Connection error with school computers

jerry_palardy

When opening an Onshape document with parts, my students get the following error: "Onshape is not connected. Your document is saved. Refresh the browser to continue working on this document."   This only happens when they are using their school computers.  The school's IT department doesn't know how to fix the issue.  Note that this occurs when students are at school or home.  So it is not (or not exclusively) an issue with the network firewall at school.  What TCP/IP ports or other permissions does the browser instance that Onshape is running in require?   Is there a list of web service URLs that Onshape calls from the browser?   Note that students can log in to Onshape and can create a document.  The issue starts to crop up when they add a part or attempt to open an existing document with parts.   

Thank you for any help that you can provide.

john_rousseau

Hi @jerry_palardy. There is either network gear or, more likely, security software on the student devices that is blocking websockets. We still use TCP 443, but some security software doesn’t like websockets. It should be an easy configuration change to fix. 

jerry_palardy

Port 443 is open.   

Here are the results of the system test:

Although the results are not great, should the system still work?   These computers were working last year, so I doubt that it is a hardware issue.

john_rousseau

It's not going to be a hardware issue. Most likely it's a firewall configuration issue in the school or security software installed on the student computers. Your school's IT department is going to need to look at any changes made since the machines last worked. You may need to have them contact the network gear vendor for some help.

jerry_palardy

Unfortunately, I don't have an exact one-to-one comparison from last year to this year.  Kids come and go.  They all have SurfacePros, but different models based on their grade and other factors.  Performance has always been slow, but this year everyone is getting that error.

IT seems convinced that it is the GPU, based on the test results of onshape.com/check.   Can you confirm it is not the GPU based on the given test results?

As previously mentioned, the computers do not work on any networks.  Home, school, hotspot...

Our IT department says nothing is being blocked on port 443 going to onshape.com.   Although they can run a network traffic analyzer on a laptop, they would be hunting and picking to figure out which domains and ports must be open.  It would be easier if we knew all the domains Onshape needs to access.