MacOS – Why is the Safari unable to open links from Google under VPN

googlemacossafarisearchvpn

Safari 8.0.2, OS X 10.10.1–Problem occurring in Mac Pro 2009 and MBP ret 2012.

Once I log into my employer's VPN, Safari has a quite unique problem:

  • if I go to Google, do a search and click on any result link, I get a "Safari Can't Open the Page" screen

  • if I do the exact same Google search on Firefox or Chrome (latest versions) they will load the linked page without any problems

  • if I type any web address in the Safari URL bar, it will load that page normally

  • if I click on a Safari bookmark that page loads normally

This appears to be a problem localized to Safari and how Google redirects a search result to the appropriate URL. This problem does not happen with Yahoo or Bing.

Has anyone seen this behavior or know how to troubleshoot?

Best Answer

Copy the URL that gives you trouble and paste it into the address bar. You said that pasting the URL directly works. Does it for that URL?

From there on you can try to reach that server by using the ping command in terminal. You can see if the DNS is properly resolved to an IP and also if any connections are blocked to that IP.

traceroute <host> might also give you a hint on what is going wrong.

Related Question