System and method for improving audio quality during web conferences over low-speed network connections

A computer system comprising:

• one or more processors and one or more storage devices storing instructions that are operable, when executed by the one or more processors, to cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:
• transmitting, at a first transmit time point, a first probe packet over a network connection to a conferencing server immediately before transmitting a data packet over the network connection to the conferencing server, the first probe packet arriving at the conferencing server at a first receive time point;
• transmitting, at a second transmit time point, a second probe packet over the network connection to the conferencing server immediately after transmitting the data packet over the network connection to the conferencing server, the second probe packet arriving at the conferencing server at a second receive time point, the first and second probe packets being smaller than the data packet;
• receiving information encoding a first difference between the first and second transmit time points and a second difference between the first and second receive time points;
• and
• modifying, based on the first and second differences, a transmission parameter associated with data packets to be transmitted thereafter and over the network connection to the conferencing server, wherein the modifying of the transmission parameter includes:
• reducing total data bytes of the data packets to be transmitted thereafter and over the network connection to the conferencing server, in response to the first difference being smaller than the second difference.

A computer program product, embodied in a non-transitory machine-readable medium and including instructions executable by a processor, the instructions operable to cause the processor to perform functions including:

• transmitting, at a first transmit time point, a first probe packet over a network connection to a conferencing server immediately before transmitting a data packet over the network connection to the conferencing server, the first probe packet arriving at the conferencing server at a first receive time point;
• transmitting, at a second transmit time point, a second probe packet over the network connection to the conferencing server immediately after transmitting the data packet over the network connection to the conferencing server, the second probe packet arriving at the conferencing server at a second receive time point, the first and second probe packets being smaller than the data packet;
• receiving information encoding a first difference between the first and second transmit time points and a second difference between the first and second receive time points;
• and
• modifying, based on the first and second differences, a transmission parameter associated with data packets to be transmitted thereafter and over the network connection to the conferencing server, wherein the modifying of the transmission parameter includes:
• reducing total data bytes of the data packets to be transmitted thereafter and over the network connection to the conferencing server, in response to the first difference being smaller than the second difference.