question

Bob Scullin avatar image
Bob Scullin asked Drew Leja - IT Ops x393 commented

High CPU utilization with RingCentral App

Hello. We are a new RingCentral customer, cutting both phone and video conferencing to RC around 2 weeks ago. RingCentral phone service has been solid and exactly what we were expecting. However, the video meeting functionality (RingCentral Video) has been so next so unusable. Around 20% of our users watch their CPUs max out in RingCentral Video meetings, leading to broken audio and video to the point the meeting must move to another service. These very same laptops have no issue with Zoom, Teams, GoToMeeting, WebEx, and other competitors. These laptops all meet RingCentral's system requirements with some even being as new as 1 months old, sporting i7 processors and 16G of RAM.

RingCentral support on this issue has been close to non-existent. Maybe I'm being unfair to support and they are furiously working on it, but communication is slow.

Are other having similar issues?

meetingsvideo
36 comments
1 |3000
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 8 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 1.0 MiB each and 10.0 MiB total.

jessica-community-moderator avatar image jessica-community-moderator ♦♦ commented ·

Hi Everyone,

The product team is currently looking for customers interested in beta testing RCV CPU Optimization in the RingCentral app, desktop version. If you are interested, please comment below. We'll be using your community profile email address to follow up, so if this is not your preferred email or the email attached to your RingCentral account, please indicate what email to use. Thank you!

2 Likes 2 ·
Chirag Shukla avatar image Chirag Shukla jessica-community-moderator ♦♦ commented ·

@Jessica-Community_Moderator, we'd be happy to test. We are on RCM but we have one computer that we have put aside to test with RCV. @Rocky Long from our team can do the testing.

1 Like 1 ·
Rocky Long avatar image Rocky Long Chirag Shukla commented ·

Hi @Jessica-Community_Moderator - Yes, please add me to the list of testers.

Thank you

1 Like 1 ·
Joshua Abts avatar image Joshua Abts jessica-community-moderator ♦♦ commented ·

@Jessica-Community_Moderator I would absolutely love to test any fix to make video useable on a large number of our systems!

1 Like 1 ·
Bob Scullin avatar image Bob Scullin jessica-community-moderator ♦♦ commented ·

Yes, we have a small team which would be happy to help!

1 Like 1 ·
Show more comments
Bob Scullin avatar image Bob Scullin commented ·

Thanks for the detailed information Craig. We too have a ticket escalated up to engineering, and our sales team involved. We heard back from our tech that RC released version 21.1.30 yesterday which should help with the CPU load issue, but initial testing with a small group shows no distinguishable change.

Troubleshooting across a number of machines, we thought there may be a correlation between those with high CPU loads when sharing video / screen shares and older DisplayLink drivers. Updating this driver have no impact.

We have seen better results using the web app, however the overall user experience is impacted by the interface and browser gotcha's such as enterprise policies, mic and speaker permissions, notifications, and switching mics and speakers.

1 Like 1 ·
Chirag Shukla avatar image Chirag Shukla Bob Scullin commented ·

Our observations are similar to yours. We are on `Version: 21.1.30.436 Web, 21.1.30.748 Windows` and are still seeing sustained CPU spikes.

0 Likes 0 ·
Chirag Shukla avatar image Chirag Shukla Bob Scullin commented ·

@Bob Scullin have you had any resolution to the RC Video issues? We are seeing it on isolated machines and have found only one correlation. Lenovo Thinkpad T470 is the common factor across the issues. So, we have asked more staff members to report issues and we'll be testing T470 vs. another model to see if if the issue is model-specific.

0 Likes 0 ·
Joshua Abts avatar image Joshua Abts Chirag Shukla commented ·

I'll echo this -- we also are seeing these exact same issues and while a bit sporadic we have also identified this is primarily happening on users with T470 laptops.

I have also noted that it is primarily when enabling video that we see the most issues. The other issues are there from time to time depending on user, but I have a T470 personally and the moment I turn on my video during a meeting, the experience goes terrible. Turn it off and everything is back to functional/useable.

0 Likes 0 ·
Joshua Abts avatar image Joshua Abts Bob Scullin commented ·

I am about to place a support ticket, as we are experiencing basically identical symptoms and issues. Wondering if anyone has an update on their tickets or could provide reference numbers so we can get these all correlated and hopefully work towards a collective solution?

0 Likes 0 ·
Chirag Shukla avatar image Chirag Shukla commented ·

@Bob Scullin What's the make and model of your laptops? We have Lenovo Thinkpads: T-470, T-480 etc. with i5 processors and 8 or 16GB memory and all systems using SSDs.

0 Likes 0 ·
Bob Scullin avatar image Bob Scullin Chirag Shukla commented ·

All Dell Latitudes: i7 processors, mostly 16GB RAM (some 8GB), all SSD. The laptops range from 3.5 years old to 1 month old.

1 Like 1 ·
Adam Staub avatar image Adam Staub Bob Scullin commented ·

Do most of the laptops have an integrated Intel GPU?


