Genesys Cloud is a premiere platform for your telephony needs. To ensure that we can provide the best network connectivity worldwide, we have partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS). Because of AWS’s worldwide reach, network connectivity between your Local Area Network (LAN) and Genesys Cloud should be fast and trouble free. 

However, there can occasionally be a glitch in that connectivity path that results in network latency, which impacts call quality. Based on our troubleshooting experience, we have discovered that the majority of those glitches are located on the customer’s LAN. The glitch could be caused by an overloaded workstation running with the minimum system requirements for Genesys Cloud or it could be the result of an improperly configured firewall. To help you diagnose those glitches on your LAN, you can use the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment.

In this article, you’ll find detailed instructions on how to run and interpret the results provided by the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment tool.

How do I get the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment tool?

Genesys does not make the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment tool publicly available for download because we want our customers to have guidance from our support engineers when running it. To get the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment tool you must open a support case and request access. For more information, see My Support Portal.

What is the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment?

The first thing that you must understand about the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment is that it is designed to provide a moment in time snapshot of your LAN. As such, we recommend that you run it multiple times and on multiple systems in order to gain an accurate assessment of your LAN’s performance.

The results generated by the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment can vary significantly based upon when you run the tool and the network load at that time. If there are large variances in your network’s load, then you should run it when you believe that your network is busiest to ensure that the results indicate what you would consider acceptable performance for your planned load. Furthermore, the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment tests network connectivity between the local machine and AWS region you select. This tool generates outbound connections and does not require any inbound connections 

With that in mind, the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment looks at the network performance (bandwidth, jitter, latency) as well as the connectivity (firewall settings) and help you to understand potential issues.

If you have more questions, see the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment FAQ.

Run the tool

We recommend that you run the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment on various computers on your network and various times throughout a normal work day. 

To run the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment:

  1. Click the link in the email that you receive from Genesys.
  2. If prompted, download and run the BCS client.

The BCS client is a client side application that enables accurate VoIP, SIP, Route testing from within a browser.

 
  1. Select the correct AWS region.
  2. Enter your organization name.
  3. Click Start the Test.
    • As the test runs, you’ll see a progress animation.
  4. When the test is complete, you can look over the results using the information in the Understanding the results section as a guide.
  5. To save the results to a file, click Download Results.
    • The results file will appear as a .TXT file in your browser’s status bar. For more information, see the Compiling the Results section.

 

Understanding the results

When you run the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment, you’ll see the results displayed in two columns titled VOIP and Firewall. 

VOIP

The VOIP column on the left side displays the results of your overall network performance. Proper network performance is critical for voice calls, internal video calls, co-browsing, etc. 

Note: To be able to understand the VOIP metric descriptions, you need to have a basic understanding of what a network packet is.

When data is sent over a network, it is divided up into multiple small units called packets. Along with the data, each packet contains control information that essentially identifies the data. More specifically, control information provides the source and destination network addresses, sequencing details, and error detection. The source and destination network addresses are self-explanatory. The sequencing details are instructions on how the packets should be reassembled and the error detection identifies corruption in the packets. There are many other very technical pieces that make up a packet’s control information, but as far as the Genesys Cloud Network Assessment goes, these are the three main pieces of information that you need to understand.

Measurement Expectation Description

Up Jitter

Down Jitter

The up and down jitter metric should be less than 30ms.

If you see jitter metrics that are consistently higher than 30ms, then you need to take a closer look at the amount and type of traffic on your network.

Jitter is a variation between the time when packets are sent and when they are received. When sending, packets are evenly spaced and flow in a continuous stream. Due to network traffic, the packets can become unevenly spaced and the flow can be inconsistent. The receiving end compensates for this by buffering the packets and then passing them on in an evenly spaced continuous stream.

Up Packet Loss

Down Packet Loss

 The up and down packet loss metric should be less than 1%. When packets fail to reach the destination due to heavy network traffic or total corruption, the network must resend the data. This impacts overall network performance.
Packet Discards The packet discards metric should be less than 5%. When the jitter buffer exceeds is limits, the buffer discards any additional packets.
Packet Order The packet order metric should be 98+%. When packets travel over a network, they may take different routes and therefore arrive in a different order than they were sent. This can be compensated by jitter buffers as long as the packets arrive quickly enough to be re-sequenced and do not have to be discarded.
Round Trip Average Time The round trip average time metric should be below 150ms.  The round trip average time measures the latency between the selected Genesys Cloud AWS region and your location. 

Upstream MOS Score

Downstream MOS Score

 The MOS score metric should be 3.6 or higher. The MOS scores provide a range between poor and excellent voice quality. The MOS score is based on all the network performance measurements and will  incrementally decrease as the other other measurements deviate from the recommended values. 

Firewall

The Firewall column on the right provides a simple Pass/Fail test on your firewall. All of the ports listed in this column must be open on your firewall in order for Genesys Cloud and your network to communicate properly.

All ports, with the exception of Port 53 and Port 19302, should be marked with a green check and be identified as passed.

Notes:

Port 53 is used by DNS and is usually flagged with a red x and identified as failed. This is common and nothing to worry about.

Port 19302 is used by STUN and is optional and may be flagged with a red x and identified as failed. If you are not using STUN, then this is nothing to worry about.

If any of the ports, other than 53 or 19302, are flagged with a red x and identified as failed, you will need to open those ports on your firewall. For more information, see:

Compiling the results

After you run the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment and download the results, you’ll want to add the results in an Excel spreadsheet You’ll want to do so for each computer on which you run the tool. (If there are multiple issues, having all the data in a spreadsheet will help Genesys Cloud Customer Care more efficiently troubleshoot the problem.) You can download an Excel spreadsheet template here. 

Note: The spreadsheet template contains sample entries so you can see how to compile your data.
  1. When assessment results appear in your browser’s status bar, open the .TXT file.
  2. Press CTRL-A to select all the results data in the file.
  3. Press CTRL-C to copy the data to the clipboard.
  4. Access the Excel spreadsheet template.
  5. Press CTRL-V to paste the results data in the spreadsheet. 
Tip:

To make collecting the data from the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment as easy as possible, consider using a USB flash drive. 

  • On the drive, save a link to the Genesys Cloud Network Readiness Assessment and save the Excel spreadsheet template.
  • When you get the assessment results, save the .TXT file with a unique name on the drive
  • Add the results data to the spreadsheet. 

That way, when you finish you will have everything in one place.