As the subject says....my iPhone seems to disconnect the VPN as soon as it goes into auto-lock....in my case after two minutes.
I have a L2TP VPN configured for a mail connection to an Exchange server...if it constantly disconnects then the pushmail functionality is of no use....
Is this behaviour as designed or am I missing something ?
i'm using VPN for a year now. never noticed this...
i've tried now to replicate this and failed. it works fine!
i've only noticed it to be disconnected when fluctuation between 3G and EDGE happens. between WiFi and 3G the connection is persistent. push mail and other services work fine...
we are encountering the same problems. After we successfully implemented L2TP VPN from iPhone 4 (OS 4.2.1) via Sonicwall NSA 4500 we were wondering about the folowing behaviour: when the iPhone locks the screen VPN networking is beeing disabled. While evaluating the use of iPhones for corporate mailing and networking we need to make use of a permanent VPN connection. We were wondering what use of such a (go-to-sleep) VPN implementation could have ?
Well - not locking the screen could be a workaround, but not a solution. When you make use of smartphones for corporate needs you have to make it as secure as possible - Do you Apple guys have any ideas ?
+1 for this. It's a bit ridiculous that this was overlooked. Now all of a sudden putting your device to sleep means all your Push traffic tries to go over unsecured networks. Great.
This is an example that I just tested. You're at your local unsecured Starbucks location and are on their WiFi nextwork. You establish your VPN connection because you don't want Firesheep sniffing all your gritty Facebook details. You have push mail enabled. I had one email sent to me while on VPN, and surely enough, my iPad alerts me that it came. Great, I'm secured, no problem. Now, I turn my iPad off. I sent another email after 30 seconds, which is how long it took for VPN to get torn down (verified by my VPN server). iPad alerts me of a new email. That exchange was all done on their unsecured network, without me even knowing.
Bottom line is I now know I have to disable Push email whenever on a public hotspot, and there goes one of the best business features. Maybe it's not a big deal since I think Exchange is secured, but still seems sketchy.
+1. I'd like to have permanent VPN too.
If there are good reasons why VPN shouldn't be kept on permanently, I'd feel much better if I knew them. Otherwise I hope it'll be fixed.
Same problem here, L2TP with a Check Point firewall. Although there are other uses for the VPN in our organisation, the only use on an iPhone is to secure emails.
I'm not so much concerned that the VPN drops, but that it does not re-establish as needed - that's just plain annoying. I understand VPN-on-demand is possible in certain situations, but not with L2TP, and not with the shared-secret configuration supported by our firewall.
We need an additional parameter under e-mail account settings 'use VPN' so that when the email is refreshed the VPN is connected first.
I have the same issue. Apple please update and fix this. Or at least provide a setting to keep the VPN on. We know it might be a drain on the battery. We should at least have the option to keep it on.
+1 I would like to see this addressed. Using public wifi is not a viable option for business users w/o this feature working reliably. I see the security issue on an admin standpoint to have a device automatically hooking to your private network as soon as it comes out of "sleep" but that can be handled on the VPN server side. It should not be imposed by the device. This is a bug IMHO.