General Questions

I have a secure chat server behind the monowall  192.168.1.10/24
with port forward setup so it can be accessed from the net..
so from the net they hit the public ip address


but when users are behind the firewall it requires them to use the internal ip address.

is their a way to make it so if a user inside the lan tries to access the public number it loops them back "correctly" to the internal server?

Add the server as a host override in the DNS forwarder page.
When an internal client requests it's domain name (since most chat clients use a domain name for the server), it's given the server's LAN IP rather than the Public IP.

More information and why it doesn't work using the external IP address is explained at http://doc.m0n0.ch/handbook/faq-lannat.html The solution given will work fine, you can also add it to an internal DNS server instead if you use one as long as it is not the authoritative DNS server for your internet domain, as that would have to give your external IP address.