@Cry:
You could use Squid as a reverse proxy/accelerator to do that.
As you said, using hostnames adds a massive, non trivial, overhead and potential delay.
Thx,
As I noted, when Squid is installed on the same box as pfSense, if it doesn't evaluate packets in front of the firewall then it's not a workaround (if possible at all would have to be configured on a different box).
Also, if Hostname lookups were to be done along the lines of what I suggested then overhead should be at least manageable… it avoids bottlenecks of hitting the disk and requires a DNS query only initially. Utilizing a simple lookup table/array in RAM would likely be so fast and require few CPU cycles to the point I don't know if indexing would be necessary.
Anyway, thx all... I'll ponder the issues if I decide to trial before the next major version of pfSense...