Note: This pertains to SAP employees accessing SAP's network, but the same applies to any person connecting to thier company via VPN on MAC OS X 10.4.
The problem is that every time I bring my Mac from work to home and back again I have to change my "Location" to accomidate the company proxy settings.
Another problem is that in order to access the VPN gateway (eg: connectpal.sap.com) you need to have NO proxy settings, but once the VPN is established, you NEED proxy settings in order to access the internet from inside the firewall.
Here's how I set-up Mac OS to seemlessly handle these issues.
1) go to the “proxies” tab in the network preference of Mac OS
2) Under “Configure Proxies” choose “Using a PAC file”
3) Under PAC File URL enter “http://proxy:8083
4) Check that under the TCP/IP tab you have defined the Search Domains to have “pal.sap.corp, sap-ag.de, wdf.sap.corp, tlv.sap.corp”
Now, when you are outside the firewall, Mac OS will not reach the URL “proxy:8083” so it will default to no proxy settings, allowing you to reach the VPN gateway. Once you successfully establish the VPN into SAP, Mac OS will connect to “proxy:8083” and retrieve the PAC file and you will now be able to surf internally and externally using Safari.
Note 1) If you have not restarted Safari since you were using it INSIDE the firewall you will need to restart it to flush the proxy settings otherwise you will not be able to connect to connect.sap.com
Note 2) Firefox uses its own proxy settings which can come in handy. Firefox is required to access the corporate portal.
-Eric
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