Problems with Chromebooks signing in - Suggestions please

[robjduk]

Morning,

 

My school has been using Chromebooks for years now and everything has been fine until the past 2 months where I have heard some grumblings about them not signing in or once they are in, refuse to load any sites.

 

Now it turns out this is quite an issue site-wide but why would anyone report this to IT eh? I've visited some rooms and witnessed the issue, all the while keeping an eye on the closest access points (Meraki) and the load on the switch (HP/Aruba), and nothing much of interest is going on.

 

I've logged support calls with my broadband supplier and we seem to top off at about 200mbps of our 300mbps so that does not seem to be the issue while extension wise, I removed the smooth wall authentication one in case that was the issue while the only other things I push out are classroom and Gmail links for the taskbar.

 

My suspicion it is Smoothwall related somewhere up the chain (controlled by my supplier) but wanted to ask everyone if there is something I may have missed that can cause this trouble?

 

I've been through the profile cleaning of every Chromebook from http://www.edugeek.net/forums/cloud-services/224141-size-user-profiles-google-enterprise.html and set all users to not save data on logoff which I understand can add to login time a little but not to the extent 15 freeze (out of 30) for 10 minutes.

 

Any suggestions are welcome.

 

Thank you

Edited October 7, 2021 by robjduk

[j224]

We have had issues like this in the past, but not recently. It was definitely filtering related but I wouldn't be able to tell you exactly what the fix is because it's managed by a 3rd party.

[robjduk]

This is my suspicion. This morning we have 7 classes all working fine since I removed the Smoothwall client. I'll give it a few days and put it back to see if that's ok. I'll never prove it and honestly, I don't understand it fully as its setup elsewhere but I doubt Google services like their SSL being played with.

 

Fingers crossed that was it but won't rule out other options.

 

I've restricted Chromebooks to 25mbps each in case that was causing grief too but they have been working for years with no issue.

Edited October 7, 2021 by robjduk