ME either. It seems anything after the first slash (i.e. /mydevices or /profilemanager) is almost always sloowww... and will usually (not always) come up wether I'm using the public IP or the server name but https://publicipaddress is usually pretty snappy and reliable.
I won't be able to test again until Monday unfortunately but I'll be sure to post all results here. A second level Apple technician from their Enterprise support will also be contacting me hopefully Monday. Hate thinking that some of the issues may have been Safari on the iPad all along... On that suspicion I have cleared cache, history, cookies etc. several times to no avail.
For clarification, we're just trying to enable a corporate self-help, profile manager web portal for iOS policy enforcement/enrollment. That's it. All other services are off except DNS, Profile Manager, Web Services, Open Directory. All internal DNS checks (various different kinds) check out. There's been some ambivalence on the part of our separate network group (tonsay the least) so I can't definitively say all requisite ports are forwarded/open per cptmrgnx's suggestion above yet but I hope to nail that down Monday.
Also, the server did go through an IP address change (I know I know - couldn't be avoided) so Apple had me gut the server.app surgically in order to flush out any hard baked IP addresses left over from the initial IP. So again, All internal DNS checks (various different kinds) check out.
thanks again