pfSense Firewall Settings to Allow Internal Access via Public Name and IP Address

OK, who hasn’t tried to get to a website on your internal network using the public name or sometimes IP address when troubleshooting.  sure enough, “Page not Found” shows it’s head.  But i know it’s there and running, i can get to it using the internal IP or with a modified hosts file.  well, a lot of firewalls by default don’t redirect outgoing traffic back into the network.  Well, if you are using a pfSense (a FreeBSD based OS focused on firewall and routing tasks), this is a very simple fix.

Assuming you already have the port forwarding set and the site is accessible from the internet, there is only one check mark you need to remove to get this working from the inside.  Start by hovering over the “System” in the menu bar, then click “Advanced”.

Home Page of pfSense firewall

From there, scroll almost all the way down to the “Network Address Translation” section, and uncheck the “Disable NAT Reflection” option.

pfSense System -> Advanced -> Network Address Translation

Now you will be able to type the public name or IP address into your browser and be able to see the page being hosted on your internal LAN.  No more keeping hosts files to keep things easy, which sounds even easier to me.