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teddyb
teddyb
Visitor III
July 15, 2025
Solved

Intermittent connection problems from iPhones

  • July 15, 2025
  • 3 replies
  • 1433 views

Hello,

 

We're running a pair of FortiGate 121G (v7.2.11 build1740) in active/standby mode, acting as a gateway/DNS and DHCP server for the wireless guest users.


The Security Policy along with the DNS Filter policy is very generous with literally nothing blocked.

 

There are absolutely no issues with any laptop (Windows or Mac) and Android phones/tablets, but I have consistent issues coming from iPhones. It takes some time to load any page and sometimes it works fine and sometimes it just times out. Reloading the page seems to help.

 

I initially blamed Private Relay, but turning it off doesn't seem to help, and there is nothing in my policy that could affect it. Everything is under DHCP and it's the same SSID for all devices.

 

Would greatly appreciate any tips since I can't find any errors in the logs, nor traces that some web resources are blocked.

 

Thanks.

Best answer by teddyb

It appeared to be a mix of QUIC and Private Relay issues.  

 

https://community.fortinet.com/t5/FortiGate/Technical-Tip-How-to-block-iCloud-Private-Relay-from-bypassing/ta-p/228629 seemed to help.

3 replies

AEK
SuperUser
AEK
SuperUser
July 15, 2025

Hi Teddy

First thing is to enable all logs in the related rules and in the implicit deny rules as well, reproduce the issue and see if you get any relevant logs.

AEK
teddyb
teddybAuthor
Visitor III
July 15, 2025

Hi @AEK , thanks for you reply!

I log everything and so far couldn't find anything that was blocked, however, I think I noticed that it might have to do with the DNS resolution.

There is a ping utility installed on my iPhone, and when it happens, I can ping 8.8.8.8 without any issues, however, no URLs could be pinged (cannot resolve).

 

DHCP is configured on the Fortigate, and the DNS for DHCP clients is set to be the internal IP of the gateway itself.  Looking at the DNS I noticed that one of them is unreachable -- could that be an issue? But then why no other devices are affected?

 

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AEK
SuperUser
AEK
SuperUser
July 15, 2025

Hi Teddy

I don't know if iPhone has a special way to use DNS, but all I know is if your iPhone can't do DNS resolution then it can't use the network.

AEK
teddyb
teddybAuthorAnswer
Visitor III
July 18, 2025

It appeared to be a mix of QUIC and Private Relay issues.  

 

https://community.fortinet.com/t5/FortiGate/Technical-Tip-How-to-block-iCloud-Private-Relay-from-bypassing/ta-p/228629 seemed to help.

    hokilno2
    hokilno2
    New Member
    July 18, 2025

    I switched over from android to iPhone in part because my Galaxy S3 was an incredible phone - but I would constantly run into some wifi issues. At my workplace it would never renew its lease properly. As soon as I got my 6s all those problems went away and it just worked properly.

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