Firewall – server 2008 firewall for file sharing (local subnet access only)

firewallwindows-server-2008

I am trying to share out a number of network shares on a server 2008 machine, but I want the firewall only to allow access to machines on the local subnet.

After I created the share, Windows wanted to automatically enable "network discovery" for the profile which I allowed.

Now even though I went into the "Windows Firewall with Advanced Security" and configure the "Inbound rules" starting with "File and Printer Sharing…" to only accept connections where the Remote Address is in the "Local Subnet" I am still able to access the network share from machines outside the subnet. What am I missing here? Is the Local Subnet value not the right thing to use?

Best Answer

Not sure about how your network is setup, but is it possible that you have the subnet mask on the server setup to have the subnet larger than intended (ie 255.255.0.0 instead of 255.255.255.0)?