at sender and receiver

Quality data include

  • Audio/video transmit/receive bit rate
  • Device performance, including system CPU usage and memory usage
  • Local collection volume and remote playback volume
  • Audio/video sending/receiving frame rate
  • Video sending/receiving resolution
  • Packet loss rate of the upstream and downstream video ends
  • The number of audio and video minutes
  • User behavior events, such as network switching, switching resolution, switching audio and video modules, etc

In terms of user problem tracking, 98% of problems can be covered by analyzing the above data points. Our monitoring hall also tracks data based on the above all-link data points, and we only need to watch a few indicators to find out the problems of users.

When a few customers have quality problems, you can analyze the network situation and check the device status:

Network packet loss

Generally, you can check the packet loss rate and holdup rate for the audio and video quality caused by the network. Generally, if the packet loss rate is less than 5%, the communication is good; if the packet loss rate is greater than 5%, the communication is poor; if the packet loss rate is greater than 10% or the sequential packet loss rate, the network is severely blocked.

Bit rate

Normally, video and audio bit rates are curves within ±10% up and down. If the bit rate drops suddenly or fluctuates more than 30%, it indicates that the network is congested or jitter.

Frame rate

Under normal circumstances, the video frame rate is usually ≥15 frames and remains stable. When the frame rate fluctuates more than 5 frames, or the frame rate drops below 10 frames and does not rise again, the network is usually blocked or jitter, and the user feels the lag subjectively.

CPU usage

The CPU usage displays the overall CPU usage of the system and App. Under normal circumstances, the overall CPU usage of the system is less than 50%, and the lower the better. When the overall CPU usage of the system is greater than 85%, the application is prone to no response or slow response, which is displayed in red line.

The volume size

  • The volume of audio collection refers to the volume of data collected by the sender from the microphone. If the volume fluctuates, it indicates that the microphone is collecting sound normally, that is, the device is working properly.
  • The audio playback volume is the volume that the receiver decodes the rendering data and sends to the loudspeaker. If the playing volume fluctuates, the SDK sends sound to the loudspeaker, that is, the SDK works normally.

The resolution of the

Resolution as auxiliary information, if the resolution of the sending end is not stable, there may be some compatibility problems of the player, such as screen lag, splintered screen, etc.

User behavior events

User behavior events are displayed in bar charts, including normal events, minor events, and critical events. Usually, it is used to help locate software problems and analyze bugs. By analyzing the operation steps of users, the corresponding scenarios can be reproduced.

Q&A

In the real time communication scenario, there are all kinds of events. After sorting and screening, we found that there are generally several categories:

  • Equipment problems, such as old model, poor system compatibility, failure.

  • The network environment is abnormal, for example, the terminal user bandwidth is too low.

  • Integration issues, such as incorrect API calls, API call order issues, etc.

  • Terminal user misoperations, such as shutting down the audio and video module.

  • AnyRTC service problems, such as SDK or real-time transport network bugs or other problems

The monitoring hall gives the business a basic basis to determine the problem, which greatly improves the work efficiency of problem solving; Combined with the analysis results of monitoring hall, the developer operation and maintenance personnel can proactively diagnose the user’s equipment and network conditions, give users suggestions for improvement, and improve the quality of products and services.

The significance of the monitoring hall is to provide application developers with a meter that can accurately grasp every detail of real-time communication at any time, making the whole product experience more secure. So far, we have launched this tool and hope to make more quality data and more intelligent quality analysis services available to developers in the future.

P.S. developers can use the lobby monitoring tool for free after logging in to anyRTC (anyrtC.io). Welcome to anyRTC technology developers, technology enthusiasts in anyRTC public number more comments and suggestions. We will continue to improve for your convenience.