Connection issue on iOS using cellular data

[hypoji]

Describe the problem
hello, i have this issue from v0.0.13.
I am experiencing a connection issue with the iOS client. The app fails to connect when using a cellular data connection, although it works perfectly fine over Wi-Fi.

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. install ios app
2. try connecting to netbird cloud from wifi network
3. sign in with github account
4. disconnect
5. Turn off Wi-Fi on the iOS device and enable cellular data.
6. Attempt to connect again

Expected behavior

The app should connect to the server regardless of the connection type.

Are you using NetBird Cloud?

I use NetBird Cloud (not self-host).

NetBird version

netbird ios client: v0.0.14

Is any other VPN software installed?

wireguard but disabled

Debug output

netbird-app.log
netbird-engine.log

Have you tried these troubleshooting steps?

• Reviewed client troubleshooting (if applicable)
• Checked for newer NetBird versions
• Searched for similar issues on GitHub (including closed ones)
• Restarted the NetBird client
• Disabled other VPN software
• Checked firewall settings

Note: English is not my first language, so please excuse any errors in my writing. I hope the attached logs provide the necessary information.

[rogerv95]

Similar issue here, I think the client is broken since the last update 6 days ago which also updated the engine version. All my clients in the network work fine (docker, windows, etc) but ios clients can't connect. The connection is established in the app with the server but the tunnel between the different peers is never established, it stays "connecting" for ever.

[shuuri-labs]

Thanks for reporting. We'll be focusing on mobile client issues in January, and I'll add this issue to the consideration pile. Will update you when I have some further info!

[ExhaleAfloat]

Double check it's not related to #44.

If you're actually on v0.0.14, this might be related to the new "Force relay connection" setting which is now enabled by default. It routes all traffic through relay servers instead of attempting direct P2P connections.

Try going to Advanced Settings and toggling off "Force relay connection", then reconnect. This resolved similar connection issues for me. The relay connections failing may be a misconfiguration on my part. I'm not sure yet.

This was introduced in #37 (675c560), where the default was

ios-client/NetbirdKit/EnvVarPackager.swift

Line 14 in 675c560

defaults.register(defaults: [GlobalConstants.keyForceRelayConnection: true])

.

[rogerv95]

That actually was my issue, as @ExhaleAfloat mentions, Force relay connection comes enabled by default since this update and that is the issue.
On my side it came because I don't have Coturn configured, so the relay connection can not be established. It's possible that your issues come from the Coturn container not being properly configured and causing relay connections to fail.
In my case, I could not make it work with dynamic WAN ip address, as it needs to be set in the configuration files for the Coturn server and from what I found out, that configuration variable can't be used with a dns name, so if I wanted to dynamically update that a script would be needed to detect the change in the public ip, update it in the config file and restart the container. But that's a different issue outside the scope of the ios client.