By default in Windows Server 2016, the Windows firewall is configured to suppress all incoming ICMP traffic. This includes echo requests common to ping, which can complicate network troubleshooting.
Here, we cover how to allow ping via the Windows firewall.
A common response is usually to simply disable the Windows firewall as a whole, but this is not recommended as the Windows firewall does a good job of providing a basic level of system protection. We will only allow the specific rules required to allow ping to succeed.
Allow pinging via the Windows firewall
- First we need to open Windows Firewall, which can be done in several ways. My preferred method is simply to press the Windows key to open Startup, then start typing Firewall. As shown below, Windows Firewall with Advanced Security should appear, click here.
-
Alternatively, you can simply type “firewall” and press Enter in PowerShell to open the same interface.
-
From the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security window that opens, select Incoming Traffic Rules from the left-hand menu.
From the rules listed under Incoming traffic rules, select “File and printer sharing (echo request – ICMPv4-In)” and activate the rule.
Note that this will only allow IPv4 requests; if you need IPv6, you’ll need to enable the “File and printer sharing (echo request – ICMPv6-In)” rule.
Once enabled, the server should now respond to ping requests. From my desktop, I started sending a ping request to my Windows Server 2016 virtual machine at 192.168.1.13 before enabling the rule. You can see the first request expired. I then activated the rule while the ping was running and subsequent requests succeeded, confirming that it works as expected.
Summary
By default, the Windows firewall prevents ICMP echo requests, so the server doesn’t respond to the ping. By enabling this firewall rule, we’ve enabled pinging, which can help us solve network problems.
