Network Assessment Tool Quick Guide

Network Assessment Tool

The Microsoft Teams Network Assessment Tool provides the ability to perform a simple test of network performance and network connectivity to determine how well the network would perform for a Microsoft Teams call. The assessment tool tests both required port validation and media quality validation. The tool should be running on Windows machines, either laptops or PCs located on client subnets targeted for testing.

• It is recommended by LoopUp that the port connectivity checks, and the media quality report shown below be carried out on all company sites to verify the overall network performance and compliance.
• Once the media quality report is generated the file can be renamed with the site designation and forwarded to the LoopUp project team for verification.
• It is also recommended that this tool is ran whenever any network configuration changes are made on a site to verify no media quality issues are introduced.

Windows PC Configuration Requirements

To ensure we test a clean uninterrupted media stream to Skype Online or Microsoft Teams, the test PC’s should be these minimum requirements. If the following requirements are not met, results will be skewed and produce false results.

• Download and install the Network Assessment Tool
• Windows updates disabled
• Sleep mode disabled
• PC should be idle with no users using the PC during testing
• PC can be locked but not logged off during testing
• AV scanning disabled

Port Connectivity Checks

The Network Assessment tool can run connectivity checks to ensure all required outbound ports to Microsoft Teams are open. If the connectivity checks report blocked ports, the ports must be opened on the firewall before running the media quality part of the Network Assessment Tool.

Open a command prompt or PowerShell window and run the following commands

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Teams Network Assessment Tool\"
NetworkAssessmentTool.exe

The tool will run through the initial checks and show the outcome on screen (as shown above), the tool should complete the task after around 30 seconds to 1 minute.

Media quality report

To get a more detailed report an additional step can be carried out, by adding the /qualitycheck switch to the network assessment tool from the installation folder.

cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Teams Network Assessment Tool\"
NetworkAssessmentTool.exe /qualitycheck

This will carry out a more detailed check by opening a media stream to simulate Microsoft Teams calls every 5 seconds for a set period.

Once completed a report will be produced showing the collected data, this report can be found in the following location:

C:\Users\<account used to run the application>\AppData\Local\Microsoft Teams Network Assessment Tool\<date & time>_quality_check_results.csv

The tool can be stopped at any time by pressing Ctrl+C.

By default, the media quality checks will run for 5 minutes (300 seconds), this value can be changed by opening the network assessment tool configuration file located in ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Teams Network Assessment Tool\NetworkAssessmentTool.exe.config’ and changing the following key:-

<add key="MediaDuration" value="300"/>