VPN problem on iPhone after updating to iOS6 - server not found for .local URLs in Safari

It looks like Apple posted an official response to this issue with KB Article http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3389.

The above KB article indicates that the issue only occurs with sites that have .local as the DNS suffix which means it's not an issue with the VPN's DNS servers not getting applied to the connection and that any other internal hosts will resolve over the VPN tunnel as long as they have a DNS suffix other than .local.

It seems rather odd that this behavior was not present in iOS 5 as many users on this thread have pointed out and Apple does not specifically indicate that there is anything different in iOS 5 and iOS 6 as far as this behavior is concerned--but they don't explicitly say it's been this way all along either.

Nice job Apple. After months of no help from "geniuses" ("I know the only change made to your network was updating to iOS6, but your VPN is mis-configured"), you post a KB article stating what everyone having the issue already knows as well as setting the expectation it won't be fixed because it will conflict with another Apple product.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.local

Seriously, the only thing that over-shadows Apple's ability to make fantastic hardware is their total incompetince at making software.

I guess I am just a little peeved, thanks for letting me vent!

No solution ??? ....... Please help me 😐😐😐

As far as I read somewhere here that it seems like it's not going to be fixed as somehow it interferes with other apple devises.

This is crazy. I have the same basic problem. I can't resolve my View Connection Server's FQDN when using VPN to connect to my network only when connecting via cellular connection. If I shut that off and turn on Wi-Fi the connection works perfectly. Why in the world would that make any difference? I don't buy the explanation that using .local conflicts with their Bonjour service because if that was a deliberate coding on their part the problem would exist whether using LTE or Wi-Fi to connect to the resource.

Apple...FIX THIS!

fwiw...I can change the View client to connect via IP address but that won't work at this point because View needs a trusted SSL connection. My connection won't be trusted since I'm not connecting via FQDN. I'm going to try and add the IP address as a second name to the certificate and see if that fixes things.

please fix this, are u there? 😢

I missed Steve Jobs so much!

It looks like it might have been fixed in 6.1

Initial testing shows positive results here as well, using Juniper Pulse app / Verizon service

Fully tested here on an iPad 4th gen., and an iPhone 5. .local now resolves on AT&T LTE here in Atlanta and Florida.

Nice!!

No dice, I have a iPhone 4S running iOS 6.1 on Verizon. Same as before, works when wifi connected, fails when 3G connected. If you are testing this, make sure you disable wifi.

Regardless, Apple has already posted a KB article indicating they will not fix this issue because it could potentially break their Bonjour service - which is a bogus statement as it works when wifi connected (unless they plan on breaking that with the next iOS release also?).

If it works for you without wifi, congratulations, your IT team is part of the 1% that use Bonjour, or all of your servers have bad their DEFAULT name extensions switched out from .local - something that is barely reasonable for even small IT shops.

Works for me, 6.1 fixed for me also. Verizon iPhone 4S running iOS6.1 connecting with Palo Alto VPN. Works on 3G only whcih is the fix, and still works on Wifi also. Using the FQDN it can now resolve my internal serve rnames.

Hi there,

for me it worked only when i used the actuall IP instead of the domain in order to get the emails and go to the company local site under VPN.

so for example if your email setup is mail.yourcompany.local replace it with the actual IP e.g. 192.168...etc.

if you dont know the IP you can ping under wifi with mobile or pc to the smtp.yourcompany.com (when you are under VPN) and then you will see the IP in terminal or CMD

works for me after months of fraustration and temp solutions (using the free ping app)!

It fixed the issue for me too. Both Wi-Fi and 3G work with the other being off. Using IP for resolution is not an option when using SSL certs that use FQDN for certification.

My mistake! I had given up on this ever working based on the Apple KB article. From all the recent posts claiming success, I re-checked my phone and saw I was actually running 6.0.1 - after a few scary moments of updating to 6.1 (a user NEVER wants to see ' Swipe to setup your phone' after updating their OS!), I shut off wifi and powered on the VPN. Bingo it works!

Ohh happy days! Looks like we need to cancel our Android order!

Amazing that apple's website about software update to 6.1 never mentions anything about a resolution, to which they would have to admit the problem was with their OS.