Since I recently (read: this weekend) got an iPad, I’ve been trying desperately to use DTTG in a meaningful way and have encountered the same issues that many have encountered with discovery not working over corporate WiFi networks.
My suggestion is this: make an “advanced” setting where the user can specify a hostname for sync, rather than having to discover the service via mDNS. This will, at least, give people a solution that doesn’t involve taking both their iPad and laptop off their corporate intranet for an ad-hoc wifi connection.
Sorry if there’s a reason why this won’t work, but it seems like it should if you are simply using Bonjour for “discovery.” My laptop doesn’t need to be discovered – I know where it is and what its IP address is. In fact, there’s a hostname that maps back to it whether I’m at work or at home.
We are indeed working on such an option. You will note that there are a number of posters to this Forum who are encountering problems with Bonjour in general, and the fact that it appears to be generally blocked on corporate networks and sometimes blocked on home networks. However, this is a fairly large change to existing code and we want to make sure it works “almost perfectly” before we roll it out, so we urge patience until we can offer this option in a future update. In the meantime, we urge customers to use the “Create Network…” option in your AirPort menu bar item. This approach allows you to create a local WiFi network from your Mac directly to your iOS device and circumvents issues with the larger WiFi network your computer may be using. (Also a lot more secure in a corporate setting). If you need further details, this approach is described in a number of threads on the Forums, or ask and I will respond with a better description of the technique.