Anatomy of a Microsoft Teams Service
What You will Learn from Reading this Article
This article shows the topology of the Microsoft Teams service and how it contrasts to a normal SIP Trunking service connecting your PBX to the PSTN. The protocol interfaces used are specified.
The Microsoft Teams service is hosted in the Microsoft cloud. Your users’ endpoints/Teams soft-clients signal directly to this cloud using a mysterious protocol, which is also encrypted. You may have the opportunity to solicit feedback from users making Calls within your corporate enterprise. But for calls going out to the PSTN, it is more difficult to be assured that the quality is good.
Problems Caused
What are the common Microsoft Teams problems
Poor Teams quality Random Video Dropouts
Teams has made substantial improvements to its video conferencing capabilities, but it still feels like it lags behind other platforms like Zoom or Google Meet. For instance, the layout options are limited, and sometimes the video quality can drop unexpectedly, even on stable internet connections. The virtual background options, while functional, are still not as polished as those offered by Zoom, and there are often issues with audio quality or delay.
Sometimes, especially for international networks, Microsoft Teams phone line goes out of service and callers cannot reach that dialed number. Upon closer inspection, that user’s configurations have disappeared from the Teams portal. This results in the service and phone number having been wiped.
As Unified Communications products get more popular, the vendors get bigger and more remote, and the challenge to get instantaneous support becomes more onerous and the expectation for rapid bug fixes diminished. The biggest of these vendors is Microsoft. Teams is in the lead in terms of market share and also in terms of problems that impact your productivity. These include multiple problems with features such as broken Notifications, annoying chat bugs, read stuff that’s not marked as “read”.
The Long History of Teams
Microsoft states they have 320 million monthly active users on Teams as of October 2023. We all know Teams has been around for a while in various forms with different names. Microsoft acquired Skype in 2011 and later developed Skype for Business (SfB) in 2015, which replaced Microsoft Lync (do you remember that?). In 2017, Microsoft introduced Teams to move into the collaboration space and integrate more with Office 365.
MRTC Interface
Microsoft Teams uses a set of Media Real-Time Communication (MRTC) protocols, to signal directly between Teams Endpoints and the Microsoft Teams cloud. However, MRTC itself is not a published standard. Instead, it is a term Microsoft uses to refer to its real-time media transport mechanisms, which are based on established standards like:
- WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication)—Used for browser-based calling and meetings.
- RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol) & SRTP (Secure RTP)—Used for media streaming.
- ICE (Interactive Connectivity Establishment), STUN, and TURN—Used for NAT traversal.
- SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)—Used for call setup in certain scenarios.
MRTC is essentially Microsoft’s implementation of real-time media protocols, optimized for Teams and integrated with their cloud infrastructure. If you need official documentation, Microsoft publishes information about Teams’ media and networking requirements, but there is no standalone “MRTC standard.”
Microsoft Teams Direct Routing
A corporate enterprise may wish to retain their phone numbers (DID’s) without porting to Microsoft. To achieve this Microsoft offers two different Services:
- Microsoft TEAMS Microsoft Carrier Connect
- The call goes from a TEAMS client up to the Microsoft Teams cloud and then directly to the PSTN from TEAMS cloud.
- Teams Direct Routing
- The call goes from a Teams client up to the Microsoft Teams cloud and back to your Carrier or service provider via the direct routing link—see diagram above. This allows you to maintain your relations with your local carrier and retain your phone numbers without porting.
- This link uses standard SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) which is encrypted using mutually mutual TLS 1.3.
- Although TLS guards against “Man in the Middle” attacks and has “perfect forward secrecy”…
- This advanced form of encryption provides specific difficulties to voice technicians trying to monitor the connection for troubleshooting reasons.
Speak to Teraquant for advanced solutions for troubleshooting both the MRTC Interface and the Direct Routing Interface.
