Firewall and the relative direction data goes
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This might seem like a easy question to you guys but I can't figure out the terminology used in the firewall rules.
What exactly is outbound and inbound? What are they relative to? After a bit of testing they do not refer to the pfsense device in general meaning inbound being "coming from the WAN side and being routed to the LAN" and outbound being "coming from the LAN side and routed to the WAN side"
I've read
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Firewall_Rule_Basics
But that doesn't explain it either.
I suspect the rules are relative to the interface they're being configured on.
All my rules are based on NAT port forwarding by linking them but I want to do some more specific rules. And without knowing this seemingly basic thing I can't do that.
I would really appreciate the help. -
Inbound means the interface receives data; outbound means it transmits. When your users are making a request over the Internet they are communicating inbound on LAN, outbound on WAN.
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Thanks, that picture is exactly what I was looking for!