Microsoft Teams Kills all Network Connectivity During Calls

Anonymous
2019-10-28T14:37:04+00:00

Despite having a good WiFi or Ethernet connection, regardless of which network I'm on, if I join a Microsoft Teams call, all network connectivity stops working and teams simultaneously reports poor call quality and no network connectivity. All this while on an active call which I can see and hear. Here's a full description of symptoms.

Every time I connect to a Teams call:

  • Incoming call quality is ok. I can hear and see others.
  • Outgoing call quality is very poor. Others say my voice is breaking up.
  • If I unmute and speak for more than a few seconds, I am booted from the call.
  • If I stay muted I can stay on the call indefinitely.
  • I can share my screen just fine, I don't get kicked from the call.
  • Teams periodically puts up a warning symbol in the call controls reporting poor connectivity.
  • Teams puts up a blue banner stating that I have been disconnected from the internet.
  • (Intermittent) Teams puts up a big overlay on top of the whole app saying I have been disconnected
  • The call continues though all of this, including voice and video.
  • All other network connectivity is broken (e.g.: Browsers cannot load pages, network drives stop working)
  • Text chat features work fine (but not during calls, where they fail to work like all other network activity)

The instant the call ends, all the symptoms stop. I can access network resources again. My wifi connection is fine. I've tested using wired networking and encounter the exact same issue. I've also tried various audio devices and disconnecting all peripherals as longshot solutions. No dice. I don't have anything weird on my system as far as I am aware. Teams works fine on other machines but not on my primary laptop. 

This issue not only makes Microsoft Teams itself nearly unusable, it knocks my whole system offline for the duration of the call, which is incredibly frustrating.

I'm booting into Windows 10 on a 2015 MacBook Pro 13". I have all the latest patches for everything. I've seen two other people here who have what I think is the same issue as mine, but their question threads didn't have any solutions either, and now they're locked.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/microsoft-teams-always-appears-poor-network/1a9ef89c-e495-4e2c-b108-d5b8702a54a8

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/teams-kills-all-connections/6b9dd383-df31-4bec-957a-41ee478eab3e

Does anyone have any idea what could be going wrong? Any solutions? Any more info needed from me about my setup?

Microsoft 365 and Office | Subscription, account, billing | For home | Windows

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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  1. Anonymous
    2019-12-09T17:00:59+00:00

    Hi TNPI,

    Great to see your post. I have the exact same issues and its extremely frustrating and counter productive. All the symptoms you identify I have. 

    I work remote 75% of the time and this is troubling to this cause. My typical scenario is this:

    Start Computer.

    Teams starts.

    Login to VPN and open typical apps (Outlook, Browser and such)

    I can login to remote servers and do work and IM on Teams no problem. 

    I join a Teams meeting through the client and all hell breaks loose. VPN starts to drop and connect. Meeting attendees complain that I am breaking up. Experience is not good. When I end call, system goes back to normal. Sometimes I am required to restart Teams as everyone's status is colored white. One other issue not noted is that when I am VPN'd into the company network I cannot upload/download files to Teams which is another PIA. I must disconnect from VPN to get or put files. I am also not able to upload and download files from the Teams web client if the VPN is connected.

    When I use the web client it is better but I am not alerted when IM's come in and I miss messages. I prefer the desktop client. 

    As a side note. My wife also works remote has the same issue. Despite my attempts to tell her it is not our network, she insist something be done. So I've change our router with no change in behavior. We have 450 MB download speed from our provider (tested). 

    Both of our companies have migrated from Skype to Teams and for those that work remote this is a real issue. 

    Hope to see a resolve soon.

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  2. Anonymous
    2019-11-01T18:16:20+00:00

    Different person here.  I experienced the same exact issue from my desktop running Windows 10 Pro.  I connected to a MS Teams Webinar using the Web client from within Google Chrome, anonymous login.  It disconnected all other network connections like it was connected to a VPN and forcing all traffic over a VPN.

    I have no other VPN services enabled.  This is entirely something in the MS Teams connection and it makes-no-sense for a webinar or app within a web browser to unexpectedly just disconnect everything while it plays just fine.

    What the hell is built into Teams web client that would do this kind of thing without warning?  I'm strongly considering blocking Teams as malware across all the networks and clients I manage now, this is not expected behavior and Windows itself did not report a network change.

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  3. Anonymous
    2019-10-30T14:23:09+00:00

    Using a Macbook Pro should present no problem beyond using any other PC. Windows is running directly on the machine with no virtualization or complicating layers. It has working drivers for all my hardware. The Windows install is stock.

    I will take my issue to the Teams uservoice.

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  4. Vincent Choy 11,260 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2019-10-30T02:13:22+00:00

    Unfortunately you are using Teams on windows10 running on a Macbook Pro. This probably adds a layer of complexity to the problem you are facing and may limit full compatibility?  I am also not sure this might be a supported configuration by Microsoft as well ? If you have found others who face the problem perhaps you can report it to Teams uservoice?

    https://microsoftteams.uservoice.com

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  5. Anonymous
    2019-10-29T15:36:51+00:00

    The Teams app works fine on other machines on the same network. It only fails in this way on my primary work machine (i.e.: the machine where I really need to use it). There is no obvious problem with that machine either, until I try to use Teams.

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