Video Calls Dropping or Freezing in the Meeting Room?
If the call connects fine but then drops, freezes or turns pixelated, the room's network connection is almost always the cause - not Teams or Zoom.
(A room that never joins the call at all is covered in our separate connection guide.) The single biggest fixable cause is the room running on Wi-Fi instead of a wired connection - the fixes below start there.
Work top to bottom - most common causes first
1. The room system is connecting over Wi-Fi instead of a wired cable
Drops are worse in busier periods or when the room's Wi-Fi signal is weak, and rooms with an actual network cable run to them rarely show the same pattern.
- 1Check whether the room's core unit (Teams Rooms PC, Zoom Rooms PC, Neat Bar, or other MTR appliance) has an ethernet cable plugged into it, not just Wi-Fi.
- 2On Neat devices, plugging in ethernet overrides Wi-Fi automatically - documented, guaranteed behaviour. Teams Rooms devices don't guarantee the same override, so if a room 'should' be wired but still misbehaves, open the device's own network status screen and confirm it is actually using ethernet rather than Wi-Fi, and check the cable is seated at both ends.
- 3If the room genuinely only has Wi-Fi, note it down: Microsoft's own guidance for Teams Rooms devices strongly recommends a wired network 'for greater stability and performance.'
- 4If you have to run on Wi-Fi for now, confirm the device is on the 5GHz band rather than 2.4GHz and shows strong signal (full bars) on its own screen.
- 5Flag any Wi-Fi-only room to IT or your AV partner as a candidate for a permanent network point.
If the room is already properly wired and calls are still dropping, the cable itself isn't the problem - move on to bandwidth contention and QoS further down.
2. Everyone's on a call at the same time and the network can't cope
Problems cluster around the same times each day, typically mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and ease off outside those windows or worsen when several rooms are in back-to-back calls.
- 1Note the exact time drops happen and whether other rooms or staff are also on calls at that moment.
- 2Check whether anything bandwidth-heavy is scheduled at the same time - Windows updates, cloud backups, large file syncs, or video streaming.
- 3Ask IT whether the office's internet connection is sized for the number of simultaneous video calls it now carries, not just general web browsing from a few years ago.
- 4As a short-term workaround, avoid scheduling large all-hands video calls at the same time as bulk downloads or backups.
If drops track the office's busiest hours regardless of what else is running, this is a capacity and prioritisation issue rather than a single room fault, and points toward QoS configuration (see below) or more bandwidth.
3. Wi-Fi interference or the room device losing (roaming) its connection
Most common on wireless-only room kit (soundbars, huddle cameras, wireless collaboration bars) or rooms far from the nearest access point; often worse near microwaves, other Wi-Fi networks, or thick or metal-lined walls.
- 1Check the signal strength shown in the room device's own settings screen - weak or fluctuating bars point to interference or distance from the access point.
- 2Note whether drops coincide with other Wi-Fi-heavy activity nearby, such as a training session bringing extra laptops into an adjacent room.
- 3Where the setting allows it, confirm the device is on 5GHz rather than 2.4GHz, since 2.4GHz suffers far more interference from other equipment.
- 4Log the pattern (time, duration, which room) for IT or your AV partner - persistent Wi-Fi issues normally need a proper site survey and access point placement, not a one-off tweak.
If signal looks strong and the pattern doesn't correlate with anything obvious nearby, this crosses into access-point placement and channel-planning work that needs an engineer with proper Wi-Fi survey tools.
4. Too many USB devices sharing one connection, or the room PC overheating
The freeze or blockiness is mainly on video rather than audio, it worsens the longer the meeting runs, or the room PC's fan is loud or the unit feels hot to the touch.
- 1Check what's plugged into the room PC or USB hub alongside the camera - speakerphone, extra webcam, USB extenders, dongles - and unplug anything not needed for that meeting.
- 2Where possible, connect the main camera directly to the PC rather than through a third-party USB hub or extender - Logitech's own Rally troubleshooting guidance is to disconnect USB devices not in use and connect the camera directly to isolate faults.
- 3Check the room PC or console's air vents aren't blocked by cabling, furniture, or built-in cabinetry, and that it isn't sitting in a warm AV rack with poor airflow.
- 4Restart the room PC or console - many freeze-related USB and driver glitches clear with a reboot.
- 5If the unit is visibly dusty or several years old, flag it for a hardware check.
If freezing continues after simplifying the USB chain and confirming ventilation is fine, suspect a failing camera, cable or PC component rather than USB contention - that's a hardware fault for an engineer to diagnose.
5. A loose, damaged or wrong-spec network cable
Drops are intermittent rather than constant, and wiggling the cable at the wall plate or back of the unit seems to affect it.
- 1Swap the patch cable running from the room device to the wall or switch for a known-good one.
- 2Try a different wall port or switch port if one is available, in case the port itself is faulty.
- 3Check the cable is a proper network cable - Cat5e minimum, Cat6 or better recommended - and not a cheap or visibly damaged lead.
- 4Reseat both ends firmly; a cable that looks plugged in can be sitting slightly proud of the socket.
If a fresh cable and a different port make no difference, the fault is more likely in the switch, the room device's own network hardware, or further upstream - time to bring in IT or an engineer.
