I'm setting up a small office network with a single public IP (let's say it's 69.16.230.117). I've configured NAT on the router with incoming traffic forwarded to the server (say the server has a private IP of 192.168.0.2).

Is it okay to configure the client machines on the same subnet to access the server via the router's public IP (69.16.230.117)? In practice it's never caused me problems, but I've heard, here and there, that it is a bad idea, and one should use the private IP (192.168.0.2).

Does connecting to the default host via public IP from within its subnet cause any issues?

Please refrain from writing "never! it breaks the intranet!" ;-)