0 Likes 0 ·
Show more comments
Chirag Shukla avatar image Chirag Shukla Chirag Shukla commented ·

@Bob Scullin You had mentioned that one of your team members has a computer with i7 process and has RC Video related issues. What's the processor model and speed? I am trying to understand whether the processor is i7 with dual core or quad core.

0 Likes 0 ·
Bob Scullin avatar image Bob Scullin Chirag Shukla commented ·

Sorry for the slow reply.

Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7600U CPU @ 2.80GHz 2.90 GHz
Installed RAM 16.0 GB (15.9 GB usable)
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

We ended up migrating the trouble users to RC Meetings (off RC Video).

0 Likes 0 ·
Show more comments
Chris Leon avatar image Chris Leon commented ·

@Jessica-Community_Moderator

I was told to reach out to you about the beta version of the software with the CPU optimizations, as we are having a couple problems on our end if you can please reach out to get us on that version.

0 Likes 0 ·
Chirag Shukla avatar image Chirag Shukla Chris Leon commented ·

@Chris Leon and @Jessica-Community_Moderator , just FYI, we tested the beta version and it is still not resolving our issue. Yes, the CPU is not as pegged as before so that is good but it seems like audio and video can get really choppy. The person from RC working with us seemed to be on the right track that antivirus software may be inspecting RC packets aggressively, causing the choppiness. I believe Google uses the same underlying standards that RC uses for video but Google meetings' packets may not be as aggressively inspected. That's our learning from the beta version so far.

0 Likes 0 ·
jessica-community-moderator avatar image jessica-community-moderator ♦♦ Chirag Shukla commented ·

@Chris Leon I've reached out to the lead for the beta to see if they are still accepting users. I'll let you know when I've heard back from them.
@Chirag Shukla Thank you for sharing this feedback, I've forwarded it to the beta lead.

0 Likes 0 ·
jessica-community-moderator avatar image jessica-community-moderator ♦♦ Chris Leon commented ·

Hi Chris, I confirmed that CPU optimization is currently in production. Please ensure you are on version 21.3.10 or 21.3.20 of the desktop app.

0 Likes 0 ·
Greg Vermilion avatar image Greg Vermilion commented ·

@Jessica-Community_Moderator When did CPU Optimization go into production? We're experiencing general application crashing in our VDI environment for the last 6-7 days and noticed there was an update mentioned on 8/13. We do have a case open, so just need to know if that is when the CPU Optimization was rolled out.

0 Likes 0 ·
jessica-community-moderator avatar image jessica-community-moderator ♦♦ Greg Vermilion commented ·

July 2021. Should be versions 21.3.10 and 21.3.20.

0 Likes 0 ·
Show more comments

2 Answers

Chirag Shukla avatar image
Chirag Shukla answered

For those following this thread, if you have the ability to give your users a computer with at least 8th Generation quad core processor like i5-8250U or better (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_processors), your RC Video experience will be equivalent to or close to Zoom when video is ON and your screen sharing is ON also.

RC Meetings, Zoom etc., on the other hand, will work just fine on older processors with 2 cores.

1 |3000
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 8 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 1.0 MiB each and 10.0 MiB total.

Chirag Shukla avatar image
Chirag Shukla answered Chirag Shukla edited

Recommendation (not an answer)
We have talked to support and they have escalated it up to engineers. RingCentral has engineering ticket open as well. We have also talked with RingCentral's sales team who sold us the software and they are willing to help as well. We are receiving help, and we appreciate it, but we don't have a solution just yet. I'll encourage you to engage your sales team and continue to talk to support team at RingCentral

Our issues
We are a new customer as well and we also have challenges with RingCentral Video conferencing similar to how Bob described. We have fewer issues with phone audio. We have more issues with RingCentral Video.

We do have pockets of very significant issues with RingCentral Video - CPU spiking to 100% and staying there, audio breaking up as soon as screen is shared, Seeing `Shared screen is minimized` message when sharing a screen, audio breaking up when network traffic is generated while on screen share etc. Not everyone sees these issues, which makes it harder for us to troubleshoot. Some users notice this issue consistently. Some users have no issues if they used app.ringcentral.com instead of RC desktop app to conduct conference; while acceptable, using web app changes user experience. We don't want users to flip-flop between web app and desktop app.

How the issue impacts acceptance of RingCentral
RingCentral Video's substandard quality compared to competition is inhibiting wide-spread use of RingCentral for unified communication. Staff who are external-facing are reluctant to use it if they face a challenge with RingCentral video conference - such as CPU usage, audio breaking up, shared screen is minimized issue, and more. This challenge is making our IT team's job harder.

The cool features of RingCentral can be overshadowed rapidly if users keep on facing RingCentral Video conference. The longer the issue stays unresolved, the fast the confidence in this good product will erode and the harder it will be for our IT team to regain staff's interest in RingCentral. We see RingCentral as a promising tool, but this video conferencing issue is certainly a thorn - especially in this day and age when video conference meetings are prominent than ever before.

1 |3000
Toggle Comment visibility. Current Visibility: Viewable by all users

Up to 8 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 1.0 MiB each and 10.0 MiB total.

Work together.
From anywhere.

Team messaging, video meetings
and phone - all in one app.


Get the new RingCentral app