Why Does My Apple Watch Lose Connection to My iPhone When Using a VPN

I understand the purposes of a VPN. My use case is a bit different though. I am applying an Always On VPN through a configuration profile on a supervised device as a way to enforce DNS settings (on cell signal and WiFi) that cannot be changed. This is to enforce blocks on malicious domains and adult content.

I admit that is a round about way of doing things, but I see no way of forcing DNS on an iOS device other than this. DNSCloak which is an iOS app looked like a good option, but it is easy to disable even with the option to set a pin on the app. If you know of another way to enforce DNS settings on an iPhone, I am all ears. I have researched this to death and am about ready to look into the open source code of DNSCloak to see if I can build my own app for enforcing DNS settings on cell and WiFi.

My understanding is that the Apple Watch only connects to the WiFi network as a backup. The connection between the iPhone and Apple Watch is done through bluetooth primarily which as I understand it has nothing to do with the local network.

This appears to be a paid VPN which likely will cause the same issues I am running into. Additionally I doubt you can set a custom 3rd party DNS through an iOS configuration profile. All the paid solutions VPN solutions I looked at do not support this approach.

Hello to anyone reading this thread. I have come to the conclusion that a VPN simply causes a lot of connection issues when dealing with iOS and watchOS. For example, I found that iMessage and standard texts were not working correctly when my VPN was on. I was also noticing notification issues. This is all besides the Apple Watch connection issues. I will now go the route of looking into a DNS Proxy (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkextension/nednsproxyprovider).