I saw in another post where someone was having the same issue where when you are disconnected from the same wifi the security camera doesn’t connect. This is something I’ve been dealing with for some time myself. I don’t know how to allow my Reolink app to work with VPN on my Iphone but I can say when I turned off VPN on my phone the Reolink app works as it should. Problem is I don’t want to turn my VPN off so question is, On my iPhone (not computer) how do I allow apps to work when I have VPN enabled?
Lets ask our resident mobile expert @peterweb
Unfortunately, there is no Split Tunnel function for the iOS versions of Norton’s VPN.
Are you using the VPN in 360 or the standalone Norton Secure VPN app?
If you are using 360, first we need to verify if it is the VPN or the Safe Web feature that is blocking your camera. Tap on the menu at the bottom of the 360 screen and click on Safe Web. Disable that and test to see if you can access your camera. If you can, it is the Safe Web feature doing the blocking. If not, then turn off the VPN and test. If that allows the camera, then that would appear to be the culprit.
Follow the directions in this Norton Support article to send logs to Norton. If you do, please post back here and I’ll have my contacts look out for the logs.
Send reports if Norton 360 app encounters an error on your mobile device
So the safe web feature was off but from my iPhone settings I just found out if I have the Personal VPN settings connected that’s when my security camera will not connect. I have device VPN connected ON, personal VPN connection OFF and I CAN connect to my security camera. I turn ON personal VPN and lose my connection. I will check out the support link included here
Do not try to control the VPN functions from the iOS settings. When you turn off one of the features from there, it will generally just turn itself back on. You should only use the controls in the 360 app to control Safe Web and VPN. You can look at the iOS settings to see what is active. Device VPN is the Safe Web feature and the Personal VPN is the actual VPN service.
So from your testing, it does seem like it is the VPN feature causing the issue. What you may be seeing is the app you are using for the camera access is not allowing access to their website from known VPN IP addresses. A VPN does not block or filter any web content. It is the website you are trying to access that is probably blocking access from known VPN IP addresses. This is done for copywrite, legal or political reasons. There is nothing a VPN provider can or should do to bypass the site’s protection for its content.
Here is a How to Geek article on this. Why Do Some Websites Block VPNs?
You should contact the camera app developers to see if this might be the issue. See if they might have a solution to the issue.
EDIT
A quick look around the Reolink Support articles all say to turn off your VPN. You can still contact them to see if they have any work arounds.
Yes, looking at the Reolink website and VPN issues it says this - thank you for helping me figure this out.
Turn off any VPN on your phone. Accessing Reolink devices via VPN is generally not recommended, as it may block the peer-to-peer (P2P) connection of the devices.
Ideally, Norton could implement Split Tunnel on iOS. But there could be issues accessing other apps in iOS because of the way Apple locks the OS very tightly.
Although not really any fix for you, glad we got you on the right track as to why things are happening when VPN enabled.