Wife is a university Prof and they are letting her teach by ZOOM,..when she is on, I have to turn off any TV and not use the internet.

If I do she gets big drop outs. Since some of her students (one on one teaching) and they are in Asia etc. she has to be on in the evening, so no TV or internet for sometimes 4-11pm.

Look up a ping test. It will tell you how fast your internet is. Then you will know if you are getting what you pay for. You might try having her tie in to the modem /router with an ethernet cable that way the wifi is not an issue. Is there something you could download and watch? Get a dvr feature w your service. As a last resort get a wall mounted TV antenna so you can watch regular TV.

I have four teenagers learning via Zoom right now, while DH and I (sometimes) work from home. No issues once they fixed our cable. We have Spectrum 100mb service. No way should you be having issues, unless you're dial-up!

Don't assume that you are getting what you pay for when it comes to network speed. You need to do the speed test and it will vary at different times of the day.

Hollis,

Here’s my AMATEUR TECH advice:

-Comcast wanted to sell me higher speed internet. Geek Squad told me our local wires do not carry that higher speed so money wasted.

-ask Comcast and Best Buy about upgrading your modem. An old modem is slower and will cut out, AND not carry the current speed you are paying for.

-my new router is designed to handle 14 devices at once IF IF IF the incoming signal has enough umpf.

- Newer computer. It’s deductible as her professional tool. Does the college provide a computer?

-many colleges have free tech support desks. She should be talking to them.

-I no longer rely on wifi for Zooming. Had troubles. So I connected with hardwire.

-still had troubles until someone pointed out my COMPUTER was still using wifi and ignoring the hardwire. Flipped that switch on the edge on the laptop body. Not a hitch since!

-I learned that the wifi bars on my iPad or iPhone only show that I have a strong CONNECTION to the router, NOT an indication of a strong SIGNAL.

-I was Zooming tonight on my hardwired laptop, Wifey was Zooming on wifi with her iPad, and grandkids were on Amazon Prime, all from the same modem and router. (bribed them with tv to stay quiet during the meeting! Check out the new kids show AlienTV. Even funny for adults!)

PS

My two older laptops that I use for travel are useless for Zoom.

My Intel Core i3 woth added memory sticks does fine.

so it says

download 127.2

upload 11.6 mbps

protocol 1bv4

latency 32ms

My goodness, it sounds like you have very good dsl speeds!

I had ran into a very similar problem as your wife, and it seems to happen when lots of people are using the wifi connection in the same house.

How many students show up on your wife's screen? We have just about 45 students who all turn on their video in gallery mode.

That should be sufficient for zoom and internet surfing or netflix at the same time. Are you sure the choppiness is caused by your end? If the international link and/or the student's link are over loaded then she will still see choppiness on your end and there's nothing much you can do to fix it. Also, make sure you run the speed test in the evenings. It could change as significantly as more people get home and start surfing or watching movies on the local provider.

You could try a new wireless router or put her computer on the wired port on the back of the router to see if it helps. The next suggestion would be to see how much memory she has in her laptop, I would suggest 8 meg minimum and 12 would be better. As a last resort, you could enable the hot-spot on your phone for you to do surfing via cell servce while she's on zoom.

Also reboot the router. unplug it for about 15 seconds and then plug it back in.

Zoon takes very little internet download speed to run according to this:

Lots of advice above from people who are not IT people. They are the standard answers, but they likely don't apply here.

You have plenty of speed. Your latency at 32ms is a little high, but not unreasonable and certainly not enough to make Zoom drop out. Zoom uses very little bandwidth.

You have some other issue if it really happens that often. Do you provide your own router and/or wifi? Or are you just using the modem with a router and wifi built in from Spectrum?

- John...

Salernitana: That's not a DSL connection.

- John...

I should clarify that I think MikeA's response is also a good one.

- John...