iPhone Mail & Proxy Servers

Question

Level 1

11 points

iPhone Mail & Proxy Servers

At work, I'm fortunate enough to be able to access our wireless network. I have the connection configured to use a proxy server which is required for all traffic passing through our firewall. The iPhone web browser works just fine access pages with no problems at all.

However, the Mail application is unable to reach my mail server (I use .Mac). I can get to the server just fine using the iPhone web browser so I know the connection is working and the server is responding; however, attempting to access it with the mail application results in the error message, "The connection to the server 'mail.mac.com' failed."

I'm guessing this is because the Mail application is trying to access the server directly, but it actually needs to route the connection through my proxy server. Is there some way to configure the Mail application to make this work?

MacBook Pro 17-inch, Mac OS X (10.5.3), Safari 3.1.1

Posted on Jun 10, 2008 8:18 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Dwimmerlaik Author

Level 1

11 points

Jun 11, 2008 6:57 AM in response to Dwimmerlaik

I'm thinking this was buried under the deluge of threads on the new 3G iPhone so I'm giving it a gentle bump to see if anyone has any ideas.

Reply

Answer 2

Jul 22, 2008 7:43 AM in response to Dwimmerlaik

Hi all,

any news ?? i also have the same issue... seem that safari send http authentication request but weather, stock and youtube do not
Any workaround to this issue ???

thnaks, bye

Reply

Answer 3

Dwimmerlaik Author

Level 1

11 points

Jul 29, 2008 10:41 AM in response to alice_anto

I haven't been able to figure out any way of getting it to work. I did notice that with the 2.0 firmware, the iPhone is able to connect to Wi-Fi networks that utilize PEAP authentication. That's at least an improvement on past abilities and makes it possible to connect to my corporate WLAN without too much difficulty.

I'm not prompted for my username/password instead of the WLAN password like you normally find on WEP and WAP encrypted networks. Typing in my credentials results in a connection.

Now, if I could just figure out how to get access to the MAIL client, I'd be a happy camper since the AT&T signal in my workplace is pure crap.

Reply

Answer 4

Aug 8, 2008 10:38 AM in response to Dwimmerlaik

Has anyone figured out how to do this yet?

Reply

Answer 5

dignoe

Level 1

0 points

Aug 12, 2008 12:46 PM in response to Dwimmerlaik

I'm having the same problem. The AT&T signal in my office is virtually nonexistent. All of our outside network traffic at my office is required to go through a proxy, but the mail app does not use the WiFi specific proxy information. Is this going to be addressed in a future update?

Reply

Answer 6

Dwimmerlaik Author

Level 1

11 points

Aug 14, 2008 8:51 AM in response to thunderwalker

Not so far. It seems that Weather, Stock, and a vast variety of iPhone Applications from the AppStore work just fine utilizing the proxy settings established with the connection parameters and settings, but for whatever reason the Mail application doesn't.

The only thing that I can think of is that it is trying to directly establish the connection on an outgoing SMTP port (port 25) instead of routing it first through the proxy server. Any corporate environment I've ever worked in doesn't allow direct connections to port 25. You have to first route the traffic to port 80 (or whatever port the proxy server is configured with) and then direct the traffic to port 25 on the destination server from that point on.

I too would love to see this resolved in a future update, but I'm not sure how Apple would do it.

Reply

Answer 7

Aug 20, 2008 3:43 PM in response to Dwimmerlaik

Also searching for a way to do this. I am assuming that all other apps are just communicating with their respective servers via HTTP and that's why they work over proxy but mail (IMAP, POP, or SMTP) will not go over the proxy first.

Reply

Answer 8

tsai_tao

Level 1

0 points

Sep 17, 2008 6:22 PM in response to Dwimmerlaik

No news yet, I guess? I'm bumping this thread because I need a solution too. This situation is quite silly because my mail is really the only thing I really want/need to check at any time in the day.. (btw, I think a "quick fix" for Apple would be to allow my iPhone to connect to the MobileMe web pages.)

Reply

Answer 9

Alfafa

Level 1

0 points

Sep 24, 2008 6:18 PM in response to tsai_tao

Having the same here. Let's keep this threads running until we get something on this! Also, I've posted more details on another threads. Check it:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8149758#8149758
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8165118#8165118

Reply

Answer 10

Sep 28, 2008 10:33 AM in response to Dwimmerlaik

i have the same problem my proxy firewall doesnt allow apps on my macbook like mail and entourage...also my ipod touch doesnt work with apps like stocks, weather, and youtube however when i went to the apple store and used youtube and went back home to try it it can only load the videos but cant refresh the featured videos and stuff
it recently works with the itunes store on the ipod touch on the new 2.1 firmware but everything else like the aim app from the app store and myspace or any other app that uses the internet doesnt work

Reply

Answer 11

Nov 5, 2008 7:24 AM in response to Dwimmerlaik

Me too - still looking for an answer to this one. I can access everything at home via wireless sharing on my iMac, but at the office I have to go through a proxy (which uses port 8081) and only Safari works...

Reply

Answer 12

cmadon

Level 1

40 points

Nov 5, 2008 8:04 AM in response to Grant Thompson

I too would love to have an answer for this as well.

Reply

Answer 13

Dec 8, 2008 5:29 PM in response to cmadon

This issue has not been resolved with firmware 2.2.
Any tips anyone?

Reply

Answer 14

EuroPWM

Level 1

0 points

Dec 16, 2008 6:54 PM in response to dnsstaiger

Quicktime Video will not play (as in BBC iPlayer) over proxy server - accessing the site is fine but video will not run. Also, most of the apps I have from the apps store will nto work either over proxy.

Reply

Answer 15

donald_i

Level 1

0 points

Jan 5, 2009 1:21 PM in response to EuroPWM

Sorry, I have no solution, but I'd just like to add my voice to the general clamour (hoping that Apple might do something about it). I have an HTTP proxy at work (squid, using port 8080) and wifi. I observe the same behaviour, most notably the BBC iPlayer will not work and neither will FStream. The iPlayer works fine on my Macbook (using the same wifi network and proxy settings) so not sure why the iPhone cannot get it together.

Reply