How do I add/remove ports from Windows firewall?

An enabled integrated Windows Firewall is a good first layer of protection. It can be configured using many methods, we will mention the two basic ones: GUI and CLI.

Go to Start – Control panel – Windows Firewall.

General tab – Enable (On) or disable (Off) the firewall, as well as ability to allow exceptions (by default, all ports are blocked).

Exceptions tab – By adding specific programs or ports you are excepting them the firewall blocking rules. You should use specific ports and not relay on the adding of rules for whole applications.

Advanced tab – Specify which network adapters should be filtered, configure security logs (can be quite useful for troubleshooting), allow ICMP traffic and restore settings to their default values.

When you add a port in the Windows Firewall exception rules using GUI, it will automatically be opened once you apply the changes.

You have to specify 3 things every time you want to open a port:

Name – If you plan to open a lot of ports, it is always easier to have the name associated with the port number for easier overview.

Port Number – Port which you want to open.

Protocol – Can be either TCP or UDP. If you want to allow both, you would need to insert two rules, once with TCP and the other with UDP protocol settings.

Another option to mention is Change scope. From here, you can define which networks should have access to the port in question. This can be:

• Any computer (including those on the Internet)
• My network (subnet) only
• Custom list

Default value is Any computer.

Following is a set of commands needed to successfully manage Windows Firewall from the command line.

• To enable Windows Firewall:

netsh firewall set opmode enable

• To disable Windows Firewall:

netsh firewall set opmode disable

• To open a port:

netsh firewall set portopening protocol=PROTOCOL port=PORT scope=all profile=all

• To remove a port:

netsh firewall delete portopening protocol=PROTOCOL port=PORT

• Firewall state:

netsh firewall show state

• Firewall configuration:

netsh firewall show config

		Topic: How do I add/remove ports from Windows firewall? (Read 893 times)
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