[ipad] Global Proxy Issues?

[jnedobity]

Hi All,

 

We are having issues with our iPads not saving the global proxy username & password when configured either via Apple Configurator or our MDM solution MaaS360. What happens is that on the device it constantly pops up a box requesting authentication as you use the device. And by constantly I mean every time you open Safari, App Store, any App that needs an internet connection. Or in addition if you haven't used the device for 10 or 15 minutes it will require re-authentication for it to access the internet again. Each time it asks, the username / password field are blank.

 

But on the flip side, if we configure the proxy by hand and not as a global proxy (for all networks). It works fine. No pop ups, nothing. But the devices to communicate and go out the proxy as it should.

 

Some limitations that we are bound to.

 

• Our proxy is hosted by a third party. So the following apply
  
  • Cannot make it 'open'
    
  • Must use username / password
    
  • Cannot authenticate one IP address for multiple hours. (We need to be able to track each student when they go home)
    

   

  [*]The device has to be supervised and trackable. (Either via an MDM or some other way)

  [*]Must be able to scale. (We are slated to roll out 750 iPads in the coming weeks)

  [*]We are required to filter the devices, even when not on school grounds. It is school equipment thus it is required to be filtered. So no filtering is not an option

 

Any suggestions on how I can work with the proxy would be great.

 

Thanks!

[mattmarsman]

Did you happen to come upon a solution? We see the same behavior with our implementation.

 

If I manually input the proxy settings on the ssid it seems to work correctly, but the global proxy does not seem to keep the credentials. At this point I feel like we're either going to have to force our devices to VPN or turn off authentication to our proxy.

[jnedobity]

Hello,

 

We ended up doing a few options based on our needs / requirements. We were thinking of using a VPN, but found it would be difficult to fully enforce. Even if we were using an MDM to push it out. (IE: students home routers / internet connections blocking VPN access, etc)

 

But what we ended up doing, was removing the username / password for the Global proxy field and integrated AD authentication with it. Doing this alone dropped our 'prompting' almost 10-fold. It still pops up but to a much lesser degree. Additionally our proxy provider bumped up the authentication time out to 4 hours (last I checked). This further cut down on the prompting. Our students still get prompted when they leave our network, or if their public facing IP changes in the 4 hour time window. But it is now usable by everyone.

 

But we were also having a few issues with the way our MDM provider was pushing out profiles. Sadly we've switched to another provider for this deployment as it works far better.

 

Hope that Helps