Access internally hosted website from inside LAN using FQDN (NAT loopback?)

[jmandawg]

Hi,

I'm trying to connect to my domain name "www.example.com" from inside the LAN but it fails. But it works fine if i'm not connected to the LAN.

For example:

1. my external IP is 3.3.3.3
2. my domain name www.example.com resolves to this 3.3.3.3 ip address.
3. Inside the LAN the webserver is at 192.168.1.3 port 8080
4. I have a port forward for anything coming in the WAN on port 80 -> 192.168.1.3:8080

When i access www.example.com from my cell phone with wifi turned off it works fine.

When i enable wifi on the cell phone and i'm connected to the LAN and i attempt to connect to www.example.com domain it times out.

What is the best way to resolve this?

It worked on the stock netgear firmware.

Thanks.

[frollic]

i guess you should try to use www.example.com:8080 or LAN-IP:8080 when accessing from the LAN side ?

[jmandawg]

that gives me a connection refused error.

[vgaetera]

Rebind the domain name to the server LAN IP:
https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/base-system/dhcp_configuration#hostnames
And make sure to specify its LAN port in the URL.

[jmandawg]

Unfortunately i still get a connection refused. Here is what was added to /etc/config/dhcp

config domain
        option ip '192.168.1.3'
        option name 'www.example.com'

And from browser i tried to access: http://www.example.com:8080

[vgaetera]

Verify that your LAN IP range is not filtered in the web server config.

[jmandawg]

It's not i can access it directly at http://192.168.1.3:8080 (although it brings me to the root website since it's missing the domain name header)

[vgaetera]

Each site in httpd typically has a separate config which can use a different set of allowed IPs.

[frollic]

did you restart dnsmasq afterwards ?

[jmandawg]

I'm actually using nginx inside a docker container on a different server not httpd.

Yes i restarted dnsmasq, but I have dns setup to use google DNS.

I since the hostname is resolving to the external IP, I guess the real problem is how to use external IP address from inside the network.

[frollic]

set a rule on the outgoing traffic, to redirect to 192.168.1.3, or change the DNS.

[jmandawg]

So in Luci, under interfaces->devices -> "br-lan" device, when i check the box for "promiscuous mode" then it works.

Is there any downsides to enabling promiscuous mode on the br-lan?

[scottbouch]

This just worked for me too, thanks for posting!

I have a few needs for accessing my home-hosted server by the domain name, while inside my LAN, and setting br-lan promiscuous mode to enabled fixed this issue.

Many thanks, Scott.