CKAD Bad experience with PSI Bridge exam - disconnected during exam and cannot continue

yale

I took the CKAD exam yesterday (29th November) at 10:00 CET and faced several issue with using the exam platform. I got issue with "Network Bandwidth Too Low message that shows you have a 0 KBPS connection, please follow the steps below" on the internet network with such a result https://www.speedtest.net/result/14005728555
Found the "workaround" https://helpdesk.psionline.com/hc/en-gb/articles/360054980551-RPNow-Network-Bandwidth-Too-Low but haven't found that had to restart the computer.

After two verification process including one DURING THE EXAM TIME after around 10 minutes and completed 3-4 questions I was disconnected. I couldn't continue the exam because for some reasone some processes cannot be stopped by Secure Browser - proctor and support where completely here not helpful. Once I restarted computer and spent long time waiting for verification I couldn't join the exam.

I have already reported the problem https://jira.linuxfoundation.org/plugins/servlet/desk/portal/15/TCCS-49920 and PSI support issued yesterday three tickets.

It is been more than 24 hours after taking the exam and my exam is still in status Grading in progress.

I still have one retake left but my voucher is valid till 6th December. I am well prepared but cannot join the exam which makes me totally upset. Please let me know how I can take this exam without technical issues and do it before expiration?

Thank you!

fcioanca

Hi @yale,

All exam-related issues are handled by the LF Customer Support team, not PSI. You already opened a ticket, and they will work with you once they get to it. Please keep in mind that tickets are handled one at a time, and they are currently experiencing a higher than normal volume of inquiries. As a result, response will take several business days. If needed, they will extend your expiration date, to allow you to take the exam. The 'Grading in Progress' status must be removed from the backend, and the Customer Support team will do that as well when responding to your ticket.
Thank you for your patience!

Regards,
Flavia

yale

Thank you @fcioanca for your quick reply. It is more than 48 hours and don't have any result or feedback. I need only have chance to schedule exam again and could only scope on questions regarding CKAD but not be disrupted by tech issues.

vkumar09

Today i took my exam .It was really bad experience. The psi disconnected all of a sudden nd i spent 5 hours with the technical team .Its very strange these guys observe us all the time while taking the exam but they dont know how to fix the issue .After 5 hours the proctor redirected to simulator nd what got …I got the msg dat exam completed click on end proctoring session .My 65 minutes was still remaining.It was my second attempt ,the same experience was in my first attempt. I am well prepared.We spent our hard earned money but these guys don’t understand value of time nd money .

fcioanca

Hi @vkumar09

If you have not done so yet, please open a ticket with the Linux Foundation Customer Support team at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org and they will assist you in rescheduling the exam.

Regards,

Flavia

vkumar09

I have raised the ticket

vkumar09

Below is the ticket number .TCCS-53870

I hope they would look into the issue. Im very much frustrated nd disappointed.In such a well known institution, such things r happening.Plz respect candidate money nd time

fcioanca

Due to a higher volume of inquiries at the moment, it can take several business days for the Support team to respond. Rest assured that they will assist you once they get to your ticket.

vkumar09

Mam ,my apologies to say ,but this is really disappointing.We dont even know how many business days it will take .If the organisation can’t troubleshoot the problem then why they conduct online exams .What would u do if u were at our situation.I have taken the leaves from my office now again the same thing .Very bad experience from the team

yale

Hi @vkumar09

The PSI platform is really disappointing but I managed to pass the CKAD exam at second time even I was disconnected again but returned to platform and using the rest of time I got 86 points (I will get more if only scoped on the exam but not on troubleshooting and verification). I suspend to take next exam on my list till I see some confirmations that this problem is resolved. I lost almost whole day on first approach and again 5 hours on second approach - but because I passed it is only bad memories.

BTW exam itself is very interesting and well constructed therefore I think that LF did good job, the problem is on PSI side.

My ticket was resolved within 48 hours I got another attempt and some advice regarding the exam. I booked the next exam on different day of the week (Sunday) and little bit later. I am located in West Europe (Austria) and just few days after me my friend also took the exam. We noticed that the connectivity issue happens when only one packet is lost during 'ping psionline.com'. Our internet connections are super fast and modern (Fiber), we have been connected through cable. We took exam on completely fresh system installation on our laptops. In case my friend he was interrupted only once 2 weeks ago. In my cases on first attempt it was around 5 times and on second attempt around ~3 times.

@fcioanca you need for sure investigate what caused that issue. People complains about, many people faced the issue like my friend once and never reported it. I think for some reason in case of lost packets PSI Secure Browser doesn't wait but immediately disconnects. We don't have any influence on that tech issues. The advice during taking the exam from PSI support "Change network connection for better" is really funny. I went through all steps from handbook before the exam. I checked my internet connection on suggested tool and got very good grade without any warnings.

I passed plenty of online exams during the covid and never faced such a issue till experience with Secure Browser version 2.6.2 (but I think that happens with older versions as well).

