Apache Access Restriction to LAN Not Working - NOT Solved

I wanted to have a site only available within my LAN.

The configuration should be as simple as this:

         Order Deny,Allow
    Deny from all
    Allow from 127.0.0.1 ::1
    Allow from localhost
    Allow from 192.168.178

Thanks to monit I found that from time to time (about once a month) my site was accessed from an external IP address.

I checked my configuration over and over again, but did not see anything wrong. Still, I had these occasional external requests coming through.

In the end, I decided to use the authz_host_module with the following configuration:

    Require local
    Require ip 192.168.178
    Require host localhost

Since then, there have been no more reports of external IPs accessing my site.

I still do not quite understand why the original approach failed intermittently, but hey, it is secured now.

Update 2021-12-15

After a while the external IPs appeared again in my log. It seems the above was an "accidental solution", because it required me to restart the Apache web server.

I added a cron job to restart Apache every 24 hrs, hoping that this will "fix" the issue for good. If not, I will post an update.

Update 2022-01-04

I still see external IPs accessing my internal site. How this happens will remain a secret to me, I guess. I am at the end of my wits here ...