On one of my projects, we’ve encountered a strange issue regarding domain name resolving.
A little background on the canvas painted it’s about a VMware Workspace ONE setup with working web URL’s and UEM enrollments, you name it. We have a nice setup regarding managed devices and these use a per-app VMware tunnel connection to achieve secure application access. All working dandy fine. The devices are based on a Ascom Myco 3 setup with Android 10 and are dedicated used for specific applications.
Then we moved on to the managed devices in a COPE / Work managed format for the normal usage of applications work and personal usage. We also implemented VMware tunnel in a per-app situation and we got some mixed scenario’s as in working, not working or not resolving at all the URL’s with a .local suffix (I know what you are thinking .local isn’t best practice to use etc. etc. well we don’t live in a perfect world and there are a LOT of companies with .local suffixes over here) on Android 11/12, it more of less pointed to Android 12 that changed DNS resolving with mDNS support as in the way how it always should have been, see Android adds mDNS support so .local hostnames finally work (esper.io) for the details.
We had some interaction with VMware support as we first thought that it would be a combination issue with VMware Tunnel because the behavior in a Workspace ONE Web with the built-in tunnel SDK would work just fine. But as soon as we changed the URL’s to a not .local suffix but .net or something else it would instantly work.
On a closing note, I think more and more customers will see this change now that Android 13 is on its way. It’s good to prepare in advance.
Special thanks to my partner in crime on this case, Sidney Laan.
See the following reference articles and blogs for some fun reading and a hint to a new DNS setup:
Local DNS resolution suddenly stopped working… – Google Pixel Community
Why do Android 12, 12L, 13 Preview devices don’t resolve local DNS anymore? – Stack Overflow
Hope it helps!