In a recent case, with BigIP and Cisco webex servers we saw the SSL would break in the browser even while the configuration had no apparent errors.

The VIP on the BigIP hosted the webex over an SSL connection using a client-ssl profile and also used a server-ssl profile.

Cisco webex does not support the solution over HTTP port 80 and hence a server-ssl profile becomes a must. 

The perplexing part is also how different browsers dealt with the errors. 

Chrome gives you the option to accept the certificate error but then just refreshes the page and comes back to the same page. 

Mozilla Firefox just gives you a “secure connection failed” with nothing explained. 

Resolution

All this while we were trying to access the webex console in the browser using the IP address only, but in the end, we just decided to give a go with a URL and added a hostname entry to the windows hosts file. 

Luckily we chose the name “meeting.domain.com” and the webex console opened perfectly fine with a trusted certificate. Later on trying with the meet.domain.com, the connection started failing again as before.

I scoured the internet for some document which explains whether webex server requires the word “meeting” to be present in the hostname and didn’t find a thing.