Deductions

Deductions are where we move from understanding towards root cause analysis.

Deductions in rtcStats is where we look at the Observations, trying to figure out where are the areas worth investigating in the results.

The Observations are built on our know-how and understanding of WebRTC behavior and troubleshooting. Our main objective here is to collect as many interesting and useful observations as possible and provide it to you when you analyze the session.

What we found out is that there's a lot to observe in most WebRTC sessions. This led us to the creation of a Deductions layer, one which seamlessly integrates and works along the Observations.

The best visual manifestation of that is the Areas tag cloud shown next to the Observations in the Overview tab:

There, we score and weigh each of the observations found, looking at their domains - network, behavior, inbound, outbound, audio, video, peripherals, etc. By looking at all the information together, we can estimate with a high level of accuracy what areas are causing issues, making it easier for you to zero in on the root causes.

The various tags and their meanings are:

• inbound - issues related to the incoming streams. Often appears along with the network tag, indicating potential issues with the downlink network connection
• outbound - issues related to the outgoing streams. Often appears along with the network tag, indicating potential issues with the uplink network connection
• audio - root cause focusing on audio related problems
• video - root cause focusing on video related problems
• datachannel - data channel related problems
• configuration - issues center around the configuration of the peer connection. These occur a lot for iceServers configuration
• connectivity - problems with getting peer connections to the connected state and a stable state there
• behavior - there's a user behavior problem that will be important to investigate. It can indicate a user issue or a UX problem
• network - the problems appear to be coming or affecting the network
• peripheral - the peripherals are worth looking at. These are the camera, speaker, and microphone
• cpu - the CPU is exhibiting issues that are impacting the call quality
• security - what we're seeing may affect the security of the service. Check to see that everything is in order in that domain

A few things to know about Deductions:

• Deductions are only calculated on the rtcstats.com server itself. They are never calculated on rtcstats-js or rtcstats-server
• Deductions are available only in commercial plans. The free accounts don't support deductions