How to Prepare Your Network

To prevent testing interruptions, school or district technology staff need to check network speed before test day and make sure testing rooms can support the number of expected test takers.

Assigning too many students to a room can delay testing and prevent answer submission.

Part 1: Network Speed

All students and testing staff must connect to your network on test day.

Choose Networks

Decide which networks should be used on test day. Make sure your choice meets test day needs:

• SAT Weekend test centers: Some students and staff will use personal devices or be unaffiliated with your institution.
• Schools: Depending on your policy, students and staff using personal devices or unaffiliated with your school may need network access.

Run the Speed Test

1. Choose a time when competing network activity approximates test day conditions.
2. Connect to one of the Wi-Fi networks that will be used on test day. If Wi-Fi won’t be used on test day, run the test with a wired connection.
3. Go to collegeboard.speedtestcustom.com and run the speed test. Results are provided in megabits per second.
4. Compare your results to the minimum speeds shown in the table below. For more help, go to Interpreting Network Speed Test Results.
5. Connect to any throttled networks and run the same test to make sure they also pass.

Insufficient Bandwidth

If a Wi-Fi network fails the speed test:

1. Compare your facility’s maximum bandwidth to the testing bandwidth requirements.

If you don’t know the maximum bandwidth, run the speed test using a wired connection to find out.

2. If your facility’s maximum bandwidth is high enough to support testing, run the speed test on other networks to find out if they’re faster than the network that failed.
3. If your maximum bandwidth is too low, minimize competing network activity on test day. For example, throttle or delay scheduled backups.
4. For SAT School Day and PSAT-related tests, advise the test coordinator to stagger start times or test different groups on different days.

Part 2: Room Capacity and Wireless Access Points

Assigning too many students to a single wireless access point (WAP) can delay testing and prevent answer submission. That’s why it’s critical to check the coordinator’s choice of testing rooms.

A WAP is network hardware that makes wireless connections possible.

Best Practices

• Choose rooms where digital tests were successfully administered in the past.
• Give the coordinator a list of recommended testing rooms with the device capacity of each.
• Recommend backup rooms that use a different WAP.
• Avoid rooms with inconsistent Wi-Fi coverage.

How to Determine Room Capacity

For each testing room, compare the expected number of test takers to the device capacity of the WAPs within range.

1. Identify the brand and model of each WAP within range.
2. Refer to the manufacturer’s best practices and device maximums for that model.
3. Make sure the number of students assigned to the room is lower than the combined maximums of all WAPs within range.
4. Assign even fewer students if environmental factors at your school could lower the room’s true capacity.

Part 3: Network Information for Test Day

Provide the coordinator with the network passwords they’ll need. Also, list backup testing rooms, if possible, and provide the phone number of a network manager who can help on test day.

Part 4: Network Configuration

1. Ensure that all necessary content filters, firewalls, and proxy servers are open.

2. Allow traffic to and from College Board on test day so student responses can be submitted. Use a wildcard at the root level: *.collegeboard.org
3. To enable Bluebook updates on Macs and iPads, allow traffic to and from the Apple App Store.