Zoom with an intermittent internet connection

[BenR]

I sometimes use zoom when the internet connection will drop occasionally.  It can drop for 10 to 30 seconds and then come back.  After about 20 seconds, Zoom closes the app.  It restarts and reconnects.  This takes about another 30 seconds and does some annoying things - steals focus, resets the screen layout, and when running with multiple monitors opens the app on a different monitor.   When I use Webex, it tolerates the drop-outs with far less disruption.  It looks to me like the timeout value it uses for lost connection before  it decides to restart is much longer.  This makes the experience better.  

Is there any way to set the timeout value for the internet connection to be longer?  30-40 seconds would be a lot better in this case.   Not all the world has gigabit fiber and dodgy connections are a reality many places.  

Thanks

[RN]

Hey @BenR welcome to the community! I can't say off the top of my head that there is any configuring of Network time-out values with Zoom. Here is some documentation on Network and Firewall specifically the KB on Limiting network bandwidth maybe what you're looking for! 

Can you share a little bit more as to how your network is? Curious why your network times out so often? 

[BenR]

Thank you for the information, that could be useful in some situations. However the post is not about bandwidth but about connection reliability.  The two often go hand in hand.  Zoom does pretty well by default with limited bandwidth.  The issue I explained is that the connection timeout is a bit too short for some connection scenarios.   Is there a setting to change this so that, for example, zoom waits for 40 to 60 seconds before it closes the app and tries to reconnect?      What about setting it so the screen layout is preserved across sessions?   

If there isn't, this would be a good thing to add. 

[BenR]

Several network scenarios that can cause intermittent connections:

1. Using a mobile connection while moving

2. Using a network connection while not using some places

3. Using a Wi-Fi network that is heavily loaded and/or when you have a lot of users in the same physical area (when interference and/or traffic load cause the AP to drop connections). This is common when it's a public network e.g. hotel, airport, etc. at times when a lot of users are present.   

4. Certain times of day when the ISP routers are overloaded 

Bandwidth reduction can help in some of these scenarios when the connection is stable but slow - which will happen in some of the above if the network is well designed and configured (but sadly this is not always the case).   Others like the mobile case are I know asking a lot, but I have to do it a lot.  In another meeting service I sometimes use, the connection timeout can be set to be longer which shortens the recovery time when the connection comes back by not having to wait for the app to restart and not dealing with the annoying bits about having the app restart.  It would be a great feature to have!