Mobile Devices and Proxy Servers - Some Apps Don't Work

[enjay]

We've hit a problem with using some mobile apps over our wireless, as they don't connect. From a bit of Googling, I think it might be to do with these apps attempting to make direct connections to the web and ignoring the proxy setting which is configured in the device. Has anyone else experienced this, and what (if any) solutions or workarounds did you employ?

[free780]

App:proxy whats a proxy?

Unfortunately it seems to be the way it is. And you'll probably find authentication isn't supported as well. Or are you sure its the issue. If you filter ssl you need to add the root cert to the device.

[Techie-v2]

We ended up subscribibg to our ISP's transparent proxy. Solved a lot of issues

[free780]

@Techie-v2 Did it work with ssl?

[enjay]

We ended up subscribibg to our ISP's transparent proxy. Solved a lot of issues

 

That's what I feared might be the solution, as I don't believe our ISP has one...

[Techie-v2]

@Techie-v2 Did it work with ssl?

 

We dont currently use authenticatiin on it, users authenticate against AD when joining the wireless on BYOD devices, if thats what you mean

[enjay]

users authenticate against AD when joining the wireless on BYOD devices

 

I'd be interested to know how you achieve that. Our filtering is done upstream at ISP-level which also means that BYOD devices would be filtered, however for various reasons I'd be interested in exploring alternatives.

[Techie-v2]

The wireless controller provides a captive portal which can be set up to authenticate to AD. You can also limit communication to other devices on the same subnet so users can only outwards towards the internet

[enjay]

The wireless controller provides a captive portal which can be set up to authenticate to AD. You can also limit communication to other devices on the same subnet so users can only outwards towards the internet

 

We've got an SSID on our wireless which only provides Internet access already, but the captive portal sounds interesting. Which controller do you have?

[emdrum]

One of the problems that we found with apps is that they will request a port range from the destination server - eg: apple.com:6500-6600 with the expectation that the server will respond with a port allocation. This is to enable load balancing and increase throughput, and applies particularly to things like the App Store etc. but also to other services - YouTube is a classic example of this.

 

The proxies are generally not configured to allow port range requests - they want a source device to request a particular server on a specific port eg: apple.com:6510, which is not what is happening, so while it isn't exactly blocked, it doesn't work either. Try enabling port range requests on your proxy and see if that helps.

 

Cheers.

[Techie-v2]

We've got an SSID on our wireless which only provides Internet access already, but the captive portal sounds interesting. Which controller do you have?

 

Its a ruckus system