Troubleshoot low-bandwidth scenarios for Teams

This article will give IT admins the best practices when dealing with low-bandwidth issues in Teams.

Numerous network elements can affect performance when working with Microsoft Teams.

• Low-speed internet connection for the school.
• Low-speed internet connection for one or more students.
• Times of the day when there's low bandwidth because of network usage in an area.
• Outages not local to the school or students, but affect performance.
• Issues with hardware that cause low-bandwidth issues.

Resolving low-bandwidth issues for IT admins

Some issues may only resolve with a narrow focus at the individual user level.

If bandwidth issues occur for many users or if actions taken at the user level haven't been helpful, school-wide action is the next step.

Meetings and video

Consider the actions below when dealing with meeting issues related to low network bandwidth.

Meeting video policies

Teams automatically scales meeting quality to a user's detected bandwidth. However, you can set further restrictions to preserve bandwidth.

Some restrictions you can set via policy include:

• Turning off video altogether so no one can use video.
• Limiting the media bit rate, which is set per-user.

For more policies you should set for meetings and video, read Meeting policy settings in Teams: Audio and video.

Screen sharing policies

In Teams, users can share their entire screen or individual windows.

Sharing an entire screen uses more bandwidth than just sharing a window.

• Restrict users from sharing their entire screen via policy.
• Instruct educators to only share applications, not their entire screen.

Learn about screen sharing policies at Meeting policy settings in Teams: Audio and video.

Dial-in number for meetings

It may be easier for some students to dial in to classroom sessions.

• Provide a dial-in number for Teams meetings as an alternative to attending a video meeting.

For more information, read Set the phone numbers included on invites in Microsoft Teams.

Low-bandwidth scenarios as an educator

Having educators troubleshoot bandwidth issues may be a better choice than IT action in the following situations:

• The problem is intermittent.
• There's a specific time of the day you can anticipate there being an issue.

For steps an educator can take to resolve bandwidth issues, read Use Teams for school work when bandwidth is low.

Low-bandwidth scenarios as a parent or student

Sometimes the bandwidth problem is on a student's side.

• Their home may not have access to high bandwidth.
• They may have many people in their immediate area also consuming bandwidth.
• There may be internet instability.

We've put together guidance in our Use Teams for school work when bandwidth is low article for parents and students.