[mrpippy]

There are allowances made for local networking.

From the Info.plist key reference (https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Ge...):

App Transport Security (ATS) applies only to connections made to public host names. The system does not provide ATS protection to connections made to:

* Internet protocol (IP) addresses

* Unqualified host names

* Local hosts employing the .local top-level domain (TLD)

To connect to an unqualified host name or to a .local domain, you must set the value of the NSAllowsLocalNetworking key to YES.

[seanalltogether]

That's assuming you're using bonjour (zero config). I have 2 clients with thousands of in home devices which are using NetBios to resolve a local ip address and directly connecting over http. I imagine there are many other hardware vendors still using this method out there.

[mrpippy]

Sounds like the HTTP connection is being made to an IP address, in which case you should be fine.