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PeterFacey
Inspiring
September 6, 2011
Question

Adobe Connect dropouts talking to Adobe Support in India

  • September 6, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 1451 views

This may be the wrong place to raise this. I don't usually use Adobe Connect. But this week I've been spending hours on the phone to Adobe technical support in

India. They use Adobe Connect to see my desktop in an attempt to fix my problems (with

Adobe Creative Suite 5 as it happens).

What I found was that the Adobe Connect frequently experiences a network failure, causing the guy in India to no longer see my screen. He tells me this on the phone. I then have to wait for my Adobe Connect to notice that the connection has failed, and then go through the SHARE MY SCREEN dialogue again. This happens sometimes as often as once every ten seconds, but the connection sometimes lasts a minute or two.

Adobce Connect does pop up a little box that says something like "Network connection failure" and has a button to "troubleshoot" it (or Cancel the session), but pressing that has no effect.

The odd thing is that my internet service is pretty reliable and 4 Mbps. I have, for example, no problem downloading 50 MB files from the USA (I'm in UK). Unfortunately the Connect software tells me absolutely nothing about what has failed or how

Anyone know what the problem is? It's making support from India almost impossible.

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    1 reply

    A
    Anonymous
    September 6, 2011

    Yes, that indicator is simply advising that the connection between your PC and the Server has been severed. Either there was some disconnect on your end or on the server end or somewhere in between. That popup tries to reconnect to the Adobe Connect Server located in the U.S., Europe or Asia depending on where you reside. I suspect the support engineer was using a server in the USA and you are located in Europe and the latency along with anything going on on the line could have had some effect. Normally, you would be using a UK based server if you had an account with Adobe Connect. Hard to tell at this stage which server you were on. Next time, make sure the technician knows you are in the UK and request he/she use a UK based server which would improve things. He/she may not have known where you were calling from. If you send me your ticket number for the support call, I can have the technician make sure he uses a UK based server.

    It could have been a wireless network issue (too much interference or hub needs rebooting...all kinds of issues with wireless networks). It could have been your provider having momentary issues or it could have been any number of hops in between. The popup simply is saying the connection was interupted and it is trying again to reconnect the session.  Make sure you are using a wired ethernet connection to get the best reliable experience with any web conference solution.

    All web conference solutions require a solid connection because they are instant. All of these solutions are sensitive to any momentary interuption unlike any other product except maybe instant messaging systems that require all the time access/connection.

    Just for explanation, you really cannot compare downloading a 50 MB file with a web conference session because there are a whole lot of other thoings going on while sharing a screen. When downloading a file, many times packets are lost and re-transmitted with no communication back to the end user that a lot of the data was lost and re-sent. With web conferencing it's all or nothing. If a lot of packets are lost then you end up with latency issues and dropped sessions...again it gets into the quality of the connection and not the speed. Speed is inconsequential compared to the quality of the connection and how many hops you are going through.

    Sorry you had that experience. That is not normal. Many customers large and small use Adobe Connect for mission critical work every hour of every day without problem. But...it all gets down to the quality of the network and all vendors can and will have an issue like this if there is some network problem on their end or the customer end.

    Heyward

    hdrummon@adobe.com

    P
    PeterFaceyAuthor
    Inspiring
    September 7, 2011

    Thanks very much. I have emailed you.

    Just for the record: I'm not using any wireless networking; I think the guy from India probably was using a server in USA. It's a pity that between windows and Adobe Connect we can't get better diagnostic information: e.g. would be nice to know if problem is packet loss or latency. I was tempted to put wireshark on the network but as the support case involves doing things with windows I thought better of it.

    Just to re-emphasise one thing: clicking on the greenish TROUBLESHOOT button in Connect has no visible effect.

    A
    Anonymous
    September 7, 2011

    Well...understand that Adobe Connect is sitting at the application layer and expects the underlying network layer to be there all the time. When it does not detect the network it pops up the window trying to re-connect. The troubleshooter will try basic things to see what it can see wrong but it ultimately relies on the OS to handle the network layer. Connect is not a network diagnostic tool and just like it's competitors, is simply an application that does web conferencing. At least Connect has the green network indicator that advises the network speeds and latency. That is not common with other web conference tools I've used/sold before.

    The issue could have been anywhere in-between you and India and could have been a network outage at the server which is unusual but if an ISP has a line problem then there isn't much anyone can do. Web conferencing is entirely dependent on the internet and all the complexities of hubs/routers/lines, etc....

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