I would like say thank you to LF as I really cannot complain on your support and help.

vkumar09

Congratulations @yale on passing ur exam.In my case i was not able to take the exam after disconnection.These guys were keep on troubleshooting but not able to find the solution.The LF does not even have the customer support number .When the proctor redirected to my simulator ,only end proctoring session tab u could see there in the screen .These guys ensured me that my exam will resume from where it disconnected.PSI has customer support number but LF doesnot have .40 hrs have gone still the ticket status is in waiting state …only we have to wait.@yale ur problem gets resolved but there r many people who r facing the issue .Both LF nd PSI should look into this .PSI has customer support number these LF guys dont have customer support number .

ramuvalivarthi

Today while giving the CKAD exam PSI bridge suddenly kicked me out, I didn't end the exam,however I got email from LF saying that exam has been completed and grading is in progress. Its my second attempt and i was deeply disappointed with PSI.raise LF support ticket TCCS-60519

jcadong5

i wish linux foundation start looking permanently at this psi thing.

taking an exam is itself needs focus. instead, we have to setup our room (what if we dont have such a space), spend time during actual exam on plumbing matters (room setup, camera, showing proctor room, etc.), and what do we get when tech problems happens (and whatever issues can happen in the psi setup), we lose a day, sometimes, that is work leave lost. personal schedules affected. sigh.

inigokintana

I took the CKAD exam last monday May 16/2023 and yesterday May 20/2023 from Spain with a very good fiber service.

The experience with the exam was awfull both days with continuous latency problems on the PSI browser:

• in the vim editor , problem to recognize esc and :
• writing k run pod ... appearing 5 seconds after writing it
• copy pastes puting odd characters inside vim even though i did :set paste before
• any random key suddenly writting gggggggggggggggg or hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh like crazy during lines and lines ... messing all the work I was doing in the VIM editor
• unresposive mouse clicks simply to scroll up & down on the k create ingress name -h options in the terminal
• I did complain to proctors but they were just saying open a ticket on IT
• All these ruined my exam, I failed

I took KillerShell both practices and the Katakoda free ones, several times, where there are no latency problems, the contents are accurate and the working experience is nice and you can have with a big screen monitor with your laptop. In fact KillerShell practices are harder, in terms of knowledge, than the real exam on PSI browser.

Come on, I am an experience IT guy used to work with remote shells, and It was imposible to complete the exam for me. I have worker with servers in South/North America even China behind the "Great Firewall" and the latency experienced specially yesterday was ruining any changes to do a successful exam. I failed.

I do not care about CKAD my real goal is CKA but I am not going to take it meanwhile these latency problems with PSI browser are gone.

Please consider to have properly dimensioned infra in Europe for the PSI browser.

As mentioned before KillerShell and Katakoda are all fine, but the PSI browser sucks. Besides, many of us may be working from laptop, and not being able to have a decent big screen with the PSI Browser, makes the exam a battle against no proper technical conditions and not testing the K8S knowledge.

kbarratt

Hello @inigokintana,

We apologize for the inconvenience this issue has caused. The Linux Foundation Customer Support team will assist you in rescheduling the exam at a later time. If you have opened a ticket with them at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org, it can take several business days (no holidays or weekends) for the Support team to respond, especially due to the high volume of inquiries this time of the year.

We appreciate your patience while the team is working to assist you.

Regards,

Kassidy Barratt
The Linux Foundation Training Team

johanezja

@ramuvalivarthi said:
Today while giving the CKAD exam PSI bridge suddenly kicked me out, I didn't end the exam,however I got email from LF saying that exam has been completed and grading is in progress. Its my second attempt and i was deeply disappointed with PSI.raise LF support ticket TCCS-60519

Well, it seems like PSI bridge decided to play a little game of "Exam Hide and Seek" with you. Don't worry, I'm sure they just wanted to test your ability to handle unexpected challenges under pressure. And hey, receiving an email from LF saying that the exam has been completed and grading is in progress is quite the plot twist! It's like the exam had a mind of its own and wanted to finish itself. Let's hope that LF support ticket TCCS-60519 brings some resolution to this exam escapade. Keep calm and code on!

sthangaraj

TCCS-77318 PSI connectivity issue and wasted around 45 mins of my exam time:

I schedule my exam on 18th Aug 2023 evening MYT time, The secure browser itself took lot of time (20-25 mins) to connect, Then for the verification process it took around 15-20 mins,i get the chat support online but the person who troubleshoot did nothing rather than asking lot of questions about myself,system configuration etc.. PSI Guys- this information already available to you in my profile & you can scan my computer for getting the OS version etc., After chat support & 20 mins i am able to see the exam terminal but i notice the exam time was already started while doing the troubleshooting. The PSI person unable to reset my time & ask me contact linux support. Then again while doing the exam there is connectivity issue & same story repeat again. i spend around 3-4 hours time in the whole process and got only 70 mins for doing my exam. I raise compain to Linux about it and waiting. If you guys cant provide online exam then give me option to take exam in some center. CKAD itself took me 3+ months time for preparation & this experience is very bad. I am following up with Linux foundation on my case with the PSI ticket reference, PSI & Linux foundation have no collaboration here as i need to pass message from one party to other.

ychtourou

Same thing today, getting error network when take the ckad exam , After two verification process ,

yuvarajselva

I gave my exam on Sunday (24th Sept) and I had the worst experience of my life. Every character that I type takes minutes to load and the saddest part is neither the proctor nor the technical support were able to fix it for me.

