How to manage VPN connection from the app when .mobileconfig profile installed ?

Question

Created Apr ’18

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Hi Guys,

I am trying to make "Always-On" VPN and an app that is ability to manage VPN connection(As OpenVPN Connect).

I created a VPN profile using "Apple Configurator 2".

After installing profile, I want to manage from the app. How do I do ?

In other words, I installed a VPN profile (.mobileconfig) once and manage VPN connection from the app.

Is there any interface(API) between VPN profile and application ?

Thanks.

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Answer 1

DTS Engineer OP

Apple

Apr ’18

I’m confused about your requirements, so I’m going to sprout some factoids and ask you to follow-up with clarifications if you’re still stuck. So:

If you set up a Personal VPN configuration (using
```
NEVPNManager
```
to configure the built-in IKEv2 or IPsec VPN transports), you can manage that connection using the
```
NEVPNConnection
```
instance that’s accessible via the
```
connection
```
of
```
NEVPNManager
```
.
If your app implements a custom VPN transport via the Network Extension provider mechanism, you can manage its configurations programmatically using
```
NETunnelProviderManager
```
. Configurations creating via configuration profile will be visible to this mechanism.
```
NETunnelProviderManager
```
is a subclass of
```
NEVPNManager
```
, and so it has a
```
connection
```
property as well. You can cast that to a
```
NETunnelProviderSession
```
and use that to manage the connection associated with the configuration.
There’s no way to manage VPN configurations for VPN transports you don’t ‘own’ (except the Personal VPN case I mentioned above). This includes configurations created programmatically, configurations created by the user, and configurations created via a configuration profile. It also includes built-in VPN transports and third-party VPN transports.
Always-on VPN is an Apple VPN transport (a flavour of IKEv2) and thus falls under the last point.

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