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    Access pfSense firewall from WAN, inside LAN?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • G Offline
      grapple11
      last edited by

      I have a small network with a Comcast cable modem bridged to pfSense, which is my gateway firewall/router. I am trying to troubleshoot a problem with a VPN that works when I connect to pfSense on my laptop from inside the LAN, but does NOT work properly when I connect to pfSense on my laptop from anywhere else on the WAN (public Internet). What I would like to do, if possible, is to connect to pfSense on my laptop from my LAN but somehow make pfSense think that I am connecting from the WAN. This would just be for troubleshooting purposes. Currently, to troubleshoot the problem, I have to leave the premises where the LAN is located in order to attempt to connect to pfSense from the WAN, which is incredibly inconvenient. Does anyone have any thoughts on how to do this?

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      • P Offline
        phil.davis
        last edited by

        You could use a VPN service provider. Then install their client on your laptop and set it to route all traffic over the VPN directly from your laptop to the VPN provider. Then when you try to connect the to pfSense VPN at your public WAN IP, the laptop should send all that inside the already existing tunnel up to the VPN service provider and it will then come back over the public internet to your WAN interface.

        As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."
        If I helped you, then help someone else - buy someone a gift from the INF catalog http://secure.inf.org/gifts/usd/

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        • D Offline
          DeLorean
          last edited by

          For troubleshooting purposes like this,
          i use another public IP from my modem, and use this with a laptop for trying to access via WAN.

          If i'm not at home and on location where no extra public IP is available,
          then i use my Android smartphone as a Wifi hotspot.
          Then i connect my laptop with this Wifi hotspot.

          Greetz
          DeLorean

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          • T Offline
            tim.mcmanus
            last edited by

            @DeLorean:

            If i'm not at home and on location where no extra public IP is available,
            then i use my Android smartphone as a Wifi hotspot.
            Then i connect my laptop with this Wifi hotspot.

            +1 on the WiFi hotspot idea.  I just had to do that to test my WAN after the 2.2.3 upgrade.

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            • T Offline
              tgharold
              last edited by

              I used the OpenVPN client on my Android phone to troubleshoot my own OpenVPN setup.

              #1 Disable WiFi on the phone
              #2 Fire up OpenVPN client and connect to my VPN
              #3 Do testing on the phone

              That was enough for me to figure out whether OpenVPN was configured properly on pfSense.

              (I'll have to try the Android phone as a WiFi hotspot idea as well.)

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