6. The video platform itself is having problems
The issue affects multiple rooms or meetings, or people joining from outside the office too, and started suddenly across the board rather than in one specific room.
- 1Check Microsoft 365 service health (admin.microsoft.com/servicestatus) for Teams, or www.zoomstatus.com for Zoom, for any active incident.
- 2Check whether colleagues joining from home or other offices are seeing the same problem.
- 3If there's a live incident listed, there's nothing to fix locally - wait for the vendor's status page to confirm resolution before troubleshooting further.
If the status pages show everything green but the problem persists, it isn't a platform outage - go back to the network-side causes above.
7. The network isn't prioritising call traffic over everything else (no QoS)
Drops correlate with general office network load rather than anything specific to the room - for example, worse whenever a colleague starts a large download or backup elsewhere in the building - and happen across several rooms, not just one.
- 1This is IT or network-admin work, not something to fix from inside the room - flag it rather than trying to self-serve it.
- 2Ask IT whether Quality of Service (QoS) is configured on the office network. In plain terms, QoS tells routers and switches to treat live call audio and video like a priority lane, so it doesn't get stuck behind ordinary traffic such as backups or downloads.
- 3Microsoft publishes official QoS guidance for Teams covering specific port ranges and traffic-marking that needs to be applied consistently across client devices, switches and routers to actually work.
- 4Without QoS, network congestion produces exactly this symptom set: media packets arriving late or out of order, and packets being dropped altogether - which shows up on a call as jitter, freezing and pixelation.
QoS touches switches and routers across the whole network, not just the meeting room. If IT confirm it's already correctly configured end to end and drops persist, the cause is elsewhere - bandwidth, Wi-Fi, or hardware.
8. DNS, proxy or firewall interference disrupting the call after it connects
The call connects and joins normally, then degrades a few minutes in - particularly in organisations using a web proxy, SD-WAN, or a firewall that inspects traffic; sometimes shows up specifically during screen share.
- 1This needs IT or network-engineer access - it isn't visible or fixable from the room itself.
- 2Ask IT whether the room device or PC is being routed through a proxy. Microsoft is explicit that Teams Rooms devices do not support proxy authentication and must be exempted from it, since proxy interference can degrade or break a call mid-session.
- 3Ask IT to confirm the room's real-time call traffic isn't being forced through deep packet inspection or a VPN, both of which add delay and packet loss to traffic that can't tolerate either.
- 4Confirm DNS resolution for the meeting platform's domains is fast and reliable from the room's specific network segment, not just from general office PCs.
If IT confirm proxy exemptions and DNS are correctly set up and the room still degrades mid-call, the more likely cause is bandwidth, Wi-Fi, or missing QoS rather than proxy or DNS interference.
Vendor-specific quirks worth knowing
Microsoft Teams Rooms: Microsoft's official guidance strongly recommends a wired network connection for Teams Rooms devices and specifies a minimum of 10Mbps upload/download bandwidth per room. If Wi-Fi has to be used, Microsoft's own checklist includes prioritising the 5GHz band, enabling band steering, keeping wireless channel utilisation below 50%, and confirming signal strength of -60dBm or better between the room device and its access point.
Neat: Neat devices (Bar, Bar Pro, Bar 2) automatically use a wired ethernet connection whenever one is physically plugged in, overriding Wi-Fi - so a room that seems to be 'on Wi-Fi' but still drops is worth checking for a loose or forgotten cable. Neat's own support documentation strongly recommends wired networking wherever possible.
Zoom: Zoom publishes live platform status at www.zoomstatus.com (previously status.zoom.us), separate from Microsoft's service health pages. Worth checking directly if a Zoom-specific room is affected, since a Teams outage won't show there and vice versa.
Logitech: For Logitech Rally systems, Logitech's troubleshooting guidance is to disconnect USB devices not in use and connect the camera directly to the room PC to isolate faults. Logitech also documented a known issue where the Rally camera intermittently stopped sending video only when routed through the table hub, fixed in Rally System firmware 1.2.21 - so check the system firmware is current before replacing hardware.
When to stop and call an engineer
- ·You've confirmed the room is properly wired, the cabling is good, and USB or overheating isn't the issue, but drops continue - this points to network-wide QoS or bandwidth capacity, which needs IT or an AV engineer to configure properly.
- ·Multiple rooms show the same drop pattern at the same times of day - that's a shared network issue to fix once, not something to chase room by room.
- ·Wireless-only room kit keeps losing connection despite good signal readings on the device itself - this needs a proper Wi-Fi site survey and access point planning, not guesswork with a laptop.
- ·IT suspects proxy, firewall or DNS interference but can't isolate it - this needs network tracing beyond typical day-to-day IT troubleshooting.
- ·The room PC or camera shows physical signs of a hardware fault - won't cool down, USB ports failing, artifacts even when idle - stop troubleshooting software and get it assessed.
- ·A room only has Wi-Fi and repeated fixes aren't holding - the underlying answer is usually a permanent wired data point, which is cabling or install work.
We support all five major vendors - Neat, HP Poly, Logitech, Yealink and Cisco - and it doesn't matter who installed the room. Tell us what you're seeing and an engineer will take it from here.