It seems that this article is demonstrating the “Windows Firewall with Advanced Security” feature that allows users to configure (per-profile) whether or not each network interface should be protected by Windows Firewall. This is useful in situations where you only want Firewall to be active if your interface is connected to a certain type of network (e.g. protect my wireless interface when I am connected to a Public network, but not when I am connected to a Domain network). This is useful, but it is not the same as Multiple Active Firewall Profiles.

In Windows Vista only one firewall profile could be active at any time. This meant that even if you were connected to a “private” network and a “public” network on the same machine, the overall firewall policy being enforced on the machine was “public” (public is selected because it is meant to be the more secure profile of the two).

For example, say my computer has:

A Wired interface connected to Private network
and
A Wireless interface connected to Public network

On both interfaces the “public” firewall rules would be applied. This isn’t ideal because it means that to get things working correctly on my wired (private) network I might need to add firewall rules to the “public” profile…but then those rules will also apply to the wireless (public) network too…which I may not want!

In Windows 7 this behavior has been much improved due to a new feature called “Multiple Active Firewall Profiles”. With the new behavior you will see that Firewall is now capable of enforcing different profile policies on each interface!

If you take the same example as above, the behavior in Windows 7 will be to enforce the “Private” profile firewall policy on the wired interface, and it will enforce the “Public” profile firewall policy on the wireless interface. This is a really great improvement because it means that you can keep your Public networks secured with a restrictive firewall policy while at the same time applying a less-restrictive policy to your private network.

William, thanks! I was unsure when I wrote the article, but I didn’t find a clarifying description on the web. I corrected the article now.

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