We have performed several tests, a common problem is noted during BYOD exams with SEB.
Several students under macOS (Big Sur, Catalina, High Sierra) experience disconnection of the WiFi network, sometimes several times in a row. Windows users do not have this problem.
In the same group, some macOS users may have difficulties while others do not, it is quite strange.
I did a test with my mac under Catilina, I did lose the signal when I moved away from the router at home, a window in SEB warned me of the loss of connection. But once back at home the mac resumed the signal and I could finish my exam.
Have you ever noticed this problem?
Regards
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This is definitely not a problem caused by SEB itself, it's caused by macOS or the Mac hardware (SEB doesn't interact with the WiFi interface, it just connects to the internet using a high level API).
But in my own experience, there can be compatibility issues of WiFi hardware with specific routers, sometimes because of capacity issues or signal strength. I experiences such issues more with iOS devices though, seldomly with Macs.
I would recommend to discuss this issue with your network engineers or technicians in case of on-site exams. In remote exam settings, students would make sure their WiFi connection is stable enough (and if not, change their location or router hardware).
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We are still investigating, last night another group of 90 students did a test, without Safe Exam Browser. The group was 95% macOS users, and there were no disconnections.
Our network team believes that it is not the signal that is at fault, the room is equipped with 7 antennas that can accommodate 200 clients each.
We also asked for more data from the SEB test students. We are trying to establish what the link might be.
Regards
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If those students used SEB 2.3 and you didn't change the setting Preferences / Security / "Use Assessment Mode (AAC) if available" to disabled (settings key enableAAC = false), then the new macOS Assessment Mode could theoretically have caused such issues, but it is only available from macOS Catalina 10.15.4 (and not on High Sierra, which is a very old macOS version btw.). If you're still using SEB 2.3, either update to 2.3.2 or disable that setting.
Another possible reason might be if those Macs have some kind of third party tool installed which somehow hooks into the macOS network system software (like a third party VPN, a anti-malware software which redirects network transfers to scan it for malware or a tool which displays some kind of UI like moving bars to indicate network data transfers, a network scanning tool or a software which controlls to which servers the Mac connects. SEB has to terminate any non-macOS software which tries to display some UI in the foreground. This would be noted in the SEB log files. You could send me the log files from affected Macs (located in the user's directory, at the path ~/Library/Logs/Safe Exam Browser/ ).
Are you at all sure that WiFi was disconnected? I guess you have the Mac menu bar enabled in your SEB settings and can check the Wi-Fi status in the menu bar item? There can be other network issues causing connection problems, and SEB is less tolerant to bad network connection or overloaded web servers, as it displays an error if subresources on webpages are not fully loaded (regular browsers usually ignore that, so there might be missing images on rendered web pages, which is not acceptable in exams).
SEB itself definitely cannot cause WiFi disconnects by itself, it would need to be related to some non-standard third party software installed on those Mac, which interferes with SEB. As I mentioned, SEB absolutely doesn't access network hardware or low-level network APIs and nothing related to WiFi networks. Also I never before got a similar issue report and we never observed something similar in our testing.
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Hi,
We have performed several tests, a common problem is noted during BYOD exams with SEB.
Several students under macOS (Big Sur, Catalina, High Sierra) experience disconnection of the WiFi network, sometimes several times in a row. Windows users do not have this problem.
In the same group, some macOS users may have difficulties while others do not, it is quite strange.
I did a test with my mac under Catilina, I did lose the signal when I moved away from the router at home, a window in SEB warned me of the loss of connection. But once back at home the mac resumed the signal and I could finish my exam.
Have you ever noticed this problem?
Regards
According to the data collected it is mostly Macbook pro.
This is definitely not a problem caused by SEB itself, it's caused by macOS or the Mac hardware (SEB doesn't interact with the WiFi interface, it just connects to the internet using a high level API).
But in my own experience, there can be compatibility issues of WiFi hardware with specific routers, sometimes because of capacity issues or signal strength. I experiences such issues more with iOS devices though, seldomly with Macs.
I would recommend to discuss this issue with your network engineers or technicians in case of on-site exams. In remote exam settings, students would make sure their WiFi connection is stable enough (and if not, change their location or router hardware).
We are still investigating, last night another group of 90 students did a test, without Safe Exam Browser. The group was 95% macOS users, and there were no disconnections.
Our network team believes that it is not the signal that is at fault, the room is equipped with 7 antennas that can accommodate 200 clients each.
We also asked for more data from the SEB test students. We are trying to establish what the link might be.
Regards
If those students used SEB 2.3 and you didn't change the setting Preferences / Security / "Use Assessment Mode (AAC) if available" to disabled (settings key enableAAC = false), then the new macOS Assessment Mode could theoretically have caused such issues, but it is only available from macOS Catalina 10.15.4 (and not on High Sierra, which is a very old macOS version btw.). If you're still using SEB 2.3, either update to 2.3.2 or disable that setting.
Another possible reason might be if those Macs have some kind of third party tool installed which somehow hooks into the macOS network system software (like a third party VPN, a anti-malware software which redirects network transfers to scan it for malware or a tool which displays some kind of UI like moving bars to indicate network data transfers, a network scanning tool or a software which controlls to which servers the Mac connects. SEB has to terminate any non-macOS software which tries to display some UI in the foreground. This would be noted in the SEB log files. You could send me the log files from affected Macs (located in the user's directory, at the path ~/Library/Logs/Safe Exam Browser/ ).
Are you at all sure that WiFi was disconnected? I guess you have the Mac menu bar enabled in your SEB settings and can check the Wi-Fi status in the menu bar item? There can be other network issues causing connection problems, and SEB is less tolerant to bad network connection or overloaded web servers, as it displays an error if subresources on webpages are not fully loaded (regular browsers usually ignore that, so there might be missing images on rendered web pages, which is not acceptable in exams).
SEB itself definitely cannot cause WiFi disconnects by itself, it would need to be related to some non-standard third party software installed on those Mac, which interferes with SEB. As I mentioned, SEB absolutely doesn't access network hardware or low-level network APIs and nothing related to WiFi networks. Also I never before got a similar issue report and we never observed something similar in our testing.