What does No Direct access to Local Network actually do and when do we use it??

[Schneur_Feldman]

Team,

Can anyone please explain SIMPLY to me what  the "No Direct access to Local Network " under Global Protect actually does and mostly when are supposed to use it?

This is so confusing to me. I know there is a KB for this but the KB seems to confuse people more then help. Basically what does it block and when should we enable it? Full tunnel? Split tunnel? Only split tunnel domain?

[BPry]

@Schneur_Feldman,

It restricts outgoing traffic on the local connected subnet. Instead of that traffic exiting through the local physical adapter like you would expect, the traffic is sent through the tunnel and (usually) dropped by the firewall. There's some behavioral considerations when it comes to existing traffic since macOS won't terminate the existing sessions like Windows does.

When you enable this feature really depends on your own configuration/environment requirements. I'd personally recommend enabling it across the board, but I know some environments don't go that far because it breaks local network functions like network printing to someone's home printer.

[OtakarKlier]

Hello,

This feature is to satisfy compliance requirements around 'No Split Tunneling'. Prevents a user from being on VPN and connecting to their other systems on their home network (as an example).

Hope this helps.

[Schneur_Feldman]

So just so I understand, if my home subnet is 192.168.1.0 and my GP subnet is 10.0.0.0 when I enable  "No Direct access to Local Network " I wont be able to access for example a printer on my 192.168.1.0 network?

Essentially just cutting off Local LAN access?

[BPry · Accepted solution]

@Schneur_Feldman,

Correct

[Schneur_Feldman]

Thank you so much team!!! Really helpful information@!

[Schneur_Feldman]

Thank you so much team!!! Really helpful information@!