Private Network Access

If you are using the Pico W or other wireless controllers you may have diffuculty accessing your web servers due to new security features added to Chrome. This is called the blocking of "Private Networks".

Symptom

You can access a host via IP address using curl, however you can't access that asme address with your browser.

Example:

http://10.0.0.13 will return the error:

Solution

Sample Shell Script

This shell script will startup Chrome, but it will disable the feature that blocks access to your Pico W web server.

#!/bin/bash
"/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" \
--disable-features=BlockInsecurePrivateNetworkRequests,PrivateNetworkAccessChecks,IsolateOrigins,site-per-process,NetworkServiceInProcess,UseDNSHttpsSvcb \
--disable-network-service \
--user-data-dir=/tmp/test-profile

References

W3C Private Network Access