Challenging environments
Exams that work when the connection doesn’t
Over the years, delivering high-stakes exams in the toughest conditions has become a Synap speciality — low bandwidth, unreliable power and networks, high-security estates and locked-down devices. Where other platforms fall over, we keep candidates in the exam.
- 95% less bandwidth
- Drop-tolerant
- Global regions & CDN
Proctoring bandwidth
Up to 95% lessWebcam snapshots
Periodic images, not a video stream
Screen recreation
Your screen rebuilt, not streamed
Dropped at 09:14 — auto-resumed, no work lost
Trusted by professional organisations, awarding bodies, and universities worldwide
Our speciality
Built for the real world, not ideal conditions
Most assessment platforms assume a fast, stable connection and a modern, open device. Huge parts of the world don’t have that — and a high-stakes exam can’t simply fail because the network did.
We’ve spent years solving exactly this. From load-shedding in South Africa to rural connectivity and locked-down public-sector networks, Synap is engineered to keep exams running where conditions are against you.
Platforms built for ideal conditions
- ✕ Full-video proctoring, always streaming
- ✕ Break the moment the connection drops
- ✕ One rigid configuration for everyone
Synap, built for the real world
- Proctoring that sips bandwidth
- Tolerant of drops, dips and load-shedding
- Rules you dial to the scenario
Where we’re at our best
The conditions we’re built for
Different places, same problem: the environment fights the exam. We’ve delivered in all of them.
Developing-world connectivity
Unreliable internet, persistently low bandwidth and force-majeure events like power cuts and load-shedding.
Rural & remote locations
Developed-world sites with patchy coverage and a reliance on mobile data over fixed connections.
High-security networks
Public-sector and government estates with strict firewalls and restrictions — from health services to tightly controlled national networks.
Corporate restrictions
Private-sector environments locked down by IT policy, proxies and managed devices.
School & institutional limits
Education estates with content filtering, managed machines and limited local bandwidth.
The breakthrough
Proctoring that sips bandwidth
Synoptic Proctoring has a mode that uses up to 95% less bandwidth than typical tools. Instead of streaming continuous video, it takes periodic webcam snapshots and digitally recreates the candidate’s screen — rebuilding what they see without ever streaming a screen video.
Because proctoring is hardwired into the test engine — not a separate bolt-on — the two talk to each other. They’re aware of connectivity issues as they happen, and share a strategy for handling them, so a dropped connection never means a lost exam.
Webcam snapshots, not video
Periodic images capture integrity at a fraction of the data.
Screen recreation
The candidate’s screen is digitally rebuilt, never streamed.
Wired into the test engine
Proctoring and exam engine share one connectivity strategy.
Drop-tolerant
Intermittent drops are absorbed; work is saved and resumed.
Engineered for the unreliable
Resilience at every layer
Low-bandwidth proctoring is only half of it — the whole platform is built to keep going when conditions don’t cooperate.
Drop-tolerant delivery
Exams absorb intermittent connection loss, auto-saving continuously so candidates resume exactly where they left off.
Rules you can dial down
Proctoring and exam rules are flexible and can be relaxed per user or scenario, so requirements never lock out candidates who can’t meet them.
A short dependency list
A deliberately small set of third-party tools keeps our subprocessor and whitelist requirements short — easy to approve, with fewer things that can fail.
Regional hosting, no single point of failure
Regional hosting options, an architecture with no single point of failure, and the ability to scale rapidly with demand.
Global CDN with acceleration
A global content delivery network with transfer acceleration serves media quickly, even to distant or constrained locations.
White-glove setup
Our team’s hard-won experience is on hand — consultancy and white-glove support to design and configure exams for your exact conditions.
Proven in the field
How the University of the Free State kept 850+ students in the exam
Facing frequent load-shedding, low bandwidth and expensive mobile data across South Africa, the UFS Faculty of Law turned to Synap after other providers couldn’t accommodate their conditions. We built low-bandwidth proctoring and drop-tolerant delivery around their needs.
- 85%
- First-attempt completion, despite widespread connectivity disruption
- 850+
- Law students, across three campuses
- 8,000
- Exams delivered in a single year
“I am never going back to writing a paper-based exam, and I will not use another examination provider.”
Part of one platform
However and wherever you deliver
Challenging-environment delivery is one part of Synap. Combine it with the rest of the platform, or explore the full overview.
See the full online exam platformTough conditions?
Let’s make your environment work
Book a call and we’ll walk through your bandwidth, devices and network constraints — and show you how Synap keeps exams running regardless.
FAQs
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