Why are Virtual IPs not considered part of their interface net for firewall rules?

[OffstageRoller]

I followed this guide provided by @JKnott in order to add IPv6 ULA addresses to all my devices, since the IPv6 GUA provided by my ISP changes from time to time:
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/163161/using-unique-local-addresses

In order to route traffic between my VLANs though, I had to create firewall rules that would allow traffic between these virtual ip subnets. Why is that though? Shouldn't those Virtual IPs, since they're assigned to an interface, be considered part of the interface net and included with my existing firewall rules?

In digging more into this, I found this redmine bug:
https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/8386

The description matches the issue I have and my thoughts, but Jim closed out the ticket saying the virtual IPs are included. Maybe that's on the WAN interface? Because I'm not seeing them on my VLAN interfaces, and in order to route traffice between my VLANs using their Virtual IP /64 ULA networks, I have to create new firewall rules.

I end up duplicating most of my firewall rules which ends up getting messy:

[Tzvia]

@OffstageRoller I don't know if you found the patch since posting this... but in SYSTEM/PATCHES is a patch for the VIP networks not being part of the interface net, "IPV6 VIP Networks".

[OffstageRoller]

@Tzvia said in Why are Virtual IPs not considered part of their interface net for firewall rules?:

@OffstageRoller I don't know if you found the patch since posting this... but in SYSTEM/PATCHES is a patch for the VIP networks not being part of the interface net, "IPV6 VIP Networks".

Thank you for the reply @Tzvia

I'm running the latest pfSense 23.09.1, and the latest System Patches version 2.2.9_1.

In System Patches I only have 1 patch available for:

• Workaround for Terrapin SSH Attack

[Bob.Dig]

@OffstageRoller You have to add it manually. But it has side effects. Or maybe you shouldn't use Auto Apply, I can't say for sure.

[OffstageRoller]

@Bob-Dig Thank you for referencing that. At least it's a known bug at this point. I originally thought this may have been a design decision to do things this way.

[SteveITS]

@OffstageRoller it’s in 24.03:
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/24-03.html#aliases-tables

Ref https://www.netgate.com/blog/netgate-releases-rc-of-pfsense-plus-software-version-24.03

[OffstageRoller]

@SteveITS Awesome news. That should hopefully be released in the next couple of weeks and then I can remove all these duplicated firewall rules I have in place! Thank you for linking me to that!