Can't access HTTPS sites with an IP address in the URL

This article applies to our On-Premise Appliance Filter and Firewall product only, not to Cloud.

 

By default, access to a HTTPS URL with an IP address is blocked. Follow the instructions below to allow access to these websites.

Important

Allowing access means that HTTPS Inspection will not apply to these websites. They won’t be filtered by your Web Filter Policies, so users might be able to access undesirable content.

 

  1. Create a Transparent Web Proxy authentication policy with the Behaviour set to Allow Transparent HTTPS incompatible sites or Allow Transparent HTTPS incompatible sites and filter other using name from certificate.
  2. Identify the website using Smoothwall Reports. They’ll show with HTTP code 0.
  3. Use the Whois tool for the IP address and copy the CIDR block output.
  4. Use a CIDR calculator such as the CIDR utility tool to convert the CIDR block output into a regular expression. It will look something like: 132\.245(\.(25[0-5]|2[0-4][0-9]|1[0-9]{2}|[1-9]?[0-9])){2}
  5. Edit the Transparent HTTPS Incompatible Sites category to add the regular expression to the URL Patterns section.