Enable ICMP Response on W2k8 Firewall

The firewall on Windows Server 2008 is turned on by default and ICMP echoes are disabled. According to Microsoft you should be able to enable it using:

netsh advfirewall firewall add rule name=”ICMP Allow incoming V4 echo request” protocol=icmpv4:8,any dir=in action=allow

The result of this is "An invalid value was specified" which makes sense if you look at what netsh should be provided with. Rather than adding this custom rule, I had a look to see if there was a rule already there, but disabled. There is, but it's called "File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In)" for some reason.

So, to enable it use:

netsh advfirewall firewall set rule name="File and Printer Sharing (Echo Request - ICMPv4-In)" new enable=yes

Happy pinging.

GUI vs CLI

I always lament the way Microsoft seem to insist on changing user interfaces, seemingly burying things I need to configure one or more clicks away in successive versions of Windows, or implementing "Wizards" which require you to click fill in a piece of information, click Next, fill in another piece of information, click next, and so on. (At the risk of sounding like an old man) I liked the way things were in the NT days e.g. if you needed to configure a WINS Server, most of the settings you needed were presented in a single properties page e.g.:



This allowed you to enter everything required and hit OK once instead of hitting Next umpteen times.

Thankfully there isn't a Wizard (yet) for setting up IP addresses, but there's still a significant number of mouse clicks required to get the job done. At least the command line is never more than six key strokes away (Windows Key+R - cmd - Return). So rather than wearing out the button on your mouse, the next time you need to configure IP addresses at the command line, try netsh instead:

Set an IP address
netsh interface ip set address name="Local Area Connection" static ip mask gateway metric e.g.:
netsh interface ip set address name="Local Area Connection" static 10.10.1.100 255.255.255.0 10.10.1.1 1

Primary DNS
netsh interface ip set dnsserver name="Local Area Connection" static DNSServerIPAddress e.g.:
netsh interface ip set dnsserver name="Local Area Connection" static 82.195.128.192

Secondary DNS
netsh interface ip add dnsserver "Local Area Connection" DNSServerIPAddress e.g.:
netsh interface ip add dnsserver "Local Area Connection" 82.195.146.192