I've complained multiple times but no one showed up and helped me. They're charging 395$ but they're not providing a good platform to take the examination.

kbarratt

Hi @yuvarajselva,

We are sorry to hear about your experience. Please open a ticket at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org and the Customer Support team will assist you.

Regards,

Kassidy Barratt
The Linux Foundation Training Team

gustavomoraes.ufrj

It was the worst exam experience ever. The provided virtual desktop does not work well and I really struggled to deal with the browser and the terminal. It really didn't work as it should, and I lost a lot of time only waiting for a response from the remote desktop. I don't know whether the reason is that I am based in Australia, but there was a lot of LAG and I hard a hard time to edit files and interact with the whole environment as well. The browser was very slow, almost unresponsive, so I had problems to perform necessary research. I have tested my local network before taking the exam, so it wasn’t an internet provider issue.

During the exam, I used a wired connection to my router, and I conducted an internet speed test (speedtest.net) before and after the exam, which showed no issues with my local provider. The download speed was around 50Mb/s, and the upload speed was around 30Mb/s, indicating that it was not a local issue. Additionally, I used my own laptop, for which I have full admin privileges, and there were no special networking configurations, firewall settings, proxies, corporate firewalls, or VPNs that could have restricted user access. Furthermore, the system was not performing any tasks that could have caused overhead during the exam.

I intend to attempt the exam again, as well as the others I purchased on Cyber Monday (CKA and CKS). However, I am concerned about experiencing the same issue. If the problem recurs, am I permitted to contact support during the exam? Can the proctor authorize this? Additionally, is it possible to test latency before the exam begins?

I felt I was harmed by the technical issues I faced. I would rather prefer if this exam could be provided as an in person mode, in a certified test center. I believe LF should start considering giving this option to it's clients.

It was my first time paying for a PSI proctored exam and probably the last. I definitely didn't like the experience. That brings stress and anxiety to someone who is about to have an exam. I would never recommend this experience to anyone.

I opened a ticket with LF support and they gave me a retake, since they confirmed the connectivity issues I had.

aalizadeh

Hi everyone,

I experienced the same issue on my exam. Disconnected 3 times for no apparent reason.

Contacted PSI support who recommended me to 'restart my router'.

Lost 50 mins in total due to id and room verifications.

Opened a support ticket more than 24 hours ago with no reply. Not even a simple we're busy and will get back to you.

Ticket: TCCS-101009

All you have to do is search up CKAD and PSI, all you get is bad reviews.

Wish LF would do something about this.

mstepien

Hi @aalizadeh,

We're sorry to hear you had a problem with your exam. We conduct thousands of exams every week and sometimes, despite our best efforts, issues can happen. We understand how frustrating this can be. Our Customer Support team will assist you with rescheduling your exam. It may take a few business days for them to get back to you, as weekends and holidays aren't included. Please be assured, they will reach out to you as soon as they can.

Best regards,
Magda
The Linux Foundation Training Team

nadhir58

PSI Bridge browser the worst thing i have seen in my life i took the cka exam in 2022 befor they launch the psi browser everything was ok but now i had 2 bad experience in 15days first one the psi brige disconnected for no reason i lost about 40 min so i could not complete the exam the second time the examinator launched the exame while the chat box was overlaped with the shell of the remote desktop i spent about 25 min trying to close the chat box because the views was overlaped , the terminal was so small i could not read the output a part of the chat box was hidden by the remote desktop view i could not read properly the examinator 's messages . exam conditions was awful i ended the exam session . i really was confused if it was a kubernetes exam of psi brige browser configuration exam . this desktop application is a real trap

mstepien

Hi @nadhir58,

We are really sorry to learn about the difficulties you encountered during your exam. Please reach out to our Customer Support team with details of what happened at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org, and they will be able to assist you.

Best regards,
Magda
The Linux Foundation Training Team

chatennekkanti

Hi @mstepien and Team,

My browser got disconnected and lost time due to the issue.
While rejoining the exam, the left top "button" that the proctor suggested was not showing.

While speaking with technical support from PSI, they suggested retaking the exam.
Just checking if there is any technical outage wrt to PSI browser on May 16th, 2024 around 8pm IST.

It would be great if case TCCS-106089 is looked at as a priority, as I'm planning to retake the exam within couple of days.

fcioanca

Hi @chatennekkanti

We apologize for the inconvenience this issue has caused. Please note that all support tickets are assigned and processed in the order they are received and it may take several business days (weekends and holidays are not included) for the Support team to respond.

Regards,
Flavia
Linux Foundation Training Team