Windows Server 2008 Firewall: Any IP Address for Remote IP Addresses

Question

When creating an inbound rule in the Windows Firewall, the documentation included with Windows about remote IP addresses is located on the Scope tab:

Any IP address

Select this option to specify that the rule matches network packets addressed (for inbound rules) or addressed (for outbound rules) to any IP address in the list .

Which list does this apply to? Thanks!

Answer 1

The list refers to the list of local IP addresses (field above).

Basically, the rule applies to any remote IP address for this rule for a computer, if its target IP address is in the local list of IP addresses (if the "Local IP address" parameter is not set to "Any IP address", also )

Here is an incoming example:

• In the local IP address you only have 123.123.123.123
• In the remote IP address, you select "Any IP address"
• If the request comes from any remote IP address, but not to the list of local IP addresses (for example, 213.213.213.213), the rule does not apply
• If the request comes from any remote IP address with the target 123.123.123.123, this rule applies

Here's a derived example:

• In the local IP address you only have 123.123.123.123
• In the remote IP address, you select "Any IP address"
• If the request is sent to any remote IP address, but the source is not in the local IP list (for example, 213.213.213.213), this rule does not apply.
• If a request is sent to any remote IP address from source 123.123.123.123, this rule applies

If in another scenario you have “Any IP address” selected for the local IP address and “Any IP address” selected for Remote, the rule will apply to all requests that match this rule.