Okay, so once VPN is set-up you go to settings throw on VPN and poof!

Nothing happens. Mail cannot connect, internal web sites are not available… What gives?

Well you can read more about this here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1596178

We are not alone.

But a fix is not far off. The problems seems to sit with the interface between the VPn concentrator and the DNS servers. This problem can be alliviated by using the IP address of the servers.

Look at your mail application settings and find out the name of your mail server. Do a IP lookup for your server name and find out what IP address corresponds to your mail server name. There are lots of applications out there, if you have a Mac use Applications -> Utilities -> Network Utility.

Once done with this task you will have an IP number that corresponds to your mail server and SMTP server (these are the same for some environments, but not always). Again go back to Settings and this time select:

Mail, Contacts, Calendars

Once inside find your email account, mine is set-up as an IMAP, as I had problems with exchange.

Select the account that will be used over the VPN connection.

Replace the Host Name and SMTP server information with the IP numbers you looked up. Save.

From now on Mail should be good to go over VPN. In fact web browsing will also work, provided you know the IP address for the internal servers that you want to access.

Good luck. Let me know how it works for you.