Created on
04-22-2022
11:47 AM
Edited on
05-27-2025
06:15 AM
By
Jean-Philippe_P
Description | This article discusses how to troubleshoot when a website is not accessible without UTMs. |
Scope | FortiOS. |
Solution |
Below describes an understanding of how packet flow works for website reachability before troubleshooting this issue.
As soon as the user enters the URL in the browser, the first DNS lookup will happen for that website. Once the website is resolved, the request will pass to the specific website IP, and a response will come from that website.
Below shows the troubleshooting:
Troubleshoot 1: Perform a DNS lookup on the internal host machine for the problematic website to verify it is resolving, and take note of the IP address.
Troubleshoot 2: Once the DNS lookup happens, focus on traffic flow. If both local DNS and global DNS have the same resolution, run the following sniffers:
diagnose sniffer packet any 'host x.x.x.x' 6 0 l <----- Where x.x.x.x is the internal machine's IP. diagnose sniffer packet any 'host a.b.c.d' 6 0 l <----- Where a.b.c.d is the website IP address.
Here in this sniffer output, observe whether there is a way flow or only a way flow. Check if the traffic is reaching the firewall and if it is going out of the firewall or not. If traffic is reaching the firewall LAN interface and not going out of the WAN interface, it means the firewall could be blocking the traffic.
To confirm this, run these commands:
diagnose debug reset diagnose debug disable diagnose debug flow filter addr a.b.c.d <----- Where a.b.c.d is the website IP. diagnose debug flow show function-name enable diagnose debug flow trace start 10000 diagnose debug enable
Once the commands are entered, reload the website. Once the issue is reproduced, disable debug by executing the following commands:
diagnose debug disable <----- To disable debug.
In the resulting logs, observe which firewall policy it is matching. If no policy is matched, an error such as 'denied by forward policy check' will appear. If the above error is seen, create a firewall policy for this.
Troubleshoot 3: If the traffic is going out of the firewall, which can be seen in the sniffer, and there is no reply packet:
Check in Forward Traffic logs by filtering the source and destination IP (of the website) if there are send and receive bytes. If the number of bytes is zero, this means that there is no reply was received from the destination. In Forward Traffic logs, it can also be verified if a reset packet is sent by the client or server.
In case of a single ISP link, bypass FortiGate and connect the laptop directly to the ISP router to identify if the issue is the same.
This step is to isolate the issue caused by the ISP. These steps are important for website troubleshooting.
This article does not cover anything related to website blocking by the UTM filters.
This article covers the traffic flow for the website